Ruby off the rails

Sometimes it feels that my company is the only company in the world using Ruby but not Ruby on Rails, to the point that Rails has almost become synonymous with Ruby.

I'm sure this isn't really true, but it'd be fun to hear some stories about non-Rails Ruby usage out there.

I have inherited a legacy application that supports mobile for some well-known dating sites (which I won't name due to confidentiality).

The legacy application uses Ruby but not Rails. The original application uses a predecessor to Rails, called "Merb" ([

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][1])

Part of the application has been ported to use different technology to separate the technology into a backend and frontend layer. The backend layer uses pure ruby and the front-end uses ReactJS with some NodeJS integration.


[1]:

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### Puppet and Chef: DevOps ###

I didn't see a mention of [Puppet][1] or [Chef][2] in the 30 answers that preceded my arrival. Ruby appears to dominate current work in cloud automation and is the base, extension, and templating language of these two big players. They are used primarily to distribute system and application configuration information for server arrays and for general IT workstation management.

The [DevOps][3] field is quite Ruby-aware. Today, Perl has a competitor. While a really simple script may often still be written directly for `sh(1),` a complex task now might be done in Ruby rather than Perl.


[1]:

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[2]:

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Ruby is hugely powerfull, and Rails was a good proof-of-concept of it's power applied to web-services.

Nonetheless, Ruby continues (and will continue) to become more widespread in different contexts, like system-administration, scripting, automation, ...

The thing was that in some point along the way, Rails got so much fame that "shadowed" Ruby and make it look like that it was Ruby following Rails. But as the number of answers in this post prove it, Ruby is much more than Rails.

I too feel an "itch" when I'm searching about Ruby, and have to constantly deviate Rails info that gets in the way... but hey, Rails also contributed a lot to the Ruby growth and marketing :)

I'm mostly a Web developer, and I learned Ruby to use Rails, but I like the language so much that I started developing a desktop Swing application in Ruby, using JRuby and Monkeybars. I'm competent in Java, but don't much like using it, and the Swing API is horrible, so putting Ruby on top has been a big win.

Other than Rails I've been using ruby extensively in the following small/medium projects:

1. In large hierarchical text file parsing (to some extent similar to YAML structure)
2. Specialized small range web-spiders.
3. Three Sinatra apps.

I created a presentation -- coincidentally named Off The Rails -- to discuss Rack-based web applications:

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The git repo includes slides in Markdown format and sample code (in the form of running applications and middleware). Here's the abstract:

> Ruby on Rails is the most popular web application framework for Ruby. But it's not the only one! If you think Rails is too big, or too opinionated, or too anything, you might be happy to learn about the new generation of so-called microframeworks built on Rack. And since Rails 3 is itself a Rack app, you don't have to give up Rails to get the benefit of Sinatra routes or Grape APIs.

And here are some references:

* This talk lives at <https://github.com/alexch/off-the-rails>
* [Yehuda's #10 Favorite Thing About Ruby](

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* [Rack](

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* [rack-test](

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* [rack-client](

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* [Sinatra](

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* [Grape](

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* [Vegas](

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)
* [Siesta](

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* [Rerun](

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)



Hope you find it useful!

I almost take insult that ruby is a rails thing. It is like back when CGI was the latest trend and everyone figured that if you knew perl you must be doing it only because you programmed CGI apps. Ruby is just a scripting language for me, although not as mature as python so I somewhat regret having to jump through some of its hoops and recent changes, I still like it and use it. Although I work in a java shop and therefore groovy is the ideal choice for a scripting language, I still use ruby at home and for throw away scripts that aren't needed to be shared at work.

I was considering getting into RoR from all the buzz and how quick/simple it is, but after looking over rails I didn't see anything at all that was amazing or even the least bit innovative or rapidly fast about its development compared to **any** other framework. The only benefit I saw was that I could code in ruby, which would be nice, but initial setup, server maintenance and scaling is more difficult, thus re-offsetting the pleasure of coding in ruby.

I used Ruby for a lot of back-end code simply because I was the only person who was tasked to do it and needed a nice clean language that allowed me to be very productive and write easy to maintain code. I find Ruby allows me to do that easier than Perl and Python. Other people's mileage might vary on that but it works well for me.

Besides that, I like how Sequel and Nokogiri work. I also used ActiveRecord for a while separately from Rails.

I use Ruby with Sinatra which is much simpler than Rails. I did use Rails but just found that it has turned into a bit of a monster, although Rails is still amazing compared to web frameworks available for Java.

The main feature of Ruby that I love however is "eval" and "method_missing", which Rails actually uses for example in ActiveRecord so that you can use the amazing "find_by-field-name-" queries.