As 2021 draws to a close, we'd like to take this year-end moment to talk about why we founded the company and what we look forward to next year.

Everyone in the industry knows we develop exclusively with Ruby and the Rails framework. We love Ruby so much that we even put it in our company name. What people may not know is why, even though someone asks every year whether Ruby is dying, and even though we love playing with new technologies and tools, we have stayed firmly on this path for seven years.

In August 2021, I shared the story of how we started the company at our all-hands meeting.

Why do we love Ruby?

Before starting the company, we had all developed in many different languages. Yukihiro Matsumoto (hereafter "Matz"), the creator of Ruby, wrote in the preface to his book "Introduction to the Ruby Programming Language" (tentative translation):

"The decisive difference between Ruby and Perl or Python is 'joy,' and that is Ruby's reason for being. As far as I know, there is currently (note: as of the book's publication) no other language that puts as much emphasis on 'fun' as Ruby does. Ruby was designed for pure 'fun.' Whether creating Ruby, using it, or learning it, our goal is for everyone to enjoy it. But it is not just about joy; Ruby is also highly practical. After all, if something isn't practical, it can hardly bring joy to its users, can it?"

 

These words moved us deeply. And when we develop with Ruby, we truly feel it: developing with Ruby really is a joy!

Through the tech community we went on to meet many like-minded people, made many friends through Ruby, and eventually started this company. More than 30 companies and startups in Taiwan and abroad have worked with us over the long term, sharing in the joy of using Ruby and experiencing the strong technical skills of Taiwanese developers. We also organize RubyConf Taiwan, the biggest event in the Ruby community, to keep passing that joy along.

Many of the world's leading product companies continue to use Ruby or have switched to it: from early Twitter and Airbnb to the streaming platform Netflix, the ticketing platform KKtix, the education platform Hahow (which moved to Ruby from another language), the media platform Bloomberg, and the social platforms Twitch / Snap, among others. The choices of these top-tier product companies speak for themselves about Ruby's applicability and future.

Ruby has always delivered on cost and efficiency. That is what our commitment and our recommendation are based on.

We know you want to see the finished product sooner.
We know you want to use your R&D budget more effectively.
We know ongoing maintenance costs matter too.

We believe developing with Ruby and Rails meets clients' urgent "time to market" needs, with average development speed more than 30% faster than other languages. The Ruby ecosystem is thriving: when you need a new feature, you can usually find a library someone has already written, questions get answered quickly, and maintenance and extension are relatively easy.

A programming language is a tool, and what matters most is choosing the one that suits you. Anything that lets you build the car efficiently is a good tool. What we pursue is using what we love to create things that make users happy.

Where are we going next?

Expanding into our own products

This year we set out on the path of developing our own product. We expect to finish a prototype within the year and officially launch it in 2022. This product is also one way for us to let more people experience the benefits of Ruby, and we hope it will help our clients create more value in an increasingly competitive business environment.

Continuing to build great products for our clients

We will keep helping our first-rate clients refine their products to be more elegant and more powerful. Many clients have worked with us since their very beginnings, and once their MVP has validated the business model, the next challenge is how to make the product better in response to market feedback.

Giving back what we have received from the community

We have drawn a great deal of strength from the community, and in the future we hope to give our years of experience back to more startups and businesses. Since early 2021, Taiwan has become a hot spot for international companies, spurring the growth of the software industry. We have seen many teams struggle because they lack development experience or are not used to working with technical teams. We hope to have the chance to share our experience and help more teams. And of course, if that brings more people to join us in pursuing the joy of development, even better!

 

Johann Wolfgang  von  Goethe said:

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. 

 

We are a software development company that enjoys building software.

Have fun with Ruby, have fun with us.