Building apps AI with Ruby on Rails + Turbo + Hotwire for Startups

In my 13 years of experience in software development, I've been fortunate to contribute to a range of meaningful projects:

✅ I co-founded a startup in the Philippines, where we successfully navigated the challenges of securing funding in Singapore.
✅ Pioneer developer with equity in a U.S. startup, which led to a successful exit in 2022, thanks to a collaborative team effort.
✅ Led the development of a UK e-commerce venture, which achieved $10 million in funding through shared vision and hard work.
✅ Built a successful SaaS tool for e-commerce SEO.
✅ Founding a software development agency where teamwork and client needs were at the forefront.

Experience with Ruby on Rails

I have had the privilege of growing alongside Ruby on Rails, starting my journey with this technology in 2009. Each version of Rails has offered unique learning opportunities, and I'm grateful for the insights gained through these experiences.

🚂 Rails 2.3.5 (2009 - 2010): My initial experience with Rails was during my final college year. At that time, I was working on a CodeIgniter (php framework) library for my thesis that logs and creates a UML to help developers debug code issues. The moment I actually read through and worked on a production Rails app which was a game on Facebook, I realized my thesis would not be useful in production. 😅The logs of Rails was really intuitive.

🚂 Rails 3 (2010): This version was a really big leap for Rails because of the Merb team merge. A lot of things were introduced on Rails on this version. The main issue at that time was migrating 2.3.X apps had a lot of issues, including Gems no longer working.

🚂 Rails 4 (2013): Transitioning to Rails 4 was a smoother experience. In January/Feb that year there was a mass assignment issue with Rails (where we could do SQL injections). On Rails 4, they made strong paramaters a default.

🚂 Rails 5: Turbolinks 5 and Action Cable was introduced. I think this was Rails answer to SPAs and hybrid mobile apps. During this time, I learned Turbolinks 5 and used Turbolink-iOS adapter to build and launch an iOS app on the Appstore.

🚂 Rails 6: Although ActiveStorage was introduced in 5.2. The projects I've worked on started adoption ActiveStorage at version 6. This is mainly because when you used ActionText which was introduced at Rails 6, you see the advantage of ActiveStorage when images are easily embedded on the WYSIWYG.

🚂 Rails 7: On this release, Hotwire became the default front-end framework for Rails. Hotwire included tools like Turbo + Strada to make it easier for smaller teams to launch cross-platform apps.

Experience with Front-end Technologies

I have extensive experience in front-end development, particularly with React and similar technologies, spanning over a decade. Here's a breakdown of my journey.

＜⁄＞2012: Began with BackboneJS, where I first delved into MVC architectures in front-end development.

＜⁄＞2013: Transitioned to EmberJS, which I found to offer a more robust MVC framework compared to BackboneJS.

＜⁄＞2015: Adopted AngularJS, facing challenges with code organization due to the lack of standardized practices at that time.

＜⁄＞2016 - 2017: Shifted my focus to React/Redux, a significant leap in terms of code structure and organization. The official Redux documentation greatly aided in establishing a consistent code organization strategy.

＜⁄＞2018 - 2020: Integrated StimulusJS into my projects.

＜⁄＞2021 onwards: Embraced the Hotwire stack, continuing my journey with the latest in front-end technology.