Migrating from Ruby to Go: pros, cons, and how to get it right

A Ruby project worked steadily for years, but now the load is growing, response time is increasing, and colleagues are advising a switch to Go.

Let's explore this with Alexander Kirillov, a DevOps expert and mentor in the Evrone DevOps internship program.

What Go offers. Compilation to machine code – high performance under load. Goroutines simplify parallel computing, unlike Ruby with its GIL. Static typing catches errors at compile time. The final binary includes all dependencies – no runtime environment or gem management needed.

The downsides. The Ruby ecosystem (Rails, Active Record, gems) is significantly richer. Many things in Go would have to be written from scratch. Strict rules: an unused variable will prevent compilation. No classes or inheritance – only structs and interfaces. Migrating a large project takes months, plus retraining the team.

How to decide. Assess the real problems. If performance is no longer satisfactory – Go might help. If everything runs smoothly, the switch may not be worth the effort. The best approach: rewrite one microservice in Go first, rather than starting a revolution.

Want to try Go but unsure? We can help with migration – from a test prototype to a full project rewrite.

More details in the article: https://evrone.ru/blog/articles/from-ruby-to-go