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Future for Ruby on Rails developer 'extremely bright'

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Abhigna
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BANGALORE, INDIA: In an exclusive interaction with Abhigna NG from CIOL, Gautam Rege, founder, director Josh Software talked on the adoption of Ruby on Rails (RoR), future for Ruby developers and emerging trends that he foresees in Ruby on Rails Development. Excerpts:

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CIOL: Where do you see adoption of Ruby on Rails the most? Can you provide some industry verticals?

Gautam Rege: Ruby on Rails is a framework for building web applications so its adoption is across various sectors that are moving their operations online. This can vary from ecommerce, education, manufacturing, retail, etc. Mobile applications built with the Rails framework will soon be a large sub-sector of the industry. Apart from start-ups and emerging companies, there has been an increased interest from health and insurance sectors to start to adapt the framework.

CIOL: Having said that, you can highlight some of the reasons why companies should embrace Ruby on Rails?

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GR: The better way to answer this would be to understand reasons why a company should use Ruby and the reason for the use of Rails.

Ruby is currently used in some banks and insurance companies for heavy testing of their frameworks. Ruby provides flexibility in terms of changing or tweaking the application in an efficient and effective manner. The language can be used to test applications quicker and understand which will work the best in a given infrastructure. The language also provides great scope for innovation.

Rails is used in online portals and applications. Many enterprises use Rails for building applications for their marketing campaigns and other non-core products around their core product if it already exists in other languages like Java. This framework not only allows a quick build up, but adding features around the application/s. It provides a high performance and scalable web solution, which in turn helps increase the efficiency of the organization.

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CIOL: What is the future for Ruby on Rails developer? Considering the fact, the surge in usage of other programming languages irrespective of open source based or proprietary?

GR: The future of Ruby on Rails developer in India can be described in two words: "extremely bright". When a programmer acquires the knowledge of Ruby, it becomes a feather in their cap ultimately putting him in the elite category of programmers just like Special Forces. He becomes a premium resource in the market.

There are plenty of programming languages and approximately 99 percent new programming languages in the world are open source. Having said that, there are hardly any languages that are proprietary.

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People avoid learning proprietary languages simply because they get stuck in the future, for example: if a person learns a proprietary language then he is unable to use the language in remaining areas hence the person working with a company will be stuck in that same enterprise for a prolonged duration of their career. But, if the person is expert in an open source language, the person can go to any sector any vertical in the industry. Therefore, the future of Ruby on Rails developers is bright and the opportunities are vast.

CIOL: And, if you want to talk on the secure aspect of RoR. Is developing an application/software product on Ruby platform is secure?

GR: A framework needs security not a language, and Ruby is a language.Developing an application/software on Ruby on Rails framework is secure.A fair number of security issues have been filed since 2012, and the security patches have been added to Rails.

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Users have identified the vulnerability issues in Rails and fixed these issues themselves. This can be justified through the Github hacking case of 2012; Egor Homakov hacked into Github and pointed out the flaws and loopholes in the Rails framework, which led to a wave of people trying to find out vulnerabilities in JSON and Rails frameworks. Later all these security fixes has been put in latest version of Rails called Rails 4.

Rails 4 has the best security features today. The applications are far more secure if the security guidelines are properly read and followed. Rails framework has a lot of inbuilt security but at the end of the day it depends on the programmers' perspective. Without human error, security in Rails is difficult to be breached.

CIOL: What are the emerging trends that you foresee in Ruby on Rails development? What are the plans from Josh Software to address the growing market?

GR: Ruby on Rails framework is itself an emerging trend. The awareness and preference towards to the framework is continuously increasing. One of the disadvantages of the industry is an acute shortage of staff. Ruby on Rails needs passionate programmers, and it is difficult to find good passionate programmers. This requires us to hand-pick each team member carefully. Further, we have a strong focus on training and skills upgradation to ensure we have the best team for our client partners.

Specifically, our growth plans for Josh Software are centered on quality rather than mere numbers. We are targeting the domestic and global market, and as the awareness of the framework grows in India, our focus on the domestic market will increase. Our marketing strategy does not focus on a particular sector. The product, idea, and innovation rather than the sector drives us. We love challenges, and clients come to us for solutions! This is a great feeling for our entire team.

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