Precision Pays Off: Handling Money in Rails Apps
Ian Lourenço • Philadelphia, PA • Talk

Date: July 10, 2025
Published: not published
Announced: unknown

Handling money in software is deceptively tricky. Floating-point arithmetic introduces precision errors that can lead to financial disasters, that's why banks have long relied on COBOL for its fixed-point precision. In this talk, we’ll dive into how Rails solves these problems today using tools like `BigDecimal` and the `Money` gem, which references Martin Fowler’s *Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture*. We’ll also explore the future of financial applications in Rails, from native money types to fintech, and share real-world stories of how Rails has saved clients from costly mistakes.

RailsConf 2025