Rails will give you the ability to easily create an entire web app on your own. It will allow you to focus on the thing you are building and not so much how you are building it (though obviously you gain technical experience using Rails). Go is not nearly as easy to create an entire app. You would spend a lot of time learning Go and going deep into its standard library. You would be diving up and down from thinking about your app to learning exactly how to manage the flexibility—and thus complexity—of Go itself. You would also need to make a lot of decisions about what libraries to use, and to likely build a lot more tooling yourself. So, it kinda depends on what your goals are. Answer from davetron5000 on reddit.com
Reddit
reddit.com › r/rails › go or ruby/rails?
r/rails on Reddit: Go or Ruby/Rails?
February 9, 2024 -
I know I'm asking in the rails sub so I'll get some biased answers, but I'm really struggling to decide between dedicating more time to learning Rails, or properly learn Go.
I have a really solid foundation of Ruby, and have made a few small apps with Rails. My Go experience is very limited, like a month of learning maybe.
My concern with Rails is simply the job market for it where I live, but I do love the developer experience of Rails. Go has been good, and I like static typing, but I will say the learning curve has been pretty steep!
A con for Go would be the use cases for it. I'm not sure at this point in my career (2.5 yoe) I'd be expected to solve the type of problems Go is suited for. Also, I want to do more full stack instead of all backend, and Rails seems like a good choice for that move.
Any thoughts on the two would be greatly appreciated :)
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Rails will give you the ability to easily create an entire web app on your own. It will allow you to focus on the thing you are building and not so much how you are building it (though obviously you gain technical experience using Rails). Go is not nearly as easy to create an entire app. You would spend a lot of time learning Go and going deep into its standard library. You would be diving up and down from thinking about your app to learning exactly how to manage the flexibility—and thus complexity—of Go itself. You would also need to make a lot of decisions about what libraries to use, and to likely build a lot more tooling yourself. So, it kinda depends on what your goals are.
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My short take is, learn rails as it really gets you super productive as a single developer, but also it's a good framework to study because it's mature and just have solved many problems related to web. At the very least it gives you a good baseline. Go is language. There's definitely a bunch of web framework but also standard library is pretty good but you are free to roam on how to want to solve your problem. Given the less guardrails it provides (just like Ruby without rails) you can easily get into rabbit holes and may not be ready for those deep concepts. One book I recommend though in go is https://github.com/karlseguin/the-little-go-book . Anyway, good luck. I think as long as you are purposeful on what your learning goals are, you can't go wrong with either topic. Would just recommend you play with them to feel ergonomics and really apply your learnings. Cheers!
Olibr
olibr.com › blog › all engineering topics › what is backend development
Ruby vs Golang: Which language to use in 2024?
Golang doesn’t need to be interpreted, so it is a faster programming language than Ruby. Go is a better choice for developing APIs or backend systems, whereas Ruby is in demand for DevOps Solutions and Services frameworks like Chef and Puppet.
Published February 13, 2024
Ask HN: Go vs. Ruby/Rails for first time indie dev?
Since I'd be a solo dev on my projects, ecosystem and speed of development are important to me. How does Golang's ecosystem for web dev compare to Ruby on Rails currently? I know that Ruby has lots of gems (devise, etc) to make web dev faster. Does Golang's ecosystem have similar tools at this point More on news.ycombinator.com
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June 14, 2020When comparing benchmarks, is Go or Ruby slower? - Stack Overflow
I'm interested in learning Go and have been coding in Ruby for some time now. When comparing benchmarks, which language would be considered faster? More on stackoverflow.com
Golang or Ruby for Web Apps
If you are looking to build web apps as a new developer then Ruby on Rails is probably your best bet. It's been refined all these years to offer amazing productivity and it's quite user friendly. It has great tooling that offers tons of scaffolding. You can set up a standard CRUD app in seconds which you can then change according to your needs. Rails might not be as efficient as Go but to be honest it will take quite some time till you reach the level where Rails is a problem. If you are not looking for developer speed and productivity and you'd rather understand and learn every little detail of a web app, while working on a lower level and you are not afraid to write some extra boilerplate to keep things simple then you can also try Go. I'd say it's a trade off. You trade off, some developer speed, productivity and code magic to for simplicity, maintenability and software efficiency. More on reddit.com
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March 22, 2017Go or Ruby/Rails?
Rails will give you the ability to easily create an entire web app on your own. It will allow you to focus on the thing you are building and not so much how you are building it (though obviously you gain technical experience using Rails). Go is not nearly as easy to create an entire app. You would spend a lot of time learning Go and going deep into its standard library. You would be diving up and down from thinking about your app to learning exactly how to manage the flexibility—and thus complexity—of Go itself. You would also need to make a lot of decisions about what libraries to use, and to likely build a lot more tooling yourself. So, it kinda depends on what your goals are. More on reddit.com
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February 9, 2024Does Golang deliver faster execution than Ruby on Rails?
