Carroll Engineering - on Rails

Imagine this: your IT-Team releases a new version of your web application, and nothing goes wrong. Anywhere. Your users are just happy, and write to thank you for the new features.

With Ruby On Rails, and its intendant focus on automated ruby-based testing that is the IT-Manager's view of the future. Ruby on Rails was released in 2004. Carroll discovered and fell in love with the Rails-Way towards the end of 2005. Everybody agrees, web-frameworks are the site/application development wave of the future, and Ruby-On-Rails is breaking new ground.

New projects here at Carroll Engineering are bid and conceived with a decided preference for Rails.

Ruby on Rails - What's that?

In the not-so-distant past, interactive web applications were programmed in PHP, Perl, Python or Java. Ruby (without the Rails) is a programming language which enjoyed popular acceptance in Japan for many years. Due to a lack of translated documentation, and the adequate-for-the-jobness of PHP it took a couple of years before programmers in the US and Europe had the opportunity to admire Ruby's elegance.

The Open Source release of Ruby On Rails - a ruby language web framework which relies on convention over configuration to simplify many everyday data centric tasks almost out of existence brought Ruby in from the fringes of the mainstream.

Advantages of Ruby On Rails

  • Elegant Code (Source Code remains small - approx. 50% less code than is necessary for comparable PHP project.)
  • The Model/View/Controller architecture and object-oriented design simplify maintainence - especially for large projects.
  • Integrated Test-Framework supports automatic testing of your application minimizes the possibility of new (or reappearing) bugs.
  • Tightly integrated into Ruby On Rails is the friendly developer community made up of professional programmers with a vested interest in application security
  • Web-2.0 Ajax capable.
  • Many well programmed plugins.

Disadvantages of Ruby On Rails

  • Scalability is an issue.
  • Deployment by far not as easy as PHP for example.

Current Projects

What are we up to?

We are working hard on a big Carroll project that we are expecting to release to Beta in the Winter of 2008.

We can't say much about it now, but we can say that without the Ruby on Rails framework, we wouldn't have much hair left. A special thanks to the Rails Community!

Prominent Examples