The Ruby and Rails community linklog
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I Used Claude Code for 30 Days on My Rails App. Here's What I Learned
Spent 30 days using Claude Code as my primary AI assistant on a real Rails monolith. Not a toy app, not a tutorial project. [more inside]
I thought I needed a better AI model.
What I actually needed was better access to my own knowledge. [more inside]
Count, Length, or Size? Avoiding ActiveRecord Performance Traps
I remember when I first started with Rails, I thought .count, .length, and .size were exactly the… [more inside]
rails-persona — behavioral analytics for Rails models, no Mixpanel needed
rails-persona adds first-class behavioral tracking to any ActiveRecord model. Define trackable actions with a DSL, then query frequency, inactivity, leaderboards, and daily activity patterns — all in your own database. Supports async Sidekiq tracking and bulk inserts. A focused alternative to ahoy for model-level analytics. [more inside]
How Rails Finds the View to Render
Rails does not render views by guessing filenames. It builds a template lookup query from the controller, action, format, variant, handler, and view paths, then asks Action View to resolve the best matching template. [more inside]
asgard v0.3.0 release Thor and Loki working for you!
I got tied of cussing the CLI task running that I’ve been using for a few years. It was good but it wasn’t Ruby. So I wrote my own. The power of The Mighty Thor for a great CLI experience with Loki managing the tricks of the trade. The power of Ruby endorsed by every mythical god of the higher realms. [more inside]
From ERB to Phlex: 5 Steps to Pure Ruby Views
I love Rails, but I’ve always found ERB to be a bit messy. You spend your whole day jumping between… [more inside]
View Primitives
I like the simplicity of traditional Rails apps and the component-based approach of ViewComponent, but I always felt the ecosystem was missing something like shadcn/ui. So I built View Primitives — a collection of reusable UI primitives powered by ViewComponent. Would love to hear your feedback.
UUID v7 vs. ULID: Which Sortable ID Should You Choose?
For a long time, if you wanted a primary key that was both unique and chronological, you reached for… [more inside]
An impromptu lightning talk at Rubycon
Last week, I spent an extended weekend in Rimini, Italy, for the first edition of Rubycon. I decided to present an impromptu lightning talk to connect my reconversion story with the current trend of freezing hires of junior developers, and our responsibility as a community to offset/fight that trend.
Running local AI for Ruby development with Ollama, Aider, and VSCode.
No cloud APIs. No telemetry. No proprietary code leaving your machine. [more inside]
AI Didn't Create These Problems. It Just Stopped Routing Around Them.
Your codebase has gaps that only exist because the right people know to step over them. [more inside]
Stop Making Ugly Apps: Simple Tailwind Tricks for Backend Developers
I know the feeling of opening a blank index.html.erb file and having no idea how to make it look… [more inside]
Building user-customizable themes with Tailwind CSS
— Using OKLCH you can tweak one custom property, e.g. :root { --color-value: 60; } and get a UI in all the colours of the rainbow! 🌈😊
Inside Ruby’s OpenSSL stdlib:
how Ruby bridges native OpenSSL C APIs into elegant Ruby APIs powering HTTPS, TLS, certificates, digests, encryption, and secure communication across the Ruby ecosystem. [more inside]
The Better Primary Key: A Guide to ULIDs for Rails Developers
In a previous article, I talked about Snowflake IDs. They are great, but they require a bit of… [more inside]
Inside Ruby’s proc.c:
closures, bindings, lambdas, &:symbol, and VM internals powering every block you write. [more inside]
Stop Chasing Hype: Why I Chose Postgres Over 'New-Age' Databases
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been tempted by a “revolutionary” new database. Every few… [more inside]
Revisiting this experiment in pure Ruby GIS rendering.
Still one of my favorite projects: drawing real cities from GeoJSON data using only Ruby + GD. [more inside]
n8n vs ByteChef: Which Automation Engine Should You Self-Host?
Automating the “glue work” of a SaaS business is a survival skill for a solo developer. You need to… [more inside]
Robert released
Robert is a native FreeBSD AI assistant. He can read man pages, search documentation, and help you troubleshoot. It is distributed as a 2MB standalone binary. Built with mruby, and llm.rb.