The topic and description for my workshop at SF Ruby, “The Dynamic Ruby Toolkit” is now up sfruby.com/schedule/#dy.... Come join everybody there — looks like a great program. And sign up for the workshop!

Our mistake is your bonus. We left out a URL, so you get extra time to save! 45% off PragProg books (except The Pragmatic Programmer) Code: flashsale Ends Sept 22, 9:00 CDT -> pragprog.com

The Pragmatic Bookshelf is running a 48-hour flash sale. Get 45% off almost everything with promo code "flashsale". pragprog.com Programming Ruby 3.3 definitely included.

My team at Chime is hiring -- listing here careers.chime.com/en/jobs/8141... It's Ruby/Rails team working on internal tools and frameworks. The job is remote, about half the existing team is SF-based. US and Canada only, I think. Happy to answer questions in thread or in DM.

My team at Chime is hiring -- listing here careers.chime.com/en/jobs/8141... It's Ruby/Rails team working on internal tools and frameworks. The job is remote, about half the existing team is SF-based. US and Canada only, I think. Happy to answer questions in thread or in DM.

I’m both proud and a little afraid?

Event 1 of 6 starts Saturday. Super excited to bring this thing to life.

Rails devs -- is it a norm to not put configuration changes in the files that Rails updates will try to overwrite (like application.rb or the environments/production.rb) -- it seems like this would make updates easier, but I don't think I've ever seen it explicitly suggested. Do you do this?

Had the experience today of two different LLMs either both lying to me about the exact same feature in the Ruby standard library or both finding the same underdocumented option in the library. Both, when pressed for a cite, reversed and said the feature wasn't there. (But I think it might be?)

From the @pragprog.com newsletter:

“Dems think everything is white supremacy” your response is “well the vice president is a fucking neo Nazi so let’s fix that first then we can worry about randos on the internet” not OMG SO TRUE MY INTRAPARTY ENEMIES ARE EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICA, NAY, THE WORLD! Shut! The fuck! Up!

I've finally gotten around to writing a blog post about the Programming Proverbs book: noelrappin.com/blog/2025/07... The upshot is that there's a huge difference in the relative value of computer versus programmer time between then and now... Which kind of sounds like now and 5 years from now.

Re-upping this thread...

Turnaround in record time, the Railsconf 2025 talks have been published! If you missed my keynote in person: here’s your opportunity. Now excuse me while I go binge all the talks I missed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-lq...

As you can tell, I was so surprised that we managed to pull it off, that I didn't really think of what we should do once we did connect the two meetups. This was really fun, though.

A magical moment from June with a live bridge between ChicagoRuby hosted at Chime Chicago and SF Ruby (lu.ma/sfruby) hosted at Chime SF 🤩 The key people involved in this recording are: @noelrappin.com, @inazarova.bsky.social‬, @alan.codegardener.com, @fito.codegardener.com‬, and Brandt Sheets

Book sale -- The Raven Scholar, which is likely the best book I've read so far this year, is 2.99 at Amazon and other ebook stores. (amzn.to/4kUPeYp) (bookshop.org/p/books/the-...)

I see people responding to the study that programmer self-reports are not accurate measures of how much time they save using LLMs with, basically "but MY self-reports are accurate..."

Just for my curiosity -- I have the opportunity to give a 2-hour ish workshop. So, interactive, but not necessarily fully hands-on. Topic TBD. What topics do you think it'd be interesting to hear me present about?

I haven't been publishing them, but I have been writing book reviews as I go this year in the wild hope that I can get a book post out at the beginning of the year, or even some kind of halfway point. Without much ado, my top rated books of 2025 so far (alphabetical order)...

@noelrappin.com if you aren’t following this person you’re missing some prime Muppet content.

What's the best option for static sites these days? I need it to support a blog. Ideally Ruby-based, but I'm open to other choices.

Good Morning #railsconf. I’ve got a promo code — RailsConfNoel for 40% off of my books at pragprog.org Also, I’ll be at the Meet The Author table for an hour right after the opening panel. Come say hi!

Me with the authors of “The Well Grounded Rubyist” #railsconf #rubyauthorfriends

Even the juice is on brand at #railsconf

June went in all kinds of directions... Top rec is Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, but that is book three of a series.

