Appendix B. Why Rails?
Two common questions from newcomers to the Ruby on Rails community are “Why Ruby?” and “Why Rails?” This appendix answers these questions with several 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 anything from short scripts to full-featured web applications, such as those built with Ruby on Rails. Its clean syntax and focus on making programmers happy are two of the many advantages that have generated a large community of users. There are hobbyists who use it just for the sake of it, and hardcore programmers who swear by it.
Ruby and—by extension—Rails should not be used as “golden hammers.” Not all problems can be solved by Ruby or Rails, but the chance of running into one of those problems is extremely low. People who have used other languages before coming to Ruby suggest that “Ruby just makes more sense.”[1]
1Quote attributed to Sam Shaw from RailsConf 2011.
The speed at which you can develop applications using Ruby on Rails is demonstrably faster than with other languages. An application that takes 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 on http://rubyonrails.org that “Ruby on Rails is optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity.”