Can Ruby, Rails Make Developers Shine In A Downturn?
Indeed, Walley said, in Engine Yard’s experience, “developing Web applications with Ruby and Rails results in a five-to-six-times project time reduction and a project completion probability increase from the industry average of 10 percent to well over 50 percent. We see this over and over from Engine Yard customers. With many hundreds of customers, this is not a fluke of one customer or a few customers but real, proven savings.”
Echoing Hansson, Walley added, “When times are lean, IT managers are forced to do more with less. Ruby and Rails present a way to do just that. Developers are [rarer] and more expensive in terms of hourly rates, but projects can be cut down from 30 man-months to six man-months. That’s a huge cost savings, plus it’s always good to be done sooner than later.”
All of this to which I can only say:
What economic downturn? We get more calls now — every day — at Unspace than we did in July.
I’ll tell you the true Rails arbitrage: here is a technology which allowed a bunch of anarchist punks — literally high-school dropout musicians — start an internationally respected company with zero cash invested… and we didn’t have to get permission from anyone. Four years in, we pick the projects we want to work on, or just take time off to build our own.
So, what are you waiting for?