Recently I've been thinking about writing a book or recording a video course on building an MVP with Ruby on Rails framework. It would be specifically targeted at non-technical founders with no prior programming experience.
Ruby on Rails happens to be among the most popular programming frameworks for building web apps in startups because of its extensive ecosystem and the tooling out of the box.
Typical beginner books on programming — and programming with Ruby and Ruby on Rails specifically — are oriented at a general audience. But building an MVP or a PoC is a completely different story: you've got to be extremely pragmatic in your choice of tools, libraries and their use. You must know the easiest, scalable way of running your SaaS on the Internet. You don't have to know or understand a lot of things which are only useful to a general programmer: like performance or writing "beautiful" code. All you need is to know just enough and in just the right combination to be able to deliver the first versions of the product. If it shows a promise - you can find a technical co-founder, or hire a freelancer to develop it further properly.
A little bit about me: I have 12+ years of working as a software engineer in startups of various sizes, most of which were built using Ruby on Rails.
I was part of small teams getting an MVP ready, mid-sized teams within successful startups with multiple rounds of investments behind, as well as a company of 1000+ engineers running some of the biggest Ruby on Rails apps out there.
Recently, I've also guided a (non-technical) friend in building an MVP, and it was quite illuminating for both of us. That's how I got the idea to scale it out in form of a course, or a book.
That said, I am not sure if there would be a demand for such a course. Maybe I am overestimating the need for it, and non-technical founders prefer spending their time somewhere else, instead.
What are your thoughts?
Thank you.
