🔋 Newsletter #42 : new Ruby version is out, how to stay motivated, the dangers of effective altruism...
A bi-monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web.
In this issue, we talk about the new version of Ruby, we stay motivated all year long, we learn from those who live with the lack of accessibility, we take over an airline …
😚 French version (version française) | 🤌 Italian version (versione italiana) | 🤝 Spanish version (versión española)
Web News 🗞️
2023, year of the cRustacean 🦀: Shopify gave us a hint with their love story with Rust for everything systems programming, or their feedback about their YJIT Ruby Compiler. And did you know that Rust can also help with frontend and web development ?!
🛤️ Ruby and Rails News
During the Winter Break, a little gift showed up under the tree: Ruby 3.2 🎁: Irb now leaves in its own repo
Nadia Odunayo, the creator of The StoryGraph, was a guest on the Remote Ruby podcast where she told how she started to code with Ruby, how her business scaled with Ruby on Rails, and talked about her experience in public speaking.
Evil Martians published the gemfile of their dreams, a list of all the little gems that spark joy!
Rails Tip 💎
Rails::Command::NotesCommandThe command rails notes returns a list of all the FIXME, OPTIMIZE, and TODO comments in your code.
rails notes
app/controllers/admin/users_controller.rb:
* [ 20] [TODO] any other way to do this?
* [132] [FIXME] high priority for next deploy
lib/school.rb:
* [ 13] [OPTIMIZE] refactor this code to make it fasterYou can also filter depending on the type of notes you need.
rails notes -a NOTE
app/controllers/admin/blog_posts_controller.rb:
* [10] [NOTE] Only return the last 10 blog postsAnd finally, you can also add your own tags.
config.annotations.register_tags("DEPRECATEME", "TESTME")✨ Rake Notes Task for non-Rails' projects
On the Web 🕸️
💸 The Not-So-Cool Kids
We heard a lot about “effective altruism” lately — and not in a good way: for example from Sam Bankman-Fried, who is accused of misappropriating billions of dollars of FTX customers' funds. Born in the Silicon Valley, and made by wealthy white men, this think tank à la Web3 aims to direct donations to some organizations arbitrarily judged efficient and better for the future. Today, this movement is investing massively in AI, without worrying about the wrongs made by this technology toward marginalized populations.
✨ Effective Altruism Is Pushing a Dangerous Brand of ‘AI Safety’ - Timmit Gebru
🫶 On-Call Serenity
Sleepless nights, Sev1 alerts at 3 am, hotfixes piling up in a code base becoming weaker and weaker… For many developers, being on-call is a nightmare they want to avoid as much as possible. Charity Majors explains to us it is possible to build better on-call schedules, as long as everybody — engineers and managers — take responsibility.
✨