Trends: What’s in Store for Ruby on Rails in 2021?

The new year has well and truly begun. Soon numerous articles will crop up arguing you should ditch Ruby on Rails in 2021 for shiny new languages and frameworks. Just like they did in 2020, 2019 and so on.

For some reason, Rails has refused to die despite questions like “is Ruby on Rails dead” dominating RoR-related Google searches for the past several years. New Rails-based projects go live, Gem libraries keep growing and students keep coming to learn it.

But will that continue in 2021, I hear you ask. Read on to find out what Rubyroid Labs’ CEO thinks about this year’s perspectives for software development and Ruby on Rails trends.

Tech Superiority, the Holy Grail of Competition

The trends that emerged through the pandemic in 2020 are going to pick up steam in 2021.

We are not out of the woods yet and there is a lot of uncertainty ahead, so businesses will keep investing in digital transformation. As I write this, we are working on moving a brick-and-mortar beauty store online. In fact, digital advantage has never played a greater role in market competition, and that role is only going to grow.

Our job as software developers is to help businesses gain and keep that advantage. And the best way to do so is to get the most out of a technology that has time and again proven itself effective. New tech may be powerful, but the time spent figuring out how to apply it is lost time.

And even when there are no more lockdowns, post-pandemic business ideas will require digital power.

Why Choose Ruby on Rails in 2021

The very nature of Ruby on Rails uniquely positions the framework for 2021. Here is why.

For a long time have developers been playing with microservices-based architecture. Many of them have ultimately realized that building architecture on microservices defeats the purpose unless you are developing an app-size Google or Facebook. That is because this approach is packed with nuances that require constant attention.

In contrast, Ruby on Rails has always been about monolithic architecture, an approach forgiving of mistakes and often more effective.

Some may say that monolithic architecture can become a problem as your application grows — this is a common misconception. There are tried-and-true practices that will help you scale your RoR monolith or take out its heaviest parts. Just look at these Ruby on Rails–based companies that have become industry leaders.

What’s more, Ruby has made impressive inroads lately. The performance of Ruby applications has tripled with the release of Ruby 3.0, tangible progress since the 2.0 version. At the same time, developers have come up with ways to further improve that performance.

Speeding up and doing more things simultaneously is what awaits applications that run on Ruby on Rails in 2021. If you want to harness this trend for your business, write to us and we will build a future-proof RoR application for you.

The Fastest Gets the Most Users

Your users will go to your competitor if your app or website makes them wait too long.

It was more than ten years ago that Amazon discovered that every 100 ms of latency cost it 1% in sales. And things will slow down for users as applications grow bigger and more complex in 2021.

This will increasingly send developers looking for ways to offset the size of the user application with server speed. They have already been able to delegate more application behavior to the front end thanks to the recent development of communication networks.

That approach, however, can make testing a headache. Developers have tried to overcome that headache by using solutions like TypeScript, which help reduce bugs at the development stage. But such solutions may slow down the development.

That is one more case for Ruby on Rails in 2021, as the RoR community has always focused on striking the right balance between the application size and server speed. For an example, look at techniques like Hotwire’s Turbo, which speed up page changes and form submissions.

Over time, Ruby on Rails trends have proven that the framework can smoothly serve content to slews of users. Airbnb alone has been using the framework to work with over 150 million users and handle roughly 58 million monthly visits to its website. This feature of the framework will pave the way for more Ruby on Rails ideas.

Adapt or Die

Your tech superiority will depend on whether you can continually improve your application, responding to changes on the market and in the technology.

You ask, how do you do that? The answer is simple: integrations.

We all know that allowing new users to sign into an application through popular social media boosts the user base. But there is much more to integrations than that. There are tools that can accelerate your application, enable new features and change your application’s behavior.

Ruby on Rails developers have come up with numerous such tools.

Think of the task processing solution Sidekiq, Docker for organizing containers, and container orchestration tools like Swarm and Kubernetes. The community developing those tools has been one of the most enduring RoR trends.

Wrapping It Up

In 2021, businesses will push harder towards achieving digital superiority in their niches. To survive and flourish, you will need to use mature technology that does not require a break-in period.

Moreover, your success will depend on how quickly you roll out new features, deliver content to the user and adapt to changes. Our task as developers is to help you excel at that — just let us know when you are ready.

With that said, we are not worried about Ruby on Rails’ future. For most cases, it will be the best technology choice in 2021.