Golang runs faster than Ruby on Rails because it compiles code, yet Ruby on Rails operates through interpretation to support developer efficiency.
quickwayinfosystems.com
quickwayinfosystems.com › home › golang vs ruby on rails – which one is right for you?
Golang vs Ruby on Rails – Which One Should You Choose?
Should web developers use Golang or Ruby on Rails for their work?
Golang performs best for high-traffic purposes yet Ruby on Rails succeeds better for quick web development thanks to both its built-in libraries and smooth interface.
quickwayinfosystems.com
quickwayinfosystems.com › home › golang vs ruby on rails – which one is right for you?
Golang vs Ruby on Rails – Which One Should You Choose?
Should startups choose Golang or Ruby on Rails to build their platforms?
Ruby on Rails proves best for startups developing quickly and Golang matches the requirements of developing businesses that need scalable high-performance solutions.
quickwayinfosystems.com
quickwayinfosystems.com › home › golang vs ruby on rails – which one is right for you?
Golang vs Ruby on Rails – Which One Should You Choose?
Videos
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Why you Should NOT use Ruby on Rails - YouTube
r/golang on Reddit: Why isn't there a Rails equivalent for the ...
Flexiple
flexiple.com › compare › ruby-on-rails-vs-go
Ruby on Rails vs Go - A Detailed Comparison | Flexiple - Flexiple
These tools make it possible to develop interactive web applications that are responsive and provide smooth user experiences. Golang is widely recognized for its high performance, with speed and smoothness being two of its main characteristics.
RoR Wizards
rorwizards.org › golang-vs-ruby-on-rails
Golang vs Ruby on Rails: Best Tech Stack for 2025
July 6, 2025 - Concurrent Processing: Go’s ... Performance Issues: While Ruby is great for rapid development, it can be slower compared to languages like Golang, especially for resource-intensive tasks....
BairesDev
bairesdev.com › home › blog › technology
Golang vs Ruby on Rails: Which Framework Fits Your Needs?
Golang is for performance, scalability and managing backend systems in high demand environments like cloud native applications and distributed systems. Companies using Golang can handle large scale performance critical workloads.
Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com › item
Ask HN: Go vs. Ruby/Rails for first time indie dev? | Hacker News
June 14, 2020 - Since I'd be a solo dev on my projects, ecosystem and speed of development are important to me. How does Golang's ecosystem for web dev compare to Ruby on Rails currently? I know that Ruby has lots of gems (devise, etc) to make web dev faster. Does Golang's ecosystem have similar tools at this point
RailsCarma
railscarma.com › home › ruby vs golang: which language to use in 2026?
Ruby vs Golang: Which Language to Use in 2026? - RailsCarma
January 1, 2026 - Ruby continues to be an excellent choice for web development with its emphasis on speed and simplicity, especially when paired with Rails. It’s a powerful tool for startups and applications that need to be developed quickly. On the other hand, Golang is gaining momentum for performance-critical applications and systems that require scalability and efficient concurrency management.
Netguru
netguru.com › home page › blog › golang vs ruby on rails: the complete framework comparison for 2025
Golang vs Ruby on Rails: The Complete Framework Comparison for 2025
June 24, 2025 - Golang operates as a compiled language with static typing, while Ruby on Rails functions as a web development framework built on the interpreted language Ruby with dynamic typing.
Medium
medium.com › @mdromi › go-vs-ruby-on-rails-a-business-perspective-38a98faf2422
Go vs. Ruby on Rails: A Business Perspective | by SRD DEV | Medium
July 8, 2023 - Its lightweight concurrency model ... workloads. Ruby on Rails, while offering rapid development capabilities, may not be as performant as Go for computationally intensive tasks or high-traffic applications....
Quickway Infoystems
quickwayinfosystems.com › home › golang vs ruby on rails – which one is right for you?
Golang vs Ruby on Rails – Which One Should You Choose?
August 13, 2025 - This in turn drastically increases the time of development and makes any results non re-usable. Performance Issues: In case of Rails, large applications do not run that fast because it is an interpreted language.
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Go is definitely faster. Ruby is getting better, but it has never been fast compared to other popular languages. Here's a breakdown that includes both Go and Ruby: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org
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Go is usually much faster than Ruby:
http://blog.iron.io/2013/03/how-we-went-from-30-servers-to-2-go.html
https://plus.google.com/+MattAimonetti/posts/PeZk8FY3PWY
http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=yarv&data=u64q
DZone
dzone.com › articles › ruby-vs-golang-comparison-which-is-the-best-soluti-2
Ruby vs Golang: Which Is the Best Solution?
February 1, 2018 - Meanwhile, Ruby is ideal for creating tiny commercial projects, blogs, and personal pages thanks to the popular Ruby on Rails framework. However, for complex solutions, Ruby is not very appropriate. Its performance speed is somewhat low, which ...
