Stop Rebuilding Rails Apps That Only Need Rescue
Most Rails apps don’t need to be rewritten from scratch — they need to be stabilized, modernized, and made safe to deploy again.
I’ve seen it happen too many times:
Founders lose faith in their app.
Developers burn out on legacy bugs.
Someone says, “Maybe we should just rebuild.”
But rebuilding isn’t always the answer.
In fact, it’s often the most expensive mistake you can make.
Over the past 20 years working with Ruby on Rails applications — some of them dating back to Rails 3 — I’ve found that most “broken” apps aren’t truly broken.
They’re just neglected.
Here are five signs your Rails app doesn’t need to be burned down.
It needs to be rescued.
1. Fear of Deployment Is Outweighing Fear of Progress
If shipping a new feature feels safer than deploying a tiny bug fix, you’ve lost trust in your own codebase.
A smart rescue focuses on restoring deploy stability, not rewriting everything from scratch.
2. Outdated Gems, But Stable Core Logic
Outdated gems look scary.
But if your workflows still run reliably, you don’t need the newest ecosystem.
You need careful updates — or smart patches — to keep moving forward without risking stability.
3. Background Job Errors (That Aren’t Fatal)
Most Sidekiq or background job issues can be diagnosed and fixed systematically.
It’s tedious work.
It’s not glamorous.
But it’s faster and cheaper than building new.
4. Gradual Performance Slips
Slow queries, missing indexes, unoptimized pages — these creep up slowly.
The solution isn’t a new app.
It’s better tuning.
5. A New Developer Can Still Learn the System
If a developer can onboard — painfully or not — you still have a maintainable system.
Rewrites usually happen when onboarding is impossible.
Rescue First. Rebuild Later (If You Must.)
Rebuilding feels exciting at first — until you realize it means 6 months of no shipping, no customer updates, and no revenue wins.
I work with founders and dev teams to rescue Rails apps fast.
No lectures. No shame. Just clean commits and clarity.
If you’re thinking about rewriting your app, maybe it’s time to talk about a rescue instead.
