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appendix A
Why Rails?
A common question in the Ruby on Rails community from newcomers is, “Why
Ruby?” or “Why Rails?” In this appendix, this question will be answered with a couple
of key points about why people should be using Ruby on Rails over other frameworks,
covering such things as the culture and community standards.
Ruby is an exceptionally powerful language that can be used for short scripts up
to full-featured web applications, such as those built with Ruby on Rails. Its clean
syntax and its focus on making programmers happy are two of the many major
points that have generated a large community of people who use it. There are hobbyists
who use it just for the sake of it right up to hardcore people who swear by it.
However, Ruby (and by extension, Rails) should not be used as “golden hammers”.
Not all problems are solvable by Ruby or Rails, but the chance of running into one
of these situations is extremely low. People who have used other languages before
they have come to Ruby suggest that “Ruby just makes more sense.” 1
The speed at which that you can develop applications using Ruby on Rails is
demonstrably faster than other languages. An application that has taken four
months to build in Java could be done in three weeks in Rails, for example. This
has been proven again and again. Rails even claims up front on http://
rubyonrails.org that “Ruby on Rails is optimized for programmer happiness and
sustainable productivity.”
The Ruby and Rails communities have a consistent focus on self-improvement.
Over the last couple of years we’ve seen developments such as the improvements
from Rails 2 to Rails 3, Passenger (covered in chapter 14), and Bundler. All of these
have vastly improved the ease of development that comes naturally to Ruby. Other
developments have focused on other areas, such as the RSpec, Capybara, and
Cucumber 2 gems (featured prominently in this book), which focus on making testing
exceptionally easier for Ruby developers. By consistently improving, things are
becoming easier and easier for Ruby developers every year.
Along the same vein of self-improvement is an almost zealot-like focus on testing,
which is code that tests other code. Although this may seem silly to begin with,
1 Quote attributed to Sam Shaw from Railsconf 2011.
2 A quick nod to the aruba gem: http://github.com/aslakhellesoy/aruba, which is used extensively to test
RSpec’s and Cucumber’s command-line interfaces (CLI), but can also be used to test other CLIs.