Who Uses Ruby? Companies That Use Ruby and What Ruby Is Used For

Ruby is among the most popular programming languages today. It is used by tech startups and many silicon valley unicorn companies, including Airbnb, GitHub, Twitter, and Twitch. Ruby has increased in popularity because of its full stack web application framework, Ruby on Rails. 

If you want to pursue a career with Ruby as your main skill, this is the best time to do so. Its impressive usage statistics make Ruby an in-demand programming language. Read on for more in-depth information on who uses Ruby and what it’s used for.

What Is Ruby?

Ruby is an open source, object oriented language that was developed in the mid-90s. Since it is a scripting language, Ruby doesn’t talk to the hardware directly. Rather, it is written in a text file and parsed by an interpreter before it can be turned into code.

Ruby is flexible and highly portable with a wide range of capabilities. These include static website development, desktop application development, data processing, and automation tools. Developers also use Ruby for web scraping, web crawling, web servers, and DevOps. The Ruby on Rails framework also offers more features that make it stand out.

How Popular Is Ruby?

Ruby has acquired a large community of active users and has become known as one of the more popular languages. Below are a couple of facts attesting to its popularity.

• Ruby is the 14th most popular programming language. A survey by Stack Overflow in 2020 revealed that Ruby is the 14th most popular programming language. 
• Ruby developers are in demand and well paid. According to Glassdoor, Ruby developers earn an average annual salary of $89,872. This is due to the high demand for developers with the skill. 

What Is Ruby Used For? 

Ruby is used in building web applications. Some of the features of this programming language include dynamic typing, duck typing, object orientation, garbage collection, method names, and singleton methods. The Ruby on Rails framework makes it flexible and secure, and it reduces the time of development.

Web Development

Web development is one of the main uses of Ruby. Its usage of the Ruby on Rails framework changed the web development process. Before Ruby on Rails was released in 2005, developers spent a lot of time writing lines of code to build web apps.

Ruby on Rails allows developers to build web apps with ease. It makes use of conventions that determine the structure of the Rails app. This way, developers can configure the programs within a shorter period. It also contains code generators that reduce the need to write more code.

DevOps and Automation

This programming language is also used in automation, website deployment, and DevOps. Developers use Heroku, a popular deployment platform for web apps to make the process easier for people who are not skilled in DevOps.

Heroku allows developers to test, stage and deploy their app, even if they do not have a DevOps engineer. Originally, Heroku only supported Ruby. Today, it supports a lot more languages. 

Static Site Generation

Websites often use server side codes that generate HTML before serving it to the browser when a user visits the page. HTML files are not found at the URL after a visit. So a static generator uses the code and generates the pages for websites when it needs to.

The pages are deployed to the server so that when the user visits the URL, they will see a static HTML file. This offers some advantages such as efficiency, speed, security, and easy deployment for the website. It is ideal for websites that do not change content frequently.

Web Servers and Data Processing

Ruby is also used to build web servers. Some popular web servers such as Unicorn, Passenger, and Puma are written in Ruby. These web servers process HTTPS requests, send them to backend web apps, and handle the response before sending them back to the application. The app servers work with web development frameworks in Ruby.

When it comes to data processing, Ruby also takes the front seat. This programming language is ideal for data cleaning, processing, and filtering. It has been used to solve data processing problems through the built-in map, select and reduce functions.

Web Scraping and Crawling

Ruby is also excellent for web scraping and crawling. It has several packages for this purpose. Libraries such as Vessel are used for crawling and downloading web pages. Others like Nokogiri are used to parse HTML from crawled pages to specific parts of the page to ease the data analysis process.

List of Ruby Companies: Overview

List of Companies That Use Ruby, Expanded

Ruby is quite popular among top companies who use it in web development. More well-known companies that use this programming language include Airbnb, Shopify, Groupon, and Github. Below is an expanded list of the top companies that use Ruby.

Airbnb

Airbnb offers accommodations to travelers across 200 countries. This California-based company connects people who want to rent their apartments for a short period to visitors. The company has served millions of people since it was established and its website uses Ruby on Rails. Airbnb also uses Ruby on Rails as a part of its tech stack.

