Ruby on Rails is considered one of the easiest frameworks to learn and one of the fastest technologies to work with. Even though it is quite “mature,” RoR is an extremely dynamic technology that constantly evolves.
Contents:
- Fast facts about Ruby on Rails
- Is Ruby on Rails still popular?
- Pros and cons of Ruby on Rails for developers
- What advantages does business receive with Ruby on Rails?
- Who will benefit from RoR the most?
- Who are the Ruby on Rails competitors?
- Where to find an RoR developer for your project?
Should you choose it for your business in 2022? Or, should you start learning it? To answer these questions, we have gathered all the benefits and advantages of Ruby on Rails 7 for developers and business owners.
Fast facts about Ruby on Rails
- In 2022, Ruby on Rails came of age as it was first introduced to the public in 2004.
- It is a free open-source framework under the MIT license that has a large community of enthusiasts and more than 6,000 contributors.
- RoR is usually used for server-side development but can also be applied for full-stack development.
Rails framework written in Ruby language became a true breakthrough back in 2005, but what about today?
Is Ruby on Rails still popular?
The popularity of Ruby has been gradually decreasing over the last decade. In 2013, 10,4% of StackOverflow respondents were choosing Ruby, and in the 2022 survey, only 6,05% of software engineers stated their liking of the language. The popularity of the Rails framework is even lower – in 2022, only 5,83% of developers chose Ruby on Rails and only 3,3% of newbies wanted to bind their careers with this technology.
Ruby on Rails is not that popular among business owners as well. For example, in October 2022, there are only 324 jobs for the Ruby on Rails engineer on Upwork and more than 3,000 open positions for Node.js (another back-end framework) developers.
However, the demand for RoR experts still exists and partially this is because many websites that were built ten to fifteen years ago were written with Ruby on Rails and their code has to be maintained.
What companies use Ruby on Rails?
According to some statistics, as of October 2022, more than 413,000 websites use RoR. These are some of the large companies using Ruby on Rails:
As well as many others that use RoR as one of their frameworks among many others, like Netflix and Twitter.
Pros and cons of Ruby on Rails for developers
If you’re thinking of becoming a Ruby on Rails web developer, this section is for you. We have gathered the main advantages of RoR and some flaws you should consider before diving into this framework.
Why should you learn Ruby on Rails in 2022?
It’s very easy to learn.
Many developers claim that Ruby on Rails is “just like English!” It is considered clean, easy to read, and minimalistic. Some software engineers on Twitter or YouTube say that they needed several days to a couple of weeks to fully comprehend and start using RoR.
It is easy to use.
StackOverflow survey states that Ruby on Rails is loved by more than 55% and dreaded by almost 45% of respondents. This framework holds 14th place among the most loved frameworks.
With RoR, you can develop a new web app really fast.
Thanks to understandable syntax and multiple readymade out-of-the-box plugins and modules, developing in RoR is very fast. You don’t have to spend time on tedious tasks and instead can focus on more creative parts of the coding.
A Ruby on Rails software engineer can expect a high salary.
According to ZipRecruiter, the national average salary of the RoR developer is $117,886 a year.
Image source: ZipRecruiter
Here are some average salaries of developers that use other frameworks:
- Node.js – $130,890 a year or $63 an hour
- Go – $123,400 a year or $59 an hour
- Angular – $110, 282 a year or $57 an hour
- .NET – $105,273 a year or $51 an hour
- Django – $105,629 a year or $51 an hour
You get massive support from RoR enthusiasts.
Ruby on Rails is used by many active developers who are eager to help newbies on Twitter, Reddit, or StackOverflow. There are also more than 6,000 contributors who participate in the framework development.
Image source: Rails Contributors
Why choosing RoR in 2022 is not the best idea?
There are two intertwined reasons why some developers believe that RoR is not the best choice for newbies. First of all, RoR is not as popular as it used to be. That is why fewer and fewer companies chose it for the development of their projects. As a result of the popularity downfall, there is little opportunity for Junior RoR developers with no hands-on experience with the framework.
Even though there are still and will be enough companies that chose Ruby on Rails for web development, there will be significantly more of those who will use Node.js or .NET for their back-end.
