Methodology

Ruby is my first choice for the backend. Is a fun, intuitive and fast enough language to program with. It has great tooling and community support. It is also as human readable as python but without that strong and annoying indentation rules (annoying for me).

However, for some projects JavaScript might be the right choice for the backend. I'm not referring to situations that need high concurrency or something like that, I'm a solo developer and I don't usually build the next Twitter or Skype. I simply mean that when I can't find something in the Ruby space, JavaScript is the obvious second choice (I already know it pretty well for the frontend). For example I find Strapi a good tool for rapidly develop an API with an admin interface out of the box. I haven't found anything like that for Ruby.

A few years ago there has been a transition towards building the frontend with JavaScript frameworks like Vue or React. These are great technologies that I use myself (I even wrote an extension for supporting Vue in a text editor), the problem is that many developers use them just for writing code in a component fashion, not for their real advantages. If you are building an in-browser app like Figma or something with rich interactions you should use those technologies, otherwise if you just want to write code in a component fashion you can simply go with web components.

There are also some great libraries of pre-built components that you can use to speed up development. I personally like Shoelace. What's cool about these libraries is that they are not like Bootstrap or Tailwind, you use them for getting common functionalities for free, not styles. Nowadays what makes the difference for most of the projects is style not functionalities, those are pretty established.

The main idea behind the Jamstack is that you write content with something like Markdown or Yaml and use a generator for converting these contents into web pages. This process of conversion has to happen each time you update a content and can take some time, that's why is not suitable for projects that need a large amount of data or user generated content.

If the project has the requisites is a great choice though! Since the output is just HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the website can be hosted on a CDN (99% of the time completely free), no server required. This results in ultra fast, secure e SEO friendly websites.

If the project needs some advanced features like sending emails or selling products is possible to use external services as APIs to achieve that. These integrations open the door for advance and competitive solutions.

Personally, after a lot of experimentation, I decided to stick with two solutions. The first is Bridgetown, a static site generator forked by the Jekyll project and my default choice for every Jamstack project. The other solution is NuxtJS, a generator based on the Vue framework. The latter is used for projects that need that kind of interaction facilitated by a JavaScript framework.

Someone might say that Ruby on Rails is an old technology. I say yes, is an old technology and that's a plus. Rails has stood the test of time and continued to improve. Compared to other stacks or patterns Ruby on Rails is the right fit for a small team or even solo developer and for companies that want to get the job done without worrying about which is the trending technology this month.

Recently Rails has become even better with the introduction of Hotwire (HTML Over The Wire). This set of technologies allows to create rich and modern experiences that can easily compete with most of the JavaScript backed apps.

Snipcart is a simple and fast plug&play tool that can be attached to virtually any website. It provides a wonderful checkout experience, an admin panel and all the other features you would expect. For its API centric nature it is the perfect solution for Jamstack websites or when you need to add a shop to an existing project.

Shopify needs no introduction. I think is simply the perfect solution for all the projects where design is king and no advanced/custom functionalities are required. Basically Shopify replaced WooCommerce.

Solidus is the e-commerce platform for those who need to go the extra mile. It is the most advanced and configurable solution. It can be compared with other platforms like Magento and is built on top of Ruby on Rails, giving you all the flexibility you can possibly imagine. Oh and is completely free and open source.

I think that might be the case because is the easiest thing to do. People in my industry are already busy with a million different things, looking at new solutions that respect user's privacy is probably not considered as valuable as something else, unfortunately.

However, I think this is an extremely bad path. That's why I'm always looking at possible threats to privacy and solutions to fix them. Due to this "personal mission" I started recommending Plausible or Matomo over Google Analytics or pointing out bad privacy policies and suggesting good ones (like this as inspiration.

Of course if your business legitimately runs on ads or has special needs you can make your choices about user's privacy. The final decision is yours, what I care about is to give you all the information I have to let you take your decisions at best.