8 Good Reasons For Game Developers to Learn Ruby on Rails

It's safe to say that Rails might become nothing short a great solution for managing the back end of your web-based game. Rails can keep track of player's scores and achievements, create leader boards, as well as manage things like login authentication or multiplayer matching. If all this is what you're looking for, check out the following, very good reasons to learn Rails right now.

1. It's Open Source

Both Ruby and Rails are open source and run on Linux, which is open source as well. What does that mean for your projects? You can code away without worrying about any licensing costs. In short, Rails is free to use, modify, copy and distribute.

2. It's Surrounded by a Thriving Community

Lots of incredibly smart people participate in the thriving community life that centers on Ruby on Rails – there are forums, such as Ruby on Rails Talk (rubyonrails.org/community/) or Rails Forum (https://railsforum.com/), Google groups and local meetups. This is not only great for getting practical support to specific problems – the wide interest in Rails also ensures the constant development of the framework.

3. Quick Launch

Coding with Rails is incredibly time-efficient. Rails works with a leaner code base, which naturally helps to deliver your project really quickly. Thanks to its automated character, Rails helps to abstract and simplify common repetitive tasks that most developers find annoying. To put it simply – its application will allow you to quickly build and deploy an app.

4. It's Easy to Learn

There are lots of learning materials and online video tutorials scattered around the web. For some of them you'll need to pay, but thanks to the vibrant Rails community there's plenty of free quality videos and online courses out there – truth be told, they're all much more effective than expensive books.

5. There's Market for It

Ruby and Rails specialists are sought after on the job market, mainly due to their high efficiency that allows companies to save money on the usual development expenses. Working with Rails, you might enjoy benefits that a .NET or Java dev will be less likely to get.

6. It Saves You Time & Money

Rails is beginner friendly – you won't have to invest large amount of money or time to get the hang of it. Learning itself is cheap – the wealth of free, high-quality materials online is bound to get you going in no time. Come to think of it, Rails is a great way to invest your time – you'll be able to do more with less.

7. It's Flexible

After launching your web-based game, it's relatively easy to apply changes to its structure. Adding some new features, applying changes to the data model and other modifications can all be done quickly and efficiently – again, saving time and money.

8. It's Productive

If you're working in a team or your project is reassigned, you won't lose time over explaining the code to others. Rails is self-documenting, which makes it easier for other developers to pick up the project and immediately have a clear idea about what has been accomplished so far. There have been some reports about the problem of precise documentation for all its Gems and plug-ins – Rails is a resource-rich framework, so getting a firm grasp on all of them can sometimes be problematic.

Monique Rivers is an Australian tech blogger who also loves good food and fashion. She works at ninefold.com. Ninefold is a powerful Ruby on Rails platform, that allows you to deploy Rails apps quickly and easily.