Salaries of Ruby on Rails experts in different countries
According to Glassdoor, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, here are some of the average annual salaries of Ruby on Rails developers in different cities and countries:
- Junior RoR developer, New York, NY (US) – $77,857
- Senior RoR developer, New York, NY (US) – $146,912
- Senior RoR developer, San Francisco, CA (US) – $142,622
- Middle RoR Developer, Israel – $150,240
- Senior RoR developer, London, Great Britain – $69,985
- Senior RoR developer, Kyiv, Ukraine – $37,540
- RoR Developer, Warsaw, Poland – $26,556
- Middle RoR Developer, Indonesia – $10,200
If your business is situated in a country with high wages for software developers, you might consider outsourcing your Ruby on Rails app to a country where tech savvies have lower salary expectations.
What advantages does business receive with Ruby on Rails?
If you try to decide which technology to use for your next project and looking at Ruby on Rails, check out the advantages and best-for of this full-stack framework first.
#1. Fast prototyping
Ruby on Rails helps you to create an MVP of your app extremely fast. One of the reasons why RoR apps can be deployed so fast is Ruby Gems, the functionality that has been pre-written by other developers and that your developer can use instead of writing plugins and modules from scratch.
#2. Convention over configuration principle
Ruby on Rails is a convention-over-configuration framework. This principle was first described to explain RoR peculiarities and it means that a developer doesn’t have to make unnecessary decisions or repeat oneself while coding. In other words, the software engineer has to write only the part of the code that doesn’t fall under the convention. If all parts of the application are named according to the convention, then it should work without a single line of configuration code. The use of programming idioms and configuration libraries with a multilayered architecture are also tools that help developers avoid making unnecessary decisions.
Image source: @andrzejkrzywda
#3. Logical, steady development
Ruby on Rails web development is very consistent, meaning that its code is easy to read, understand and maintain. Every new member of your team will be able to pick up the development and continue writing code from the point where the previous engineer has stopped.
Who will benefit from RoR the most?
Ruby on Rails is not for everyone. Some developers state that it lacks scalability and therefore shouldn’t be used for large, complex apps. Others believe that Ruby on Rails performance is deficient in speed and hence shouldn’t be applied with apps that require fast real-time responses. However, there are some situations when RoR will work just perfectly.
- Teams with tight budgets and tight deadlines. Ruby on Rails development is extremely fast and hence, you can get an MVP faster and for a smaller fee than with other technologies.
- CPU-intensive apps. RoR can handle a large number of queries and requests from the users and for that reason is a good choice for applications that work with complex user actions.
- Small companies with limited resources. Ruby on Rails can be used both for client-side and server-side development, it is a full-stack framework that will suit a small team.
- Startups. Due to the high speed to market and relatively cheap development, Ruby on Rails is often used by startups that want to create their prototype as fast as possible.
- Solo developers. With Ruby on Rails, one person can cover the whole development cycle, including front-end, back-end, and database. If you want to work on your pet project by yourself, Ruby on Rails should be great for you.
Who are the Ruby on Rails competitors?
These are the most popular back-end frameworks that can be used instead of Ruby on Rails:
- Node.js. Developers state that it is much faster and more scalable than RoR. It has great libraries and is extremely popular at the moment.
- Django. It is an open-source Python-based framework with a great community. Django is loved for its rapid development.
- .Net. Open-source framework on C# that helps to create stable code and has a large community.
- Laravel. It is a developers-friendly PHP framework with clean architecture.
- Phoenix. An Elixir-based server-side framework that provides fast development and great performance of the apps.
Where to find an RoR developer for your project?
In previous sections, we have mentioned the average salaries of Ruby on Rails developers in some countries. As tech team salaries are the main expense item of software development, you might want to find the most cost-efficient engineers for your project. One of the ways to do so is to look for developers globally.
Today, Poland, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines are among the best destinations for outsourcing IT services. These countries have large pools of tech experts, offer high-quality software development, and have quite affordable rates.
When you choose a Ruby on Rails outsourcing company, pay attention to its portfolio and reputation on the market. MWDN, for example, is highly praised by tech talents and has hands-on experience in using Ruby on Rails for developing financial and logistics apps.
If you still have doubts about what technology to choose for your project or you want to find out more about the costs and deadlines of RoR development, don’t hesitate to contact us. Let’s find you the best team that will bring your dream project to life!