Spring GDS 25th Anniversary
A logistics company that ships to 190 countries built something to ship to itself.
Ruby on Rails
What is Ruby on Rails?
Ruby on Rails is a full-stack web framework written in the Ruby language. It gives you the whole backend in one opinionated package: database layer, routing, controllers, templating, background jobs, and a mature set of conventions for how they fit together. Released in 2004, it shaped how a generation of web apps got built.
Its core idea is convention over configuration. Rails assumes sensible defaults so you write less boilerplate and more of the logic that actually matters. A small team can stand up a working database-backed application in a day, which is why Rails became the framework behind early Shopify, GitHub, and Basecamp. The object-relational mapper, Active Record, lets you work with database rows as plain Ruby objects, and the framework leans hard on readable, expressive code over ceremony.
Rails is a monolith framework by default, which is a strength and a limit. Compared to a JavaScript stack like Node with a separate frontend, Rails keeps everything in one place and one language on the server, which speeds up small and mid-sized teams. At very large scale or for heavy real-time and concurrency work, other stacks can pull ahead. For most CRUD-heavy products and internal tools, Rails still ships features faster than almost anything else.
Ruby on Rails at Dallonses
We work with Rails where speed to a working product matters and the domain is mostly forms, records, and business logic. Internal tools, admin platforms, content-driven apps, the kind of custom web application that needs to exist and earn its keep quickly rather than win a benchmark.
Rails has a place and limits. It is excellent for a maturing codebase that one team owns end to end, and less obvious when a project is heading toward a decoupled frontend or microservices from day one. When we inherit a Rails app, the job is usually to tame the parts that grew faster than the structure could hold. We keep the conventions that make it productive and clean up the shortcuts that made it fragile.
Got a Rails app to build or untangle? Let's get into it.
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