Is Ruby on Rails on the Next Train Out?
In recent years RoR’s(Ruby on Rails) popularity has come into question. The amount of articles questioning the usefulness of RoR have grown in the last few years, but so have its defenders.
First, to understand why there is a debate going, we need to understand what RoR is and why it was developed, along with its objective strengths and weaknesses to get a better idea of why some people ignore RoR while others vehemently defend RoR and keep it in the top 20 of programming full stack web frameworks.
Simply put, RoR was made to make web development easier. RoR makes assumptions for what is needed to start a project and provides the skeleton to use to start a new project. RoR puts convention over configuration making apps easy to understand and develop. Although these reasons for RoR development are positive, it still has not caught on to the level of Java or PHP for web app development, which calls into question, why?
1: Popularity, there is no arguing that programing languages such as Javascript and Python dominate the programming landscape.
https://www.monterail.com/blog/why-ruby-on-rails-development
Currently Ruby itself is only practiced by 6.05% of surveyed programmers. This is the biggest blow to RoR’s future, no matter how useful it is, if no one supports it, similarly to Betamax losing to VHS in the 80’s, RoR will be a victim of its own unpopularity
2: Ruby is a bit slow. Unlike compiled programming technologies like C++, Ruby on Rails requires a little more extra time to execute the code. The main reason for it’s lack of speed is memory. Steps can be taken to optimize Ruby’s slow speed, but in comparison to well implemented Javascript, it will always be slower running.
3: Inflexibility, RoR dominates when it comes to basic tasks. The default objects mean incredible fast set up and programming of basic apps. The disadvantage of this ease is there is not a lot of room for creativity. Javascript can be seen as the wild west of programming, where there are very few rules, and with a lot of time and effort, a skilled programmer can do amazing things, while RoR is in most cases, the ready made meal that is easy to prepare, but does not have a lot of room for customization. It is a premade pizza that doesn’t allow much room for anything but pepperoni.
There are other reasons why RoR is diminishing in use among programmers, but these are some of the main reasons why less and less people are using it. Despite this reduction in popularity, there are passionate RoR developers out there, as well as large companies that use it as their primary code for their businesses. Here are a few reasons why someone would choose RoR over other programming languages.
1: Full stack, RoR is a full stack application framework, it is fully capable of being used in the front and back end of development. Developers who know Ruby on Rails can build an entire web application, and because of RoR ease of use, this process is relatively quick, which brings us to the next reason to use RoR.
2: Simple and elegant, RoR requires much less work and is easier to understand because of its simplicity. There is less technical jargon compared to other languages. RoR also has similar structure between programs meaning code can be shared between development teams who are working on different projects, this is a testament to how easy it is to scale RoR code, saving time and money for companies that embrace it.
3: Cost, although we touched on some of the cost saving measures in the last two points, it cannot be said enough that RoR saves cost because of ease of use, its ability to have code scaled to multiple projects with minimal change, and its ability to generate code on the fly to provide a framework for projects. Most companies do not require complex high speed code for their apps and websites, they only need something that will look nice and work with minimal effort, RoR does this well, again saving time and money for any company brave enough to take the plunge.
RoR is a passion project. The fans of RoR continue to update the open source code (gems) at a constant rate with no sign of slowing down. Companies such as AirBnB, Shopify, and Groupon are current users of the RoR framework for their apps.
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There is no arguing however that without these passionate developers, RoR would lose even more of its share in programing spaces, giving way to JavaScript,Go, PHP, and Python, and other programming languages; As well, new programmers are choosing to learn more marketable languages that will guarantee a job compared to Ruby which has a glut of senior programmers but not enough junior programmers to ensure its future. As of now, RoR’s fate will be decided by its updates and the passionate developers that are constantly developing new gems for RoR, giving RoR a fair shot at maintaining relevence and functionality for years to come, even if it is not the most popular programming language available.