Average Salary for Airbnb Employees Who Use Ruby

• Web developer | $67,225

Shopify

Shopify is a Canadian-owned conglomerate and ecommerce organization. It has headquarters in Ottawa and offers a platform for online shops. Sellers can trade goods online using the point-of-sale system. Shopify not only offers a platform to trade, but also offers other services like payments, marketing, shipping, and buyer engagement tools. The goal of Shopify is to make it easier for merchants to maintain their online stores.

Average Salary for Shopify Employees Who Use Ruby

• Backend developer | $109,936

Instacart

Instacart is a grocery pick-up and delivery service. Although the company is based in the US, Canadians can also access its services through the mobile app and website. Users of the service can order groceries from listed retailers and have a personal shopper handle the order.

Average Salary for Instacart Employees Who Use Ruby

• Backend developer | $124,603

Stripe 

Stripe is an online payment processing company for Internet businesses. This Irish-American financial service firm also offers app programming interfaces for mobile applications and ecommerce websites. Its headquarters is in San Francisco.

Average Salary for Stripe Employees Who Use Ruby

• Backend/API Engineer | $109,616

Twitch

Twitch offers interactive live streaming services for entertainment, gaming, music, and sports. The US company offers video game live streaming as well as creative content and music broadcasts. It is a subsidiary of Amazon.

Average Salary for Twitch Employees Who Use Ruby

• Software Development Engineer Backend | $132,207

Delivery Hero

Delivery Hero is a German multinational company that offers an online food delivery service. It has its headquarters in Berlin and operates in more than 50 countries. Delivery Hero also boasts more than 500,000 restaurant partnerships in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Average Salary for Delivery Hero Employees Who Use Ruby

• Software engineer | $100,000

StackShare

StackShare is a platform where engineers and developers discover and compare different software tools. The company aims to help compare cloud infrastructure and Saas tools to help developers search for hosting solutions.

Average Salary for StackShare Employees Who Use Ruby

• Front End Developer | $126,316

Github

GitHub offers access control and various collaborative characteristics like feature requests, project management, wikis for projects, and bug tracking. The company uses Git to facilitate version control and development. 

Average Salary for Github Employees Who Use Ruby

• Software Engineer | $111,000

Accenture

Accenture is a global company that offers technology strategy, business strategy, and operations strategy services. This company also offers consulting, management, and technology services. 

Average Salary for Accenture Employees Who Use Ruby

• Backend developer | $56,157

Groupon

Groupon supports local merchants on a global scale by connecting customers to local businesses in their area. Groupon offers massive discounts to users in over 250 cities in North America and around the globe.

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Average Salary for Groupon Employees Who Use Ruby

• Backend developer | $165,347

Ruby Bootcamps: Who Uses Ruby to Teach Students How to Code? 

If you want to learn Ruby programming and transition to tech with new knowledge, enroll in a coding bootcamp. Some bootcamps offer Ruby training as standalone courses, while others teach it as a part of a larger program alongside other programming languages.

• App Academy. App Academy offers a software engineering bootcamp for both online and in-person students. The curriculum covers the fundamentals of programming, focusing on Ruby on Rails and Javascript. The bootcamp takes place in New York and San Francisco, as well as online.
• Flatiron School. This online coding bootcamp offers a software engineering program that focuses on full stack web development. Students learn about the popular framework, Ruby on Rails. It includes hands-on learning by getting students to take part in coding projects before the end of the program. 
• General Assembly. Software engineering is one of the programs offered in this coding bootcamp. Students who enroll here learn in-demand programming languages such as Ruby and touch on frameworks like Ruby on Rails.

Which Real-World Ruby Use Case Is Right for Me?

Seasoned Ruby developers attest to its usefulness and the fact that it is a flexible language to learn. Although it is not known as the fastest language, it helps many businesses handle web applications, database solutions, ecommerce and content management. It also comes in handy in DevOps and automation.

Many companies use Ruby for building the backend of a website. As a software engineer or backend developer, there are many opportunities for jobs in well-known companies around the world. TV streaming services like Netflix and Hulu use Ruby, as well as ecommerce sites like Shopify, Github, and Groupon.

Uses of Ruby FAQ