When it comes to web app development, there are many available options to choose from: Ruby on Rails (RoR), .NET, Node.js, Java, Python, and others. Thus, we compiled several articles where we help developers and startuppers to choose the right technology for their projects.
The next article in this series is Ruby on Rails vs .NET Core comparison. Let’s dive into the main features and characteristics of these frameworks and discover their pros and cons.
Ruby on Rails vs .NET Core — The Basics
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (RoR) was developed by David Heinemeier Hansson in 2004 and it has been updated to version 6.1.0 was released on December 9, 2020. Ruby on Rails stands for an application web framework developed in Ruby, a dynamic and object-oriented programming language that operates on the backend. The framework's major goal is to be simple to develop and simple to utilize. What is more, Ruby on Rails was created to make the tedious task of software development more enjoyable and engaging. RoR, according to experienced developers, is simple to learn and makes the process more enjoyable.
Ruby on Rails also has a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework that provides a basic structure for databases, online services, and web pages. RoR also takes advantage of web standards such as XML, JSON for data communication, as well as CSS, HTML, JavaScript for interface creation. It also adheres to two main principles:
- Configuration is less important than a convention: It is a framework with strong opinions about how things should be done. RoR views are central to its conventions, allowing for fewer features and subtleties to be specified via a large number of configuration files.
- Non-repeatable code: Each data point must be identified because it has potential meaning and authority within the system. By avoiding rewriting similar pieces of information, code may be maintained, expanded, and has rarer bugs than before.
Ruby on Rails Key Features
- Multi-threaded programs, more flexible syntax
- Massive community support
- Fun and simple method to construct a web app
- Possibility of database migration
- Debugger and advanced security features
- Cross-platform and open-source
- HTML-embedded and VHLL-enabled
- Encapsulation and object data techniques
- Advanced string/text manipulation with OOP
- Connections to Oracle, DB2, Sybase, and MySQL are supported.
Because of certain advantages, Ruby on Rails is preferred by 49.3 percent of developers worldwide, who will not use any other web framework.
.NET
The Microsoft team of developers published .NET's first beta version in late 2000. When building all of your apps with.Net, you may utilize a variety of languages, editors, and libraries to make the process easier and more distinctive. Visual Basic, F#, C# are all programming languages that may be used to create .Net programs. Visual Basic is a programming language with basic syntax and a straightforward technique for creating object-oriented and type-safe programs. C# is an object-oriented programming language that emphasizes ease of use and current type-safe app development. F# is a cross-platform, object-oriented, open-source language for .Net. In programming, it's both functional and necessary. Windows, Linux, and macOS are all supported by DotNet. As a result, any of the languages listed above will result in each of the three operating systems supporting native .Net code.
There's the additional work that .Net does with the assistance of its editors. Since it is multi, the .Net Core framework editor is used for servers, websites, and console programs. On the Windows operating system, the .Net Framework provides a supporting framework for services, websites, and desktop programs.
An up-to-date version of .NET Core is. NET 6 has many features that are useful for building web applications, both mobile and cloud applications, and also has open-source, cross-platform, and requires no licensing costs. The Xamarin/Mono Net editor is used to execute apps on the mobile OS. Net editors are also used by application programming interfaces (APIs). Net Standard, for instance, is the foundational collection of APIs for the Net Framework.
Net libraries are based on the Net Standard. They are typically used to enhance functionality and maintain a stable ecosystem package. NuGet, for example, is a .Net package manager with over 90,000 items. .Net is furthermore functional to constructing Docker-based microservices, as well as, 2D/3D game development for PC, mobile, and consoles. It can help to expand the capabilities of machine learning, incorporate visual algorithms, speech processing, and predictive models. .Net applies to creating native support for IoT applications and single-board computers.
.NET Key Features
- Productive and high-quality app development
- Ability to create any sort of app on any platform
- Capable of performing quickly, resulting in less computation power and a faster reaction time
- A controlled runtime environment that is trusted and safe and is updated regularly.
NuGet and Visual Studio are part of a broad ecosystem of libraries.
Open Sourced and Enterprise
.NET is an enterprise solution that has many benefits. Being a mature framework it supports many languages and stacks which makes the development of a wide range of applications possible including cloud technologies. Thanks to JIT-compiled performance, .NET is fast and simplifies the creation of documentation.
Ruby is completely open-sourced, which means you can find most of the gems and plug-and-play solutions free and also easily create them. On the other hand, this framework often goes through multiple modifications and is unstable. Because of constant upgrades, the apps get constantly broken which complicates the developer’s tasks.
Ease of Use
Visual Studio and additional modules make the development process a lot easier for those who like working on visual interfaces and need already written pieces of code to speed up the process. This makes .NET a perfect choice for those who want to create a robust application faster than it usually takes.
Ruby on Rails is a command-line-based framework that is beautiful, simple, and lightweight. RoR is extremely adaptable, making it simple for any developer to create an app that will operate on Rails. While the code is intended to be simple, locating and resolving faults in it is more difficult.
Community
Being a Microsoft framework, .NET has a huge community that also includes the .NET Foundation that fosters open development and cooperation within the .NET ecosystem. If you choose .NET you will be able to join the 60,000 developers and 3,700 companies already contributing to the .NET platform. You can also join the .NET community on Stack Overflow.
Ruby has even larger support than .NET, which means that there are a lot of developers who constantly contribute and make the framework better. It is done via the GitHub page where developers detect and submit issues and the Rails team fixes them respectively. RubyGems website counts more than 10,000 gems already. What’s more, you can find tons of tutorials where RoR developers share their knowledge and experience.
Ruby on Rails vs .NET — Performance, and Scalability
.NET Core was created for enterprise projects, and it helps to lower the number of servers to save the cost of hosting and infrastructure. It helps easily scale programs horizontally and vertically to meet the business requirements. The framework has just-in-time compilation, native optimization, and caching services right out of the box.
Ruby has many frameworks, data-stores, and other additions that make it a good choice for scaling products.
- Redis. As Ruby supports caching out of the box you can use Redis as a cache to view fragment caching within your app’s code.
- Chef. Chef is a cloud infrastructure framework that helps to manage infrastructure dependencies, using less code and commands for system configuration updates, creating folder structures, and bootstrapping the whole system.
- Sidekiq. It’s a framework that can extend Rails’ capabilities of doing background jobs and queueing tasks.
What’s more, the latest version of Rails supports multiple databases, which means that now it’s much easier to add a database to your app if needed.
Companies That Use Ruby
- GitHub;
- Airbnb;
- Zendesk;
- Hulu;
- Shopify;
- Dribble.
Companies that Use .NET
- Accenture;
- Stack Overflow;
- Starbucks;
- Paralect;
- Agoda.
Wrap Up
All in all, both technologies are good choices for web development — one is for enterprise projects, another is for small projects. The success of your app depends on how wise your approach will be towards technology choice. From a development standpoint, both .NET Core and RoR are great technologies to build reliable products fast if you have proper talent onboard, and that might become a problem in both the short and long-term if you choose RoR. The RoR talent market shrank big time and it might be quite a bit of a challenge to quickly scale the team with proper talent when needed.
If you still feel stuck and can’t make a decision, contact inVerita and we’ll guide you through this process.
