Ruby on Rails is often celebrated for how quickly it lets small teams build and ship web applications. I’d go further: it’s the best tool for that job.
Rails gives solo developers a powerful framework to bring an idea to life—whether it’s a new business venture or a behind-the-scenes app to help a company modernize internal workflows.
You don’t need a massive team. In many cases, you don’t even need a team.
That’s the magic of Rails.
It’s why so many companies have been able to start with just one developer. They might hire a freelancer, a consultancy, or bring on a full-time engineer to get something off the ground. And often, they do.
Ideas get shipped. The app goes live. People start using it. The team adds features, fixes bugs, tweaks things here and there. Maybe they’ve got a Kanban board full of tasks and ideas. Maybe they don’t. Either way, the thing mostly works.
Until something breaks.
Someone has to redo work. A weird bug eats some data. A quick patch is deployed. Then someone in management asks the timeless question: “How do we prevent this from happening again?”
Time marches on. Other engineers come and go, but the original developer is still around. Still knows the system inside and out. Still putting out fires.
Eventually, the company stops backfilling roles. There’s not quite enough in the backlog to justify it. And besides, everything important seems to be in one person’s head. That person becomes both the system’s greatest asset—and its biggest risk.
This is usually about the time our team at Planet Argon gets a call.
Sometimes, it’s the developer who reaches out. They’re burned out. They miss collaborating with others. They’re tired of carrying the whole thing. Other times, it’s leadership. Things are moving too slowly. Tickets aren’t getting closed. The bugs they reported last quarter still haven’t been addressed. They’re worried about what happens if that one dev goes on vacation. Or leaves.
They’ve tried bringing in outside help… but nothing sticks. The long-term engineer keeps saying new people “don’t get it.”
By the time we step in, we’ve seen some version of this story many, many times.
Documentation? Sparse or outdated.
Tests? There are some, but good luck trusting them.
Git commit messages? A series of “fixes” and “WIP”.
Hardcoded credentials? Of course.
Onboarding materials? There’s nobody to onboard.
Rails upgrades? “We’ll get to it eventually… maybe.”
None of this is uncommon. It’s what happens when good engineers work in isolation for too long, often doing their best to keep things afloat without much help or recognition. Rails makes it possible. But that doesn’t make it sustainable.
Rails is a one-person framework. But very few apps are one-person apps forever.
If your project’s lucky enough to live past MVP…
If it’s important enough for people to rely on…
If it’s been around long enough to be worth maintaining…
…then it’s worth being honest about where things stand.
Write the commit messages.
Leave a few breadcrumbs in the README.
Comment that weird regex.
And while you’re in there…
- Write a test for that one thing that keeps breaking. You know the one.
- See if you can finally remove that outdated gem dependency that’s blocking your Rails upgrade.
- Strip out that old Backbone.js interface. Nobody’s going to miss it.
- Delete the dead code you’ve been tiptoeing around. Don’t pass it on like some haunted heirloom.
- Truncate that giant table full of data nobody’s touched since the Obama administration.
- Rip out ActiveAdmin and replace it with a few boring CRUD pages. It might actually feel good to write normal Rails again—and if you miss the shortcuts, build your own generators to spin up the patterns you actually use.
- And please, use a password manager.
These aren’t heroic efforts. They’re just little acts of maintenance. Little acts of kindness… for the next person.
If you’re working in a legacy Rails app—or trying not to create one—you might like Maintainable Rails. It’s a free, no-fluff email course full of real-world tips for reducing technical debt and taming older Rails code. Sent only when it’s useful. No spam, no guilt.
And if it already feels like a mess? You’re not alone. There are teams like ours who’ve made a business out of helping projects like yours find their second wind.
