5 Reasons to Learn Ruby on Rails

Tuesday June 9, 2009

Ruby on Rails has started to come into its own online. Thanks in short to the guys at 37signals and various other companies taking to it so quickly. Heres a few reasons why I will be learning Ruby on Rails for the development of my next web app.

rubyonrails

1. The Speed Factor

This is like talking about a super hero power or something. From the tests I have read about throughout the net, they have found Ruby on Rails to be faster overall compared to other PHP frameworks. This is a major selling point for me. My ambitions are to build web apps on a large scale. Whats worse than having a great web app, but to only see it dump off in speed when the heavy traffic hits. If right out of the box a framework can handle more traffic at less server cost, then you’re bound to save money in the long haul for your business. This is part of effective business planning. Although I am aware and have played with faster frameworks, like Pythons Django. I will have to compared the frameworks in a later post.

2. Instant Resume Booster

To coin the catch phrase of the year, ‘In this kind of economy’, we need to be prepared for the future. Meaning, in case you haven’t been browsing the market lately, most every decently sized company out there wants an employee who has experience in developing in Ruby. Even more so Ruby on Rails. I keep plenty busy with my private clients and personal projects, but if I have to get out there in the future, I might as well be prepared.

Edit: (Thanks  Brian) “You want Rails to help you get a job? Learn Ruby, submit patches, become known on the net as someone who does Rails. Nobody’s gonna hire you (for a good job) for just putting it on your resume. Same goes for PHP, Python, and even Javascript.”

3. The Big Boys Use It

The newest and latest startups like, oh.. Twitter and maybe you’ve heard of Hulu. Not to say the oldies are bad for using PHP or Java as their base. Since so many big startups are adopting the Ruby on Rails framework, it is probably not a bad idea to learn it. Who knows, your next web app may just be bought out by these social giants.

4. Enrich Your Brain

Why not just learn something to learn it? Of course we’re all strapped for time, but this is for those guys who have the drive to learn and develop in something totally new.

5. Solid Community

To me so far, the Ruby on Rails community seems helpful and new. Combined with the screencast and documentation, you really can’t lose. There are more than enough resources for anyone to succeed in developing web apps through Ruby on Rails.

I say make 30 minutes twice a week and dive into it. You may find you really enjoy the language and it isn’t such a waste of time for you or your goals in life.

If you like this post, then leave a comment below or Subscribe to the RSS Feed.
You can also promote this post through Twitter, StumbleUpon or Digg.


« Getting Real – Book Review
Wordpress 2.8 Released – Baker »
  • I think this is a good for us and we are going learn about it
  • Excellent. I have enjoyed learning Ruby so far.
  • There's a lot of flame-bait here. I'm a long-time Rails user but I need to set the record straight here.

    I can tune a PHP server to vastly outperform Rails apps. I can also set up a Rails application to bury a PHP application in terms of speed and scalability. However, it takes a lot of knowledge for *both* of those. Simply using Rails is not going to be faster than PHP if you don't have it working right. However, you will get your project done faster. There's no question there. By the time you have your php app talking to the database and displaying records, I'll be done with my first feature implementation.

    To point #2, resume boster... everyone claims to be "competent" or "familiar with" whatever's popular. You want Rails to help you get a job? Learn Ruby, submit patches, become known on the net as someone who does Rails. Nobody's gonna hire you (for a good job) for just putting it on your resume. Same goes for PHP, Python, and even Javascript.

    #3 Twitter uses a lot of stuff, including Rails, but also Scala, because Rails couldn't handle the demands of their message queue. Rails wasn't meant to be used the way they were using it. That's not Rails' fault, and so they did the smart thing and used a technology that *could* do what they wanted. Hulu uses Rails, but they also use Flash, and I am sure they have other technologies they use to get those videos to your machine.

    #4 and #5 are great reasons to learn Rails. We do have a great community, and if you ever need help with anything Rails-related, just let me know and I'll see how I can help. If you're building a web-based app today, you're gonna have a hard time beating Rails for quickly getting your idea implemented. Deploying isn't even that hard anymore. But just remember, it's not a golden hammer, and it's not going to get you the most awesome jobs.
  • First, thanks for the in depth reply Brian.

    Yeah my fault on shooting at just Rails, rather it needs to be directed at learning Ruby. No single framework will completely build the next great web app. Although they make a good starting point.

    Agreed, no one can just learn Rails tomorrow and be hired on at a major company as the lead developer for Ruby. You make an excellent point I neglected to make, get involved with the community and learn your craft through fixing bugs and intimately getting to know the language. As goes for any language you want to be seen as the master of.

    I actually read shortly after writing this post about Twitter not being solely on Rails anymore.

    Thanks for the helpful offer. So far Rails has been fun to develop in.
blog comments powered by Disqus