Ruby on Rails — Full-Stack Web Framework That Started It All

What Rails Does

• MVC — Model, View, Controller architecture
• ActiveRecord — ORM with migrations, validations, associations
• Scaffold — one-command CRUD generation
• Routing — RESTful resource routing
• Action View — ERB/Haml templates
• Action Cable — WebSocket framework
• Active Job — background job abstraction
• Action Mailer — email sending with templates
• Active Storage — file uploads to S3/GCS/Azure
• Turbo + Stimulus — Hotwire for HTML-over-the-wire
• Kamal — deploy Rails anywhere with Docker
• Solid Queue/Cache/Cable — database-backed infrastructure

Architecture

Full MVC with an opinionated project structure. Convention over Configuration means file names, directory layouts, and naming patterns determine behavior. Asset pipeline (Propshaft/Dartsass in Rails 7+) for CSS/JS. Rails 8 introduces Solid trifecta for database-backed queues, caches, and WebSockets.

Self-Hosting

# Production (Rails 8)
KAMAL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=xxx kamal setup
kamal deploy

# Traditional
bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
# Behind Nginx reverse proxy

Key Features

• Convention over Configuration
• ActiveRecord ORM
• Scaffold generators
• RESTful routing
• Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus)
• Action Cable (WebSocket)
• Active Job (background)
• Active Storage (uploads)
• Kamal deployer
• Rails 8 Solid trifecta
• Mature gem ecosystem

Comparison

FAQ

Q: Rails performance? A: Ruby 3.3 + YJIT makes Rails 3x faster than Ruby 2.x. Shopify runs a million global merchants on Rails. Performance bottlenecks are usually in the database, not the framework.

Q: Rails 7 vs 8? A: Rails 8 introduces Solid Queue (DB-backed queue, no Redis needed), Solid Cache, and Solid Cable, simplifying deployment. Combined with the Kamal deployer, the goal is that even solo full-stack developers can deploy anywhere.

Q: What is Hotwire? A: Turbo (HTML-over-the-wire, replacing SPAs) + Stimulus (lightweight JS sprinkles) + Strada (mobile bridge). Use Rails to build full-stack apps without React or a frontend/backend split.

Sources

• Docs: https://guides.rubyonrails.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/rails/rails
• License: MIT