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Ruby/Rails: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

  • Posted By admin on December 19, 2005

OK, we have had plenty of debate and hype about Ruby on Rails. It’s time for IT executives and decision makers to say “Show me the money!” If Ruby on Rails is so fabulous, where are the on-time, under-budget projects?

So, here you go. For the past 18 months, we have been quietly bidding web projects with both Java and Ruby on Rails. The numbers for us, so far, fall out like this:

  • For applications in the Rails sweet spot (CRUD+Ajax on the web) our Rails price tends to be 30-50% less than the same bid implemented in Java.
  • For applications that are nowhere near the Rails sweet spot (do you know what these are?), our Rails price tends to be only 10% less than the same project implemented in Java
  • Applications are completed twice as quickly in Rails.
  • When customers want an hourly rate, our hourly rate for Rails work is slightly more than our hourly rate for Java work. However, given that applications are finished 30-50% faster, Ruby/Rails still delivers more per dollar.

This is not to say that the “10x productivity” claims of Rails developers are simply false. There are specific parts of Rails development that are indeed that much faster. But other parts are not, and the 10%-50% above is what we have seen on real projects over the past 18 months.

When 10% is Bigger than 50%

I actually find the 10% number to be the astonishing part of our experience so far. The 50% number sounds better up front, but basically amounts to the same claim that many other people have already made: Rails is extremely productive doing what it was designed to do. The 10% number suggests a much more compelling argument. “Ruby is more productive than Java, period. Even when Java libraries already exist to solve a problem, and you have to roll-your-own in Ruby, Ruby will come out ahead on sizable projects.” It is this 10% edge that prompted me to write the Enterprise Hammer articles.

Given my ideas about why we are more productive in Ruby, I would expect Python or Smalltalk developers to have a similar edge. Anybody out there want to share some numbers?

Comments
  1. Stuart Eccles — December 19, 2005 @ 06:43 PM
    Did you have any resistance to introducing Rails projects into primarily Java environments? Did clients choose Java implementations even though Rails where more cost effective? What were there reasons? Its good to see some real world sales experience backing up Rails rather than just conjecture
  2. Seth Ladd — December 19, 2005 @ 07:17 PM
    I was wondering what your personal definition of "applications that are nowhere near the Rails sweet spot" was?
  3. twifkak — December 19, 2005 @ 10:59 PM
    JMS? Distributed transactions?
  4. twifkak — December 19, 2005 @ 10:59 PM
    s/JMS/Asynchronous messaging/
  5. SimpleTicket Blog - news about the open source trouble ticket system » Why Rails? — December 20, 2005 @ 12:25 AM
    [...] sier and cheaper.  Check out Justin Gehtland’s post on the issue here.      December 19, 2005 | Trackback | [...]
  6. Rob Lambert — December 20, 2005 @ 01:15 AM
    I have the same question as Stuart above. How much resistance is there to introducing Rails into a Java or any other environment? Do the PHB's worry about hosting and supporting a Rails app in their environment? (Which really is a valid concern) I assume that you have convinced some clients to go with Rails, despite these concerns. Any recommendations for getting the decision-makers' buy-in?
  7. Jason Ruyle — December 20, 2005 @ 11:40 AM
    I was also interested in hearing about; By developing and learning new languages, shouldn't we be reaping the benefits of the faster production? (same money, but less time) I understand you are writting in regards to: "where are the on-time, under-budget projects?" It's a conern of mine that as developers we are becoming so effective and efficient, that we lose out on the money necessary to sustain our daily work/life.
  8. Robert Merrill — December 20, 2005 @ 01:14 PM
    I'm our metrics and estimation guy, and we're looking at Rails in addition to Java and PHP for custom work. The presence (or lack) of on-time, under-budget Rails projects isn't about Rails (or any technology). It has everything to do with how schedules and budgets are made. Average productivity has increased substantially in the last 20 years or so (Capers Jones has the exact numbers) but projects still blow up right, left, and center. The statement that "our Rails price tends to be 30-50% less than the same bid implemented in Java" raises a couple of questions: 1. How are they normalizing projects for size? If their average Rails project is smaller than their average Java project (say, 100 Function Points versus 150), there's the difference. Even if normalized, are the Java project bigger? Project size (team, duration) tends to make productivity go down all by itself. 2. Are these "bid price" versus "actual effort to complete" normalized for scope change and the like? Sometimes the two don't line up ;-) 3. Are the same people doing both, or are their better, more enthusiastic and innovation-minded developers doing the Rails gigs? 4 How do they decide what goes Rails and what goes Java? I'll bet a customer that allows (or requests) Rails has a different (and more useful) attitude regarding a number of other productivity-enhancing and risk-reducing approaches, too. Given these things, a 30-50% productivity advantage of Rails may be partly a side effect and not a direct effect of Rails. (We see about the same difference between PHP and Java). And a 10% productivity difference between Rails and Java is truly in the noise level, IMO. Great post, though. This is what paying customers want to know about.
  9. Neil Weber — December 20, 2005 @ 02:36 PM
    Only 10% faster than Java? That's not that much. If a new Java web framework were created that provided the built in features of Rails, then the 10% gap would be gone. When you spec a Java project, what frameworks do you intend to build upon?
  10. Gaboogle » Ruby vs Java — December 22, 2005 @ 01:09 AM
    [...] other people happy Ruby vs Java by Greg Moreno 22 December 2005 Stuart Halloway: “Ruby is more productive than Java, period. Even when Java libraries already exist to [...]
  11. Slava Pestov — December 22, 2005 @ 05:17 AM
    "It’s a conern of mine that as developers we are becoming so effective and efficient, that we lose out on the money necessary to sustain our daily work/life." Do you really believe this? How disgusting. It seems for every programmer who wants to create progress in technology, there are a hundred who resist it.
  12. Wilson Bilkovich — December 22, 2005 @ 12:07 PM
    Regarding the asynchronous messaging issue, Ruby has support for ActiveMQ: http://www.activemq.org/ ..which is a full JMS provider. If you need those features, you can easily interoperate with Java systems from Ruby.
  13. Lessons in Marketing “Seth Godin Styleâ€? Part 2: Java. Why Bruce Tate was Right, but sho — December 23, 2005 @ 12:26 AM
    [...] are a few recent stories of this in action: Thoughtworks Wins Big Contract with Rails Stuart Halloway discussing how Rails helps his consultancy get business If Sun had been authentic with [...]
  14. Douglas — December 29, 2005 @ 06:09 PM
    > If Ruby on Rails is so fabulous, where are the on-time, under-budget projects? "on-time" depends on how long we think project will take. "under-budget" depends on how much we think it will cost. If we still suzk at estimating how long a project will take, and if we still suck at estimating how much something will cost, then we will be just as likeley to take too long, or cost too much. So the question is really: does using Rails make project costs more predictable? And I don't know the answer to that question. It might be worse with Rails. In Java, you *know* it will take ages to do anything. It Rails it will *probably* take 15 minutes. Douglas
  15. Danny’s Blog » Blog Archive » In Search of Ruby’s Sweet S — January 13, 2006 @ 12:37 PM
    [...] ordPress 2.0 In Search of Ruby’s Sweet Spot In a recent post, Stuart Halloway wrote that his company bids up to 50% lower for projects done with Rails, compared to sim [...]
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