I find it funny how every year there is another "Is Rails being relevant in $YEAR" article or two posted. I love Rails and still think it's a great framework, piece of technology for building companies (but you don't need to take my word for it: https://stackshare.io/rails). However, I also worked professionally and in a hobby cadpacity with Rails and been bitten by it too.
I can say from experience Ruby is not for everyone.
Rails is a tool, and it depends on _what_ you need to do with that tool. If today I needed to build a basic web app quickly and wanted minimal cognitive overhead with a plethora of "solved problems as libraries", I'd strongly consider Rails. It's fun to work with and gives great development speed, and it's manageable architecturally for a solo development team (MVC, Service Objects, API Clients, et cetera). I think it's a useful thing to have in your back pocket if you need to get an MVP up ASAP. That being said, with regards to building a prototype ASAP the fastest track is probably going to be the stack you are most familiar.
If I were building a company, choosing Rails would be an important question to consider. Programmers who know the framework and language well can ship things quickly. So if you're a solo or main technical co-founder you can go FAST. However, building a company is more than just technology considerations. For example, with each hire you will need to consider the cost-benefit of hiring or training for familiarity with tech stack. For example, Ruby is ranked #16 on most popular technology ~6% of respondents, and split 50/50 for loved versus dreaded on the Stack Overflow Dev Survey 2022. This could present a real challenge to the business in terms of sourcing and hiring qualified folks.
If you wanted something dynamic like Rails but with a higher potential talent base, using Python, Flask and Django might work.
I can say from experience Ruby is not for everyone.
Rails is a tool, and it depends on _what_ you need to do with that tool. If today I needed to build a basic web app quickly and wanted minimal cognitive overhead with a plethora of "solved problems as libraries", I'd strongly consider Rails. It's fun to work with and gives great development speed, and it's manageable architecturally for a solo development team (MVC, Service Objects, API Clients, et cetera). I think it's a useful thing to have in your back pocket if you need to get an MVP up ASAP. That being said, with regards to building a prototype ASAP the fastest track is probably going to be the stack you are most familiar.
If I were building a company, choosing Rails would be an important question to consider. Programmers who know the framework and language well can ship things quickly. So if you're a solo or main technical co-founder you can go FAST. However, building a company is more than just technology considerations. For example, with each hire you will need to consider the cost-benefit of hiring or training for familiarity with tech stack. For example, Ruby is ranked #16 on most popular technology ~6% of respondents, and split 50/50 for loved versus dreaded on the Stack Overflow Dev Survey 2022. This could present a real challenge to the business in terms of sourcing and hiring qualified folks.
If you wanted something dynamic like Rails but with a higher potential talent base, using Python, Flask and Django might work.