Five Reasons Your Startup or Small Business Should Use Rails
Ruby on Rails is a web application framework written in the - wait for it - Ruby programming language. For the past few years, my company has been recommending it to our clients for multiple reasons. If you are starting a new web project, I urge you to consider Rails as a potential solution.
1. Rapid Development
Rails was designed for rapid application development. It provides simple commands for generating database tables for storing your data, models for representing your data, views for displaying your data, and controllers for connecting everything together.
Ruby libraries and packages are called “gems”. The open source community has built many gems that make common features available in your app with only a few lines of code. This makes it possible to setup a basic application with user registration, login, and SEO-friendly URLs in minutes.
2. Stability
Rails has been around since 2005. It has changed over the years, but it is definitely not a fad technology that will disappear in the near future. It’s free and open source with nearly 3,000 contributors continuously working to make it better.
The stability of Rails shows in the many well-known companies that have built their platforms upon it. Airbnb, Basecamp, Goodreads, Groupon, Hulu, Indiegogo, and Kickstarter are all using Rails.
3. Testability
Ruby is an extremely flexible language that makes writing testable code easy. The community has built many testing frameworks, and most of them integrate well with Rails.
It’s possible (and highly-recommended) to create an automated test suite that tests all features of your application. This greatly increases confidence that changes in your application have not broken any existing features.
4. JSON APIs
Native mobile device apps (iPhone, Android, etc.) and “single page” web applications are both extremely popular right now. However, these applications still need backends to store data, fetch data, and authenticate users. Rails fills this need by making it easy to build API-only apps or add API support to existing apps.
5. Hassle-free Hosting
Gone are the days of dragging files back and forth in clunky FTP programs and hoping no files are lost. Services like Heroku, Amazon AWS, and Engine Yard make it possible to host your application and deploy updates without the hassle of low-level server maintenance.
Are you considering Rails? We can help! Checkout Kettul.com for more info.










