5 aplicativos web famosos desenvolvidos em Ruby on Rails

5 famous web applications built on Ruby on Rails

May 29, 2024 Roberto Magalhães

Explore iconic web apps built with Ruby on Rails. Uncover the magic behind the code that powers some of the web's most famous platforms!

In recent years, the Ruby programming language has gained prominence as one of the best software development technologies for building robust backend infrastructures. This is exactly why so many companies have hired top Ruby developers or started boosting their digital acceleration through Ruby outsourcing.

But behind all this success is perhaps the most iconic framework a software development language could have asked for: Ruby on Rails (RoR). RoR is the convenient, powerful and elegant solution that has enabled thousands of companies to create websites at this scale. And now that the number of companies using RoR is greater than ever, I thought it was a great time to take a closer look at the most famous web apps built using this technology. Let's start.

Desenvolvedores Ruby

1 GitHub

Let's start with one of the biggest players in the entire industry: GitHub. Since its launch in 2008, GitHub has hosted millions of codebases, making open source technologies more accessible than ever. And the secret behind its astonishing scalability is Ruby on Rails. More than 10 years ago, GitHub chose RoR as its core backend technology because of its incredible capabilities — and it continues to choose it in 2021 because RoR is simply the best.

Granted, of course, Ruby is just one of the many elements that make up GitHub's technology stack . But what makes Ruby on Rails special is the unique, win-win relationship it has with the version control company. Rubi has received hundreds of pull requests from GitHub engineers for each new version of RoR, and GitHub is always one of the first organizations to update to the latest version of Ruby on Rails.

2 Airbnb

Airbnb is also in the club of early RoR adopters. Founded in the same year as GitHub, the P2P rental company knew that a strong backend infrastructure was the only path to success and placed Ruby on Rails at the top of its technology stack from day one. Like most other companies, what attracted Airbnb to this technology was its rapid iteration cycle and plethora of “magic” tools that simplify development and prototyping.

Interestingly, Airbnb is one of the companies most committed to innovating its own technological solutions, mixing Ruby with other powerful technologies. A few years ago, the Airbnb Data Science and Engineering Blog published a post on Medium explaining how they extended the capabilities of Ruby on Rails to satisfy their complex payment systems. A great read if you ask me.

3 Kickstarter

Kickstarter has made crowdfunding as popular as it has ever been. Products like Snapmaker, The Everyday Backpack, Fidget Cube and Pebble Smartwatch were launched after receiving millions of dollars in funding from people around the world. And, unsurprisingly, Ruby on Rails is the core technology behind the platform's sophisticated microfinance system.

As a side note, it's worth noting that the company's engineering team actually has a blog on Medium where they publish their thoughts on all the technologies they use – and, if you look at that, Ruby even has its own section. The story of how the company upgraded to Ruby 5.0 is really interesting. Frankly, I'm still waiting for their post about the latest update!

4 Five

Unfortunately, Fiverr isn't as open about its technology stack as the other companies on this list, but according to Stack G2 and StackShare , Ruby on Rails definitely plays an important role in the backend of the site. And it's easy to see how the framework's dynamic type system and automatic memory management impact the speed and scalability of the site's user base.

What we do know is that Fiverr also adopted Ruby on Rails at launch, and it is still the main technology powering its online services marketplace. Also, I think it would be great if Fiverr launched an engineering blog to talk about the technologies it uses. I for one would be signed up right away!

5muscle contraction

And last but not least, the video streaming giant: Twitch. If you thought Ruby on Rails was great at everything but video, this should be proof of that. With 38 million visitors per month streaming, watching, and chatting simultaneously, Twitch needs the best possible technology stack to support maximum performance without sacrificing scalability. And once again, Ruby on Rails is the answer to that.

That said, Twitch has recently started looking at other backend technologies like Go, and some developers have even worked on migration projects to transfer some services to this technology. Time will only tell how this will happen. Either way, both are great options for massive services like Twitch.

Conclusion: Ruby on Rails is great

Believe it or not, these are just some of the companies that use Ruby on Rails as their backend. And to be honest, this list is a little biased towards the companies I knew most about. If you are curious, I will leave a list of many other companies that use Ruby on Rails for their backend infrastructures. And remember, if you want to develop your next web project, Ruby on Rails could be exactly what you need!

Here are some other companies using RoR: