Is Ruby on Rails dying: Myth or Reality?

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Is Ruby on Rails dying: Myth or Reality?

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I’ve thought about playing around with PHP. ’Cause others told me that Rails is on its deathbed.

But is Ruby on Rails dead?

The rumours have been circling for months, and a slight decrease in Ruby on Rails popularity has, indeed, been noted in recent years. Now it’s time to reveal whether RoR’s death is a myth or reality.

Ruby Myths and Legends

Though the Ruby myths surrounding RoR’s death are pretty strange, there are a number of reasons why people actually believe them to be true.

1Decrease in Ruby on Rails popularity. It is no secret that the popularity of a topic influences how people form opinions.

According to Google Trends, the slight decrease of RoR began in 2017 and has been diminishing ever since.

Rails was launched in 2004 by David H. Hansson and made big noise in the developer’s community due to its unique Model-View-Controller principle. For three years, from 2006 to 2009, the industry demand for Ruby on Rails peaked, and for quite a while it was regarded as a top-rated framework.

After several years, stability has replaced RoR’s popularity. The relevance and popularity of RoR doesn’t swing like a rollercoaster — its stability means that it is well-tested and safe to use.

But once Rails stopped appearing in top charts, it was thought of as “dead.”

This makes me wonder : is popularity a proper measurement of existence?

2Becoming outdated: Rails is one of the ‘oldies’ in the world of development. It has been almost 15 years since Ruby on Rails and its MVC principle appeared on the market.

Today, the market is dominated by AI, ML, and data science. They are the ‘hype’ technologies that programming languages and frameworks are eager to use. Comparing Rails to Python, RoR does not have enough functionality to build AI-based projects, this framework is sometimes considered to be obsolete.

3 New frameworks: Since the first Rails release, hundreds of other programming languages, frameworks, and updates have appeared.

It is clear that competition is continuing to rise, and people tend to talk about up-and-coming technologies.

Why ruby on rails is alive?

Of course, as each technogy Rails framework has its own pros and cons.

Let me jump right to the evidence of RoR’s well-being:

1. Practicality: Ruby on Rails is convenient, functional, and — most importantly — practical. It offers developers many helpful libraries, otherwise known as ‘gems’, and tools that make the development process faster and more readable.

2.Community: The beauty of RoR is its ongoing evolution. More and more developers choose Rails as their preferred programming language.

In order to learn something new, find solutions to their aching problems, or discover some cool ‘gems’ created by senior mentors, they turn to the community of other RoR users.

3.Usage by corporations:

There is no need to explain further. As you can see, big companies use Ruby on Rails due to its convenience and readable syntax.

Once you start using Rails, it quickly grows on you. Major companies stay loyal to Rails because it was likely their framework of choice when they started as small companies with unknown names. It didn’t fail them then, and it won’t fail them now.

The future of Ruby on Rails

However, a new version of Rails was released in April 2019, a new release of Ruby 3 is on its way.

The Ruby improvement will directly influence Rails with the addition of some new features and speed improvements. The user community and Rails developers can’t wait to use these updates in new versions of their framework.

The Ruby release is planned for 2020 and includes three main goals:

1. Static Analysis
2. JIT / Ruby 3×3 / Performance
3. Concurrency

In a nutshell, Ruby on Rails is a well-established Ruby framework that is not planning to disappear without a fight. The rumors that Ruby on Rails is dead are definitely false — they are simply an exaggeration of RoR’s shift from peak popularity to a more stable, sustainable programming language.

It is never easy to choose the right technology stack. But you can always feel free to contact us to validate if RoR is a good fit for your project.

Is Ruby on Rails dying: Myth or Reality? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.