Originally captured in Kent Beck's classic book "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns", Pluggable Selector is an under-used strategy for making methods more flexible. Learn how to use it in Ruby, in this classic Graceful.Dev episode now free to all! youtu.be/rMsL3ZH4A2s

I guess the buried lede here is that we're planning to get a Pickaxe version out in parallel with a potential Ruby 4.0 release this winter

Ruby standards question: An example in the pickaxe uses `.find { |num| num * num > 30 }` In Ruby 3.4 you could write the block as `{ it * it > 30 }` 1) Leave it as is 2) Use the newer syntax 3) Leave it but note the newer syntax as a possibility (This is not where the syntax is taught)

I was introduced to Tom Lehrer by my 8th grade social studies teacher who gave us a study period one day and played TW3 in the background. Then, I randomly found out that my parents had a vinyl copy -- to this day I don't know why -- and I copied it to a cassette and listened to it for years.

Probably the Spencer Tracy "Inherit the Wind"

Last night, Chime hosted the SF Bay Area Ruby Meetup in our San Francisco office and the Chicago Ruby meetup in our Chicago office, and we even managed to get the two groups to wave to each other over Zoom.

LLMs make coding tasks feel like not-coding tasks for people who are not coders, while also making not-coding tasks feel like coding for people who are coders...

One thing I think I think is that a lifetime of reading SF did not prepare me for the LLM era...

Well, every developer has an opinion, here's mine... noelrappin.com/blog/2025/05... Or, several small opinions that might add up to a big opinion.

Well, I've moved my post about LLMs from iaWriter to the Buttondown CMS, so I can't possibly fuss with this post _that_ much longer, can I?

I haven't mentioned this here much, but @pragprog.com has a @humblebundle.com with 19 Ruby and JavaScript ebooks for $18 or pay-what you will for smaller bundles or larger charitable donations. About one day left... www.humblebundle.com/books/javasc...

I haven't mentioned this here much, but @pragprog.com has a @humblebundle.com with 19 Ruby and JavaScript ebooks for $18 or pay-what you will for smaller bundles or larger charitable donations. About one day left... www.humblebundle.com/books/javasc...

Got these from a used book sale. Book on the left is from 1975, book on the right is from 1979. I am _wildly_ curious… I will, of course, report back.

This is so late that it mocks the very idea of a year end round-up, but... Here's the 2024 books post -- long awaited by, well, me, I really wanted to finish it. noelrappin.com/blog/2025/05...

Ick... the years old Disqus comment thing on my website is now showing dumb ads. Bye bye Disqus comments until I find something better...

I'm not saying reading WEWLC will make you a senior engineer, but I am saying I have a hard time taking a senior title seriously if you haven't

OK, I think it's in a good place for more people to kick the tires now! I rewrote the README from scratch. github.com/avdi/ivar

There's another @pragprog.com Humble bundle up now and through the next few weeks www.humblebundle.com/books/javasc... A bunch of Ruby and JavaScript books at pay-what-you-want prices...

Jill Sobule’s songs could be joyfully funny one minute and heartbreaking the next. If you don’t know her work, enjoy this sublime song from her final studio album. youtu.be/2OXYPzAkdJ0

Spring Best Sellers Sale, Last Call - Week 3 The Red Carpet - ♥️ Ruby/Rails♥️ 40% Off – This Week Only! Code: 2025RAILS at checkout link in 🧵 by @noelrap

Spring Best Sellers Sale, Week 3 The Red Carpet - ♥️ Ruby/Rails♥️ 40% Off – This Week Only! Code: 2025RAILS at checkout pragprog.com/titles/... by @noelrappin.com

Speaking of task trackers, my main problems with basically all the ones that I have used are this: 1) When working with a discrete project, I want to see at a glance "when does it look like this project will be done" and more importantly "is that date slipping"

A whole bunch of Ruby and Rails books from @pragprog.com are 40% off through April 29 with code 2025RAILS -- including the Pickaxe book and Modern Front End with Rails. See the whole list here: media.pragprog.com/newsletters/...

What I understood is that it will still be the release of features planned for Ruby 3.5 but will call it Ruby 4 as a celebration of 30 years since first release. I was not there and cannot find the post but I remember reading something like this.