Honeybadger
honeybadger.io › blog › rubyist-learn-go
Comparing Go vs Ruby - Honeybadger Developer Blog
February 28, 2025 - In Ruby, you don't know you made a mistake until you run the code and get the common NoMethodError. Go gives you the best of both worlds: a high development speed AND type-safety. One of the top selling points of Golang vs Ruby is type-safety.
Programming Language Benchmarks
programming-language-benchmarks.vercel.app › go-vs-ruby
Go VS Ruby benchmarks, Which programming language or compiler is faster
benchmarks,benchmark,performance,binarytrees,coro-prime-sieve,edigits,fannkuch-redux,fasta,helloworld,http-server,json-serde,knucleotide,lru,mandelbrot,merkletrees,nbody,nsieve,pidigits,regex-redux,secp256k1,spectral-norm,Go,Go lang,Ruby,Ruby lang
Velvetech
velvetech.com › home › blog › reasons to consider golang over ruby
Reasons to Consider Golang over Ruby | Velvetech
2 weeks ago - Among the programming languages that are in prolific use, we talk about two prime languages here – Ruby and Golang. Ruby is a dynamic open source programming language focused on simplicity and productivity. It also has elegant syntax that is easy to read and to write. The main purpose of Ruby is to easily create simple and intuitive programs within a short period, while the resulting programs do not necessarily have to work very fast. At Velvetech, we back Ruby projects with a skilled Ruby on Rails development team to ensure those applications remain powerful and maintainable.
Dittofi
dittofi.com › home › google go vs. ruby on rails: a business perspective
Google Go vs. Ruby on Rails: A Business Perspective - Dittofi
December 18, 2023 - In contrast, Ruby on Rails relies on a more traditional, single-task approach, which can lead to slower performance when dealing with many simultaneous requests, like a traffic jam during rush hour.
DEV Community
dev.to › m_nevin › learn-a-new-language-ruby-or-go-3ifh
Learn a New Language: Ruby or Go? - DEV Community
April 9, 2020 - My experience has been that Ruby-embracing companies have done very little, if anything, to attempt to transition over to Elixir, for either greenfield or · legacy established codebases. Even given the familiar syntax and strong guarantees of concurrency, performance, stability, and flexibility, there's an incredible inertia within teams that have already built up their Rails projects.
Sphere
sphereinc.com › blogs › go-for-rails-developers
Golang Web vs Ruby On Rails - Sphere Partners
January 4, 2024 - Check out our case study where we used Ruby On Rails and built a mobile app within 3 months that shared 90%+ of code between iOS and Android, as well as important structural commonalities between mobile and web versions. But what happens if you still encounter problems with performance and concurrency? Luckily, the Golang framework has the capacity to address some of these issues in certain circumstances.
EDUCBA
educba.com › home › software development › software development tutorials › top differences tutorial › go vs ruby
Go vs Ruby | Top 10 Differences to Learn With Infographics
March 18, 2023 - Ruby is useful if there is a requirement of rapid result delivery and the quality of performance is not that important. If there is a requirement from a testing perspective, then Ruby would add-up as the best choice for the testing framework as Ruby is based on the Agile method, and testing has its priorities in Ruby. If the project requires dynamically typed language, Ruby will choose that, and if the project requires statically typed language, then Golang will choose in that case.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/golang › golang or ruby for web apps
r/golang on Reddit: Golang or Ruby for Web Apps
March 22, 2017 -
Hey r/golang,
I just started learning ruby/rails about a month ago and noticed that Go has been picking up a lot of traction these days.
While I enjoy the syntax of ruby and also the rails community, I'm curious if I should look into Go instead. My main interests (aside from learning how to program) are developing web apps. So, am I better off investing into Ruby or Go?
Sorry if my question seems trivial or amateurish, as I mentioned I am still new to web development.
Thank you!
EDIT: Thank you for all your responses, the community here is really great and helpful :)
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If you are looking to build web apps as a new developer then Ruby on Rails is probably your best bet. It's been refined all these years to offer amazing productivity and it's quite user friendly. It has great tooling that offers tons of scaffolding. You can set up a standard CRUD app in seconds which you can then change according to your needs. Rails might not be as efficient as Go but to be honest it will take quite some time till you reach the level where Rails is a problem. If you are not looking for developer speed and productivity and you'd rather understand and learn every little detail of a web app, while working on a lower level and you are not afraid to write some extra boilerplate to keep things simple then you can also try Go. I'd say it's a trade off. You trade off, some developer speed, productivity and code magic to for simplicity, maintenability and software efficiency.
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A rubist here and a Go lover. I think the approach for rails is more for a monolith architecture, and go for micro-services. If you want to build a monolith in go, you can do it but it will take you longer although there are some frameworks like https://revel.github.io/ but I think you should change your mindset, and think more in microservices. You can always start by creating small high-performance apps with go, and then integrate them with your rails platform.