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Sheetal Rawat
Sheetal Rawat

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NodeJS vs Ruby on Rails — Which Is The Right Backend Technology For A Web App

Choosing the best programming language is one of the most important decisions at the beginning of a web development project. It is because the performance of any project depends on the suitable programming language for that particular project.

In this blog, I would take you to the participation in the debate of Nodejs vs Ruby on Rails. We will have a discussion on some parameters and will finally decide which is better. According to google trends, 5 years back Ruby was the leader but, during the last 4 years, Nodejs has just smashed Ruby, and the node continues to expand the market.

 

A Quick Intro to Node.js and Ruby on Rails

 

Ruby is an object-oriented language which is having features of other languages too. On the other hand, Rail is a framework that is based on the Ruby language. Talking about the importance of Ruby on Rails then it could be said that it has a huge number of benefits that are beneficial for startups.

On the other hand, Node.js is an open-source platform that executes the Javascript code server-side as it was initially built on the JavaScript runtime. Node.js is really an amazing, efficient, and lightweight option as it is really beneficial for an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model.

Now, we will quickly switch to the main topic that is Node.js vs Ruby on Rails. We will decide which is much better on the basis of some parameters one by one.

 

Speed and performance

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Talking about the speed and performance of Node.js, it could be said that Node.js has attained a rich position in terms of this as it is based on one of the fastest engines- Google’s V8. The execution speed of the code is also enhanced by the runtime as it helps in supporting the non-blocking I/O operations.

Node.js is capable of demonstrating really high runtime speed which helps the programmers in getting faster coding experience. Thanks to that, Node.js apps are faster to develop, and they serve the same amount of traffic with less hardware.

On the other hand, Ruby on Rails is not at all that much capable in terms of speed and performance. As it’s not really an issue when you release the first version of your product, the problem will grow proportionally to your users’ database.

It has been considered that the performance issues of RoR applications depend on the server or database architecture and the skills of your engineering team — and not on Ruby on Rails itself. The performance issues may usually happen if in case you won’t work with experienced RoR masters in your team.

 

Scalability

Talking about the scalability of Node.js, it could be said that it is highly scalable. It is indeed one of the technologies natively handled by AWS. It can be easily broken down into microservices, and it has an event-based model.

This scalability makes it possible for the developers to make it a preferred choice for applications which may win the hearts of a large number of users. The biggest truth is here that big companies like LinkedIn, Netflix, or Twitter are switching to Node.js.

On the other hand, talking about the Ruby on Rails, you will definitely find a story on twitter whenever you search for some information about RoR applications scalability. “initially built with Ruby on Rails, then switching to Scala in order to handle their growing number of user requests. LinkedIn went through a similar transition switching its back-end mobile infrastructure (built on Ruby on Rails) to Node.js.”But if we see other apps like Shopify, Github, or Couchsurfing, these all scaled properly.

But still, I can say that to do useful and good with ROR, one requires a set of good skills and sometimes it’s simply not worth it. This can be proved useful and to build your Proof-of-Concept as fast as possible, but it’s much trickier in case of larger projects.

 

By Pixabay

Flexibility

Well, everyone is highly grateful for the super flexibility of the Node.js as it can handle large files easily. And this all can be done with the help of Node’s stream modules. Streams are basically the collection of data — just like arrays or strings. Unlike them, streams don’t need to be available all at once.

Node.js is a perfect environment for real-time web apps such as chats, games or collaboration tools as it is able to handle requests simultaneously

On the other hand, Ruby on Rails is capable of creating only an app in a specific way. So, Ruby on Rails is considered a very opinionated framework. There is a large number of lacks, defaults, which may create hurdles for the developer’s creativity.

So here again, Node.js could be seen winning the hearts of the developers.

Final Words

So, on the basis of above-given pointers or parameters, it could be said that Node.js is more efficient and effective for web development. This makes clear that startups should definitely go for Node.js as it is indeed more efficient in comparison to Ruby on Rails.

So, if you are also one of the startups who are confused between these two, then let me suggest you choose Node.js. You should choose among the top web development companies in India and ask them specially choose node.js.

 

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