While I was searching the Web for inexpensive ways to build sites for small clients I can across Ruby On Rails. ROR is a framework built with the Ruby programming language by 37 Signals. Not being familiar with Ruby or Rails, I was immediately curious about it.

Ruby is a relatively new language that was created to be clean and simple code. Rails is a framework created for rapid application development. It has a robust set of classes that provide common functionality with a minimum of effort. Cool.

I am a Microsoft developer, but ever since ASP.NET came out I always though it was a bit much for small sites that do not require all the “horsepower” that .NET can provide. This might be a great way to efficiently build sites for small clients. Although I have not had a chance for much hands-on work with Ruby to evaluate it.

My biggest concern with building a site, with a somewhat obscure technology like this, for a client is when they need to make changes they will not be able to find resources that know the language and framework. Market-share does have its advantages. Hopefully Ruby will continue to grow.