Let's get straight to the answer. Rails is not dead. It is anything but dead.
Ruby on Rails is more alive than ever with a growing community and more contributors to the open-source project than I've ever seen.
The project has been improving at a lightning-fast rate too, with almost back-to-back releases of new versions of Rails 5, 6, and 7.
I'm a Rails developer so take this with a grain of salt, but out of all the languages I've used nothing is quite as enjoyable and easier to build with than Ruby on Rails.
Rails Developers are In Demand
It's never been a better time to be a Ruby developer.
Ruby on Rails developers are highly demanded and well compensated. The average salary for a rails developer is over $120K.
And Ruby is one of the easiest and most flexible languages to learn in my opinion.
It's optimized for developer happiness and rapid feature development. You can literally create a blog from scratch in 5 minutes.
It's also one of the most popular frameworks used by new and emerging companies. Which is also an excellent opportunity for anyone who wants the opportunity to get early equity in a company before they take off. This is one of my favorite benefits actually.
What Companies Use Ruby on Rails?
If you hear someone say nobody uses Rails, don't get upset! They are oblivious to the benefits of Ruby on Rails and this is an opportunity help them learn about this amazing framework and its potential!
The fact is many major companies use Rails for their production website.
- Shopify
- Netflix
- Hulu
- Github
- Groupon
- Zendesk
- Airbnb
- Fiverr
Just to name a few...
Internet: Ruby doesn’t scale.
— Lawrence Mandel (@mmmandel) November 30, 2019
Ruby: Sorry. I’m busy over here processing $1.5M+ USD Gross Merchant Value (GMV) per minute and 14K+ orders per minute running global #BFCM with @ShopifyEng. #ruby #scale 💪💪💪 #lifeatshopify https://t.co/O7GOblzcbv pic.twitter.com/mQKg2uCxvH
And it's one of the best frameworks for new companies and startups to pick up. It lets you build a product faster than any other framework out there.
Understand What Rails is Best For
Every programming language and web development framework has pros and cons that make it better and worse at doing certain things.
Rails is no different.
You should not use Ruby on Rails to build certain types of applications.
But similarly there are certain types of projects where it is without a doubt the absolute best tool for your team.
The most important thing to consider when you're choosing your development stack, is what you need to get out of it. Consider the features you need to implement. Balance the pros and cons of the technologies you are considering using.
Fine, Rails won't be the best choice for everything. Often companies adopt Rails for the things it really excels at, and pull in other technologies for the things they excel at. There's no reason you can't pull in Rails to build your website and develop features rapidly. Then connect it to micro-services in Go or Java or whatever language you need to do your other fancy stuff.
Ultimately, Rails is definitely not dead.
And if your team is considering Ruby on Rails... I would highly, highly, highly recommend it.