Ruby is one of those programming languages that makes software engineers happy. In the last few years, it’s grown rapidly in popularity thanks to its extra-readable code, comprehensive libraries, and amazing community. All of this has drastically increased the number of Ruby development companies offering a smooth, scalable, and well-optimized process that’s attracting more and more businesses every day.
Today, Ruby developers work on all kinds of projects, including e-commerce, web and app development, content management systems, and many more. If you’re interested in implementing the Ruby language in your next software development project, keep reading—these are 5 things you’ll want to know about software development with Ruby.
What Is Ruby Development?
If you’re not working a very IT-focused role yourself, you’ll probably need a brief introduction to what Ruby is and why so many companies go for it. And that’s exactly what we’ll do right now.
Ruby is one of the most long-lasting programming languages out there. It was first released back in 1993 by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who presented it to the public as a blend of other popular programming languages at the time (including Perl, Eiffel, and Ada). Matsumoto’s goal was to create a simple and easy-to-understand language that also allowed developers to create complex and scalable applications. Sufficient to say he did just that.
Ruby is now the backbone of a huge chunk of world-renowned services, including Airbnb, Shopify, Bloomberg, Zendesk, and many more. All of them are using Ruby to its full potential to provide a stable, scalable, and secure software infrastructure for millions of users.
There are four main reasons why so many companies prefer to hire Ruby developers: simplicity of development, cost-effectiveness, and optimization.
#1 Ruby Is Simply
Ruby was designed to be clear and easy to read throughout all stages of development. It makes use of English-like syntax and easy-to-follow logic that makes code easy to read even for people unfamiliar with software development. This allows Ruby developers to do more with less code, and companies to aim for higher standards in their software solutions.
#2 Ruby Is Cost Effective
Ruby is 100% open source and free to use, so any company can hire a Ruby developer and get access to the thousands of incredible libraries, frameworks, and tools that facilitate the best Ruby development without paying a dime. And once scalability comes into play, the powerful design of the language will allow Ruby developers to keep all processes running without breaking a sweat.
#3 Ruby Is Quick
There’s one framework leading the optimization of Ruby development projects: Ruby on Rails (RoR). Most Ruby projects are carried out with RoR because this framework has been known to reduce development time by more than 30%. As a simple comparison, six lines of Java code can be written in one line of RoR code. Ruby’s lean code base, rich selection of powerful plugins, and object-oriented design all make the language great for optimization and speed.
Ruby Makes Backend Development Easy and Efficient
Ruby is mostly used in the back-end of software applications—and with good reason. Just the fact that Ruby developers need to write less code to complete complex tasks means that companies can spend less on development and still achieve outstanding results.
As a matter of fact, many companies have begun to use Ruby to develop fully-featured backend infrastructures for their Minimum Viable Products (MVP), instead of investing ten times more time and money in building the same thing with other tools. And another cool fact: Ruby makes it easy for developers to update software and add new features to the code base even after launch.
Ruby is also great for backend development because it offers a wide range of readily-made solutions that have been tried and tested by thousands of software engineers and businesses worldwide. Ruby developers know that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel and that many of the most valuable features in backend development are already covered in one library or another.
If You’re Using Ruby, You’ll Probably Want to Take a Look at Ruby on Rails
Although Ruby and Ruby on Rails are not the same, they are often used interchangeably. Why? Because most Ruby development projects today use Ruby on Rails in one way or another. For those unaware, RoR is an open-source web application framework that was released in 2004. It’s offered under the MIT license, which means almost unlimited reuse and license compatibility. In other words, it is essentially free.
Here are some RoR facts you might be interested in:
- Ruby on Rails is based on the model–view–controller (MVC) software design pattern.
- The RoR framework follows two main principles that determine the underlying logic of the program: Convention Over Configuration (CoC) and Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY). The former aims to reduce and facilitate decision-making without sacrificing versatility. The latter states that Ruby developers must avoid repetitive code and redundancy. CoC and DRY are the key drivers behind the speed and optimization of Ruby on Rails development projects.
- RoR is known for being one of the most (if not the most) stable and predictable Ruby frameworks, which makes it a great choice for long-term, complex, and scalable projects.
If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out our other Ruby articles.
