Why are people afraid of Ruby? Most popular myths

Unknown technology

“I don’t know much about Ruby”

“I haven’t heard of other companies using Ruby”

“Ruby still exists?”

“I prefer to choose a different, better-known technology”

We often hear such words from customers. Ruby is not as a popular programming language as Java, Python, C # or PHP. This is indeed true. You can even say that Ruby is a very niche technology. But the question is, is it necessarily worse?

Exactly. Unfamiliarity with the technology and the numerous features of the Ruby language are the most common reasons why clients are skeptical about the possibility of developing their products in this programming language. According to the latest surveys, most prefer to choose more popular options such as Java, C, Python, C ++, JavaScript, C#.

Ruby, in this ranking, does not perform well. Usually, it is located around the 10th place. However, Ruby has many practical advantages, unfortunately not everyone (even developers) is aware of its potential. Let’s take a look at few examples:

• application development speed (this is especially true for MVP products)
• reliability (high quality of the written code)
• security (provides mechanisms that affect application security – XSS, CSRF and SQL)
• flexibility (the possibility of making changes in the code, relatively easily)
• more programming developers (Ruby supports self-documentation, which means that programmers can save a lot of time).

Lack of developers

The struggle to find qualified Ruby developers is another reason why this language is less attractive in the eyes of customers. Recently, we took part in two conferences. The first one was the EU-Startups Summit in Barcelona, during which we learned that, in the Spanish market, there is a significant lack of Ruby developers. The situation is similar in Dubai. During the InfoShare conference, we heard that local companies are forced to outsource Ruby developers from other countries such as India or Pakistan, because Ruby’s specialists in their own country are difficult to access.

The problem with finding Ruby developers is therefore noticeable. That is why companies, very often, look for qualified, professional Ruby developers in CEE. For example in Poland, the products coded in this language are becoming more and more popular because the Polish community of Ruby experts, has developed at a really high level. The lack of developers with Ruby’s expertise, is also somewhat affected by the lower popularity of the language in the industry. But, at Codest, our developers believe that the reason of its reputation is only due to the fact that Ruby does not have such a good marketing strategy as other top languages. Something to think about, isn’t it?

PHP is a cheaper than Ruby

It often happens that clients who want to create a web application, face the dilemma of choosing between PHP and Ruby. One of the main reasons why the majority chooses PHP is the price. PHP, due to its greater popularity, has more developers available, but their work is much cheaper. Earnings of Ruby developers are relatively high. It is believed to be one of the best paid programming languages.

We can say that Ruby is, in some way, an elitist language – not easily accessible to everyone. If you want to have a high quality product, it comes to a price. The higher cost of a Ruby coding, can be naturally explained by the fact that it’s able to deliver to “extra-mile” to the final product.

Ruby is outdated?

Not true! Some people think that Ruby is not niche at all, but simply outdated. We strongly advocate a second opinion. In fact, its followers will respond that it grows more and more with each passing year. New versions of this language appear on the market regularly. In early 2019, Ruby 2.6 was released. We wrote more about these changes HERE.

One should also take into account the fact that Ruby has a highly developed and active environment. You can even see it on GitHub. By the way, GitHub, which is one of the most popular websites for programmers, was also created using Ruby.

Ruby does not have good frameworks

Since 2003, Rails has been one of the most popular (and therefore the most frequently adopted) web frameworks on the market. But Ruby is not just a Rails framework. It’s also Sinatra, Padrino, Hanami, Cuba, Grape, Roda and Ramaze. Basically, there are more that just a few options here.

Even though all the above options are available, the number one is still (naturally), Rails. It is mainly used to create web applications. Rails was developed using the MVC (Model – View – Controller) architecture. It stands out from the DRY and Convention Over Configuration rules.

Other advantages of Rails? It is an open-source framework that, combined with the Ruby language, provides the developer with programming comfort and a wide range of possibilities. You can read more about Rails and other frameworks in our blog HERE.

So, what is the conclusion? Should we be afraid of Ruby?

Definitely not. As you probably noticed in this article, most of the information appearing on this language is not entirely true. To fully understand the advantages of Ruby one should delve into it a bit more. Study what functionalities it offers and how it works in practice. Of course, it’s not a perfect language but such a concept as perfection doesn’t exist yet in any coding language.

If you are still not sure about our point of view on this topic, take a look at these big brands that have already decided to develop their products using Ruby: BaseCamp, Github, Twitter, AirBnB, Kesko Senukai Digital and Helpling. Their success tells us that Ruby is not so bad after all 🙂

Read also:

• Why do software projects fail? Most common reasons
• 40% of startups fail due to lack of market needs. How to successful scale and keep up with a steady growth? My personal tips
• InfoShare Conference. What were the interesting highlights?