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AI agents are no longer just tools we manually wire together—they’re starting to build themselves. In this episode of Ruby Rogues, I caught up with Valentino Stoll to explore a fascinating idea: autogenetic (self-generating) AI agents and what they mean for how we write software in Ruby. We dig into Valentino’s experimental Ruby gem, agentic, and talk about plan-and-execute workflows, self-assembling agents, and how modern LLMs are reshaping everything from local development to production system...
In this solo episode, I sit down to unpack my thoughts on DHH’s RailsWorld keynote and what it means for those of us building modern Rails apps. There’s a lot to love about Rails right now — from the push toward simplicity and reducing needless complexity to powerful new features landing in Rails 8.1 like Markdown rendering, offline mode, structured events, push notifications, and more. I also dive into some of the deployment and infrastructure ideas DHH shared, including Kamal, Omarchi, and the...
In this solo episode, I open up about what’s been going on behind the scenes with Ruby Rogues and why you’ve been hearing more solo shows from me lately. Between new full-time work, family life, and shifting schedules among the panelists, it’s been a wild stretch — but I’m committed to keeping the show coming to you every week. From there, I dive into something that’s been on my mind for a while now: the health of the Ruby community and what Minaswan really means in 2024. I reflect on the growin...
In this solo episode of Ruby Rogues, I’m unpacking one of the biggest stories in the Ruby world right now: the tension between Ruby Central and core RubyGems contributors. I share what I’ve learned from talking to people across the community and why this issue is more complex than it looks on social media. From the origins of Bundler and Ruby Together to the recent creation of gem.coop, I trace how we got here—and why both sides have valid points but also made serious missteps. I also open up ab...
In this episode of Ruby Rogues, I sit down with Mike McQuaid, lead maintainer of Homebrew, to talk all about building and distributing CLIs. We dig into the practical steps for turning small scripts into reliable command-line tools, why Ruby is a great starting point, and when you might want to reach for Go or Rust instead. We also explore the challenges of distributing CLIs across macOS, Linux, and Windows, why Homebrew remains one of the easiest ways to ship software, and the importance of tes...
Hey everyone, Charles Max Wood here! It’s great to be back behind the mic with Ayush Nawatia for another episode of Ruby Rogues. This time, we’re diving into the fascinating world of Ruby community resources with two amazing guests: Adrien Poly and Marco Roth. They’re the creators behind RubyEvents.org , an ambitious project that’s aiming to centralize and modernize access to Ruby-related videos, conferences, meetups, and more. In this episode, we explore the vision and evolution of RubyEvents.o...
In this episode, we had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Carmine Paolino — an AI innovator, Ruby enthusiast, and all-around tech wizard. From his early days automating PC games at age five to building cutting-edge AI tools in Berlin, Carmine’s journey is as inspiring as it is impressive. We dove deep into his latest creation: RubyLLM, a Ruby gem that simplifies working with large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini. Think of it as an intuitive, plug-and-play toolkit t...
Ridhwana Khan discusses demystifying the Rails codebase, contributing to documentation, and the importance of metaprogramming. She shares her journey, insights on Rails internals, and her work at Circle. The episode also explores community building and tech in Cape Town, offering advice for aspiring contributors and speakers.
In this episode of Ruby Rogues, Charles Max Wood and Ayush Nwatia welcome back guest Stephen Margheim to dive deeper into the evolving world of SQLite. Stephen explains that with Rails 8, SQLite has reached a major milestone: it now supports a fully production-ready, server-driven web application experience with no compromises. He walks us through the big improvements, like better transaction handling and SQLite’s integration with Rails, which now supports background jobs, caching, and WebSocket...
In this episode, we dove into a topic that’s been on our minds — how to navigate change with purpose instead of fear. Whether it's personal transformation, career pivots, or unexpected life shifts, we talked about what it takes to stay grounded and aligned during times of transition. We opened up about our own experiences with change — the messy middle, the doubts, the resistance — and how we’ve learned to see it as a creative force rather than something to avoid. A big takeaway? Growth doesn’t ...
In this episode of the Ruby Rogues podcast, we dive deep into the world of Hotwire Native with our special guest, Joe Masilotti. Hosted by Charles Max Wood, along with panelist Ayush Nwatiya, we explore the evolution from Turbo Native to Hotwire Native and the exciting new features and improvements that come with this transition. Joe shares insights from his journey of writing "The Rails and Hotwire Codex" and collaborates with Pragmatic Bookshelf to make the integration of web and mobile techno...
Greg Molnar joins the podcast to discuss security in Rails 8 and 7.2, covering new features like rate limiting and authentication generators, along with essential tools such as Dependabot and Brakeman. The discussion also explores practical strategies for handling authentication, authorization, and the evolving security challenges faced by Rails developers, as well as thoughts on AI and automating code reviews.
Welcome back to another episode of the Top End Devs podcast! Today, we have an exciting lineup featuring our host Charles Max Wood and special guests Robbie Russell from Planet Argon, along with panelists Ayush Nawatia and Valentino Stoll. This episode dives deep into the insights from the latest Ruby community survey conducted by Robbie Russell. We explore topics such as the rise of Stimulus JS in the Rails community, trends in deployment practices, popular tools and services in the software ec...
In this episode of Top End Devs, host David Camira is joined by panelists Luke Stutters and John Epperson, along with special guest Jesse Spivak, a senior engineer at Ibotta. Jesse shares his experiences and insights from a challenging project at Ibotta, where he navigated through four critical mistakes. These included choosing the wrong technology, siloing work, falling into premature optimization, and making too many changes at once. Jesse explains how these mistakes jeopardized the project bu...
Ivan Nemytchenko is a freelancer. He's a speaker and conference organizer. Ivan spoke at RailsConf about abstract object-oriented programming ideas and how they can be expressed with pictures. The discussion goes into learning processes and how to create visual representations that help people understand Ruby, Rails, or other concepts. Links Chernoff Faces dmikhr/DudeGL - "Anthropomorphic UML": visualization of code and OOP concepts in a form of human body. dmikhr/Dudity - Analyze Rails code wit...
Kyle d'Oliveira (Clio) shares his survival tips for dealing with tens of thousands of commits, massive migrations and the very limits of databases. We discuss the lessons learned from Rails megaprojects and how to use these tips in your own projects to reduce technical debt and tools to keep your monolith majestic when the code won't stop coming. Links GitHub's Online Schema Migrations for MySQL Gh-ost benchmark against pt-online-schema-change performance Picks Matt - Danger JS Luke - From jQuer...
In this episode, Charles and Valentino dive into the complexities of software design decisions with the esteemed guest, Uncle Bob Martin. They explore the pivotal question: How do you evaluate frameworks and dependencies in your projects? Uncle Bob shares his seasoned perspective on choosing frameworks based on an application's long-term goals and complexity, emphasizing the importance of thoughtful decision-making over defaulting to popular solutions. Together, they delve into the nuances of ev...
Different doesn’t need to be worse. Dmitry Tsepelev tells us how to make the most of using GraphQL with Rails, the advantages over REST-based API queries and best practices for security and schemas. Links https://github.com/anycable/anycable https://graphql-ruby.org/ https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/persisted-queries-in-graphql-slim-down-apollo-requests-to-your-ruby-application https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/graphql-on-rails-1-from-zero-to-the-first-query https://evilmartians.com/chronic...
In this episode of Ruby Rogues, we talk with Ufuk about how Shopify made the transition to using Sorbet and about the benefits they felt they received from implementing it. Ufuk also reveals a little bit about how Shopify transitioned to fully remote and about how that will be the default moving forward. Picks Luke - https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf John - Walmart Grocery Pickup Dave - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Thin+Clients Dave - Apple ARM MacMini Ufuk - TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocol...
In this episode of Ruby Rogues, Chelsea Troy teaches us to hone our debugging skills to a razor-sharp edge. We learn how to actively improve debugging skills, train troubleshooting instincts and practical strategies for tackling brain-bending bugs. Sponsors Mailtrap Links https://chelseatroy.com/2020/01/13/a-framework-for-debugging/ Picks Luke - https://rclone.org/ John - Large Mouse Pads John - The Coding Den – A place where people ask and answer questions about coding, etc. Charles - Logi wire...
This week, our host Charles Max Wood sits down with co-host Valentino Stoll to dive deep into the cutting-edge tools and strategies in AI development and integration. Valentino shares his go-to resources, including Langchain and Rails plug-ins like RAIX and Ray, to enhance applications with AI. They discuss the nuances of agent-based systems, Justin Bowen’s frameworks, and AI engines from industry leaders like Alex Rudolph and Toby Lukett. Charles and Valentino also explore the significant impac...
Emil Kampp discusses building critical infrastructure using Ruby on Rails, emphasizing testing, documentation, and security. He shares experiences in fintech, civil engineering, and online voting, highlighting the importance of human factors and redundancy. The episode explores dynamic typing, rapid development, and communication challenges in complex systems.
Today, they delve deep into the world of application deployment with our special guest, Josef Stribny, a freelance software engineer and author of "Deployment from Scratch" and "Kamal Handbook". Joined by the insightful panelists, Valentino and Ayush, they explore the intricacies of deploying applications using Kamal, a minimalistic deployment tool inspired by Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson. In this episode, Josef shares his expertise on Kamal’s deployment process, Docker registr...
In this episode of Ruby Rogues, guest Jonathan Reinink joins the Rogues to talk about what Inertia.js is and why Rails developers would want to use it. Links https://inertiajs.com https://reinink.ca/articles/introducing-inertia-js https://reinink.ca/articles/getting-started-with-inertia-js https://remoteruby.transistor.fm/66 https://www.fullstackradio.com/episodes/127 Picks Luke - The Kubernetes Book John - https://github.com/brunofacca/active-record-query-trace John - https://github.com/nesquen...
In today's episode, they dive deep into the world of AI, technology, and Ruby on Rails with our special guest, Gustavo Valenzuela. Charles and Valentino unpack everything from community-driven insights and AI advancements to the fascinating board game "Star Realms." They explore Gustavo’s journey, his innovative platform "Startups on Rails," and how it aims to document companies powered by Ruby on Rails. Plus, get ready for discussions on AI's transformative role in development, the economic lan...
Darren Broemmer joins the Rogues to discuss how Ruby on Rails enables a microservices architecture and when it's appropriate to approach your system's architecture with microservices. Chuck and Dave lend their experience and expertise in pointing out some of the challenges with microservices and the power of Rails in enabling the Majestic Monolith. Tradeoffs are discussed and approaches are considered for when parts of an application may make a good candidate for microservices. Links Twitter: Da...
Today, they dive deep into the world of observability in programming, particularly within Rails applications, with special guest, John Gallagher. Valentino openly shares his struggles with engineering challenges and the frustration of recurring issues in his company's customer account app. They explore a five-step process Valentino has developed to tackle these problems and emphasize the critical role of defining use cases and focusing on relevant data for effective observability. In this episod...
Charles and Valentino are joined by special guest Brian Vallelunga, CEO and co-founder of Doppler, a leading secrets management platform often described as "GitHub for secrets." Dive into an engaging conversation about best practices for managing sensitive information, such as API keys and encryption keys, and treating all environment-configured settings as secrets. Brian shares insights on using tools like AWS Secrets Manager, Docker, and Doppler’s seamless integration with popular development ...
In this episode, Valentino and Ayush dive deep into the evolving landscape of web frameworks, particularly focusing on Ruby on Rails. Join them as they explore the challenges and advantages of transitioning from front-end-centric frameworks like Next.js to Rails, the seamless features Rails offers, and the complexities of integrating front-end components. They also discuss exciting potentials like better integration of Vue component libraries with Rails, the simplicity and utility of custom elem...
Today, Valentino dives deep into the world of Ruby development with our special guest, Andy Maleh. They explore innovative advancements in Glimmer DSL for LibUI and Glimmer DSL for Web. Andy talks about his after-hours efforts to improve productivity and maintainability in front-end development, his critiques of current JavaScript frameworks like React, and his preference for utilizing Ruby's simplicity. Valentino shares his intriguing project, building a robotic arm, and discusses teleoperation...
