Yes, no question, assuming Rails matches what the startup is trying to do well enough. I've worked in other frameworks, stacks, etc and nothing beats the raw productivity of Rails for web applications.
A lot of people say things like "the difficulty with Rails is in the long term". To them I'd say two things:
- In starting a new company, I'd assume failure as the starting point and do everything I can to wrestle success from the jaws of failure. I don't want to waste time worrying about what will happen in the long term, because statistically we won't get to the long term. I'll take every advantage I can get to get over that statistical hump. Rails gives me that advantage on the engineering front.
- I'm currently working in a Rails codebase along with a few hundred other developers and its fine. It isn't great, largely because it was an inherited codebase I was acquired into and the OGs made some (imo) sub-optimal decisions, but it isn't really any different than working on a java project with a few hundred devs. Its fine at scale.
A lot of people say things like "the difficulty with Rails is in the long term". To them I'd say two things:
- In starting a new company, I'd assume failure as the starting point and do everything I can to wrestle success from the jaws of failure. I don't want to waste time worrying about what will happen in the long term, because statistically we won't get to the long term. I'll take every advantage I can get to get over that statistical hump. Rails gives me that advantage on the engineering front.
- I'm currently working in a Rails codebase along with a few hundred other developers and its fine. It isn't great, largely because it was an inherited codebase I was acquired into and the OGs made some (imo) sub-optimal decisions, but it isn't really any different than working on a java project with a few hundred devs. Its fine at scale.