What is Ruby on Rails Used For?

Sep 9, 2021 - 2 min read

Ruby on Rails is used for building web applications quickly, and without requiring a large team of developers. It is the perfect fit for the startup environment (or startup-like environments) for reasons I’m going to get into next.

In 2021 Ruby on Rails seems to be moving into the enterprise environment. And that makes sense because it has reached a certain level of maturity; it is now less risky for large companies to use it.

And there is very good reason for why any company large or small might benefit from using the framework. And that reason is, growing the business quickly.

The startup way of growing a business is you make a hypothesis about what the market wants to buy, and then you test your hypothesis. And Ruby on Rails is the tool that gives you the quickest and cheapest way you can do that.

Rapid prototyping

When it comes to cranking out new ideas quickly, the Rails framework raises above its competition. You can get from idea to implementation in a matter of days, or weeks.

I’m not talking about building new products here. I’m talking about adding new features to an existing product in order to extend that existing product.

For most businesses that’s great news because it makes it easy for them to figure out what the market wants by showing potential customers something they can interact with, not just a promise or a presentation.

Building Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)

For early stage startups trying to find product/market fit (a product that people are willing to spend money on) can be quite a challenge. And most startups fail because they run out of cash before they find that product/market fit.

So just like with rapid prototyping, you can also build complete products, not just new features and try to validate business ideas.

Obviously it takes a bit longer to create an app than it takes to build a few new features, but is still a lot faster compared to other languages/frameworks out there.

But you can see how valuable a tool like that could be for a startup that is in a race against time and money.

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Chapters

Ch0: Learn Ruby on Rails
Ch1: What is Ruby on Rails?
Ch2: What is Ruby on Rails Used For?
Ch3: Websites using Rails
Ch4: How to Become a Rails Developer
Ch5: How to Find Ruby on Rails Jobs
Cezar Halmagean
Software development consultant with over a decade of experience in helping growing companies scale large Ruby on Rails applications. Has written about the process of building Ruby on Rails applications in RubyWeekly, SemaphoreCI, and Foundr.