In an episode of the RubySorce podcast from a couple of years ago, host Sawan sat down with Ben Rastle and Michal Korjowski, two Ruby developers from eXp Realty who have been quietly revolutionising how their company approaches web development. Their story revealed both the enduring power of Ruby on Rails and how embracing cutting-edge technologies within the framework led to remarkable productivity.
Meet the Special Ops of Ruby Development
Ben and Michal aren’t your typical development team. Initially branded as a “special projects team,” they function more like what Ben jokingly refers to as “special ops” – a nimble, two-person unit that can rapidly prototype and build applications. In just two years, they’ve successfully launched 12 web applications for internal use at eXp Realty.
What makes their story particularly interesting is their backgrounds. Ben, entirely self-taught, began learning to code in 2017 when his best friend approached him with a startup idea. Despite having no programming experience, Ben was “the nerdiest person he knew,” so his friend figured he could learn. After teaching himself through platforms like Udemy and Solo Learn, Ben joined eXp Realty in 2020.
Michal’s journey was different. After exploring various tech-related activities, he decided to attend a coding bootcamp in Poland. After completing the program, he joined a consultancy company where eXp was a client. After a year of working with them as a contractor, eXp brought him in-house.
The Power of Monolithic Architecture
In an era where many companies were breaking away from monolithic applications to separate backend APIs and JavaScript frameworks like React, Ben and Michal made what they called a “brave choice” to stick with a monolithic Rails architecture. This decision, which might have seemed outdated to some, has proven extraordinarily effective for their team.
“The thing that we love about Rails was Rails itself,” explains Michal. “We didn’t look for different technologies outside of Rails.”
This commitment to the Rails ecosystem led them to explore cutting-edge tools within that framework, like Stimulus Reflex, Cable Ready, and View Component, which allowed them to build interfaces rapidly – perhaps even faster than they could have with a front-end framework.
As Ben points out, much of what they were doing 2-3 years ago was considered “bleeding edge” for Rails, but now tools like Hotwire and Turbo are built directly into the framework. Their early adoption of these technologies has given them a significant advantage.
Remote First Before It Was Cool
One fascinating aspect of their story is eXp Realty itself. Founded in 2009 as a remote-first company, eXp was ahead of its time. “Even back then, which was pretty unheard of,” Ben notes, “there was no building headquarters that everyone went into, everyone did it remotely.”
This forward-thinking approach has served the company well. When the pandemic hit in 2020, while other companies scrambled to adapt to remote work, eXp experienced no disruption whatsoever. “When the pandemic hit and everybody’s shifting, they’re buying stuff off Amazon, building their home offices, I already had four monitors hooked up. I was good to go,” Ben recalls.
The company even uses a metaverse-like application called Verbella, where employees have computer avatars they can use to move around and talk in a virtual world – something they were doing “before metaverse was even a term.”
The Hiring Challenge
Despite their success and the growth of their role within eXp, Ben and Michal face a significant challenge: finding talented Ruby developers to join their team. Both express frustration with the difficulty of finding developers with deep knowledge of Ruby on Rails.
“It’s not easy to find a perfect candidate, but even when we tried not to find a perfect one, we just tried to find any candidate. And even that was not easy,” Michal explains.
Part of the problem, they believe, is that many developers today don’t specialize deeply in one technology. Instead, they move between different frameworks and languages, gaining breadth but lacking depth. “It’s kind of like a master of none,” Ben observes.
As a result, they’ve pivoted their hiring strategy toward junior developers they can train and mould according to their team’s needs and methodologies.
The Future of Ruby on Rails
Despite the common question, “Is Ruby dead?”, both developers are optimistic about the future of the language and framework. They point to how Rails has evolved, especially in front-end capabilities, and how it’s keeping pace with modern web development trends.
“Rails definitely is, I think more than ever, ready for the future of web development,” Ben states confidently. He points to trends like server-side rendering coming back into fashion and notes, “everything new was old at one point.”
Michal adds that Rails is “bulletproof in a way,” having been battle-tested by developers worldwide, from small startups to large organizations like GitHub.
Sharing Knowledge
Beyond their development work, Ben and Michal contribute to eXp’s engineering blog, where they share insights about their projects and technical challenges they’ve overcome. Michal particularly enjoys writing about difficult problems he’s encountered, hoping to spark discussion and provide value to the wider development community.
“I usually write about things that were difficult for me, something that I was struggling with while developing, and maybe some kind of ideas how to go about different kinds of things,” he explains.
Conclusion
The story of Ben and Michal at eXp Realty demonstrates that sometimes the best technology choices aren’t always about chasing the newest, shiniest tools. By doubling down on Ruby on Rails and strategically incorporating cutting-edge elements within that ecosystem, they’ve achieved remarkable productivity with just a two-person team.
Their journey also highlights the enduring relevance of Ruby on Rails in modern web development, suggesting that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. With the framework continuing to evolve and adapt to changing web development trends, Rails remains a powerful tool for developers who know how to harness its capabilities.
For those interested in learning more about their work or potentially joining their team at eXp Realty, Ben and Michal are open to connecting with fellow Ruby enthusiasts.
Want to listen to the podcast episode? Follow this link.
