Why Is Ruby On Rails Becoming So Popular?

Everywhere you go these days, the word App follows. Whether it’s a scheduling application that you use for organising your day-to-day activities, playing a game of miniature golf, checking currency exchange rates, or your train’s timetable on a simple, straightforward interface, or even identifying a unique mushroom that you just found in your garden, there seems to be an App for everything. For every question asked, for every technological tool you wished you had, for every website you wished existed, it is quite possible that an innovative mind elsewhere decided to code an application or construct a website to fill that void.

If you operate in tech circles in either your professional or personal life, you’ll notice a budding trend- everyone has an idea for an App… but not everyone possesses the tools to create it.

If you have ever given thought to learning a programming language for the sake of pursuing a career, or even just a personal project, in App development, it can be difficult to understand just what programming language is suitable for the task at hand. Ruby on Rails is a fascinating example of a modern tool for App development, particularly due to the emphasis it places on the efficient writing of code, and minimising just how much time is consumed in App production. Time management is vital to compete in today’s market.

‘Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming. Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months to develop can be produced in a matter of days.’
– Tim O’Reilly, Founder of O’Reilly Media.

Ultimately, creating Apps using Ruby on Rails is about writing less code, but accomplishing more than other contemporary languages and frameworks.

So, is it Ruby or is it Rails, or is it Ruby on Rails..? To understand Rails, you should know that it is a full-stack framework that emphasises the use of well-known software engineering patterns and paradigms. Ruby, the general-purpose programming language that Rails is written is, while being both incredibly user-friendly and quick to learn, is an interesting example of a progressive, dynamic language that has evolved to compete with the modern demands of a market that has come to expect the conveyor-belt production of applications. It did so by maximising the pace of production from the very first line of written code. The methodology behind the developers behind Ruby on Rails is very apparent- they wanted to provide a framework that facilitated economy of language in order to minimise written code, maintain time-oriented efficiency, and minimal obstruction to development from beginning to end. It’s very much a mechanism for creating intelligent apps with as little difficulty and clutter as possible.

Simply put, Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework written in Ruby. It is designed to make programming web applications easier by asserting assumptions about what every developer needs to get started.
 

Ruby on Rails  should not be dismissed as a framework for constructing simple Apps. Rather, it should be acknowledged as a framework for constructing complex Apps, simply.

‘Before Ruby on Rails, web programming required a lot of verbiage, steps and time. Now, web designers and software engineers can develop a website much faster and more simply, enabling them to be more productive and effective in their work.’
– Bruce Perens, Open Source Luminary.

Given the fact that apps have become so abundant in our everyday existence, many people have accepted them as merely part of the furniture, but for the curious and the tech-minded among us, they might just want to understand the processes behind the scenes. Increasingly so, with such a significant correlation between economic prosperity and awareness to the modern tech climate, businesses have taken to investigating just what programming is suitable for their project. Coders and software engineers who understand just how are these applications are created want to know just what programming language is the most intelligent, efficient way of meeting a certain task, be it creating a website or constructing an App. Some programming languages are more tailored to meeting certain tasks than others, which is why it’s so valuable to research the compatibility of a language and framework to the project at hand.

‘What sets this framework apart from all of the others is the preference for convention over configuration making applications easier to develop and understand.’
– Sam Ruby, Apache Software Foundation board of directors.

We exist in a world which has become increasingly determined by how code is written, and what code is written, and as such it couldn’t possibly hurt to understand what programming languages are being used today. This is why the Code Institute values the intellectual and productive capital of Ruby on Rails as a tool for future App development. The Code Institute, as part of the core curriculum, heavily features the in-depth teaching of Ruby on Rails in an engaging, interactive learning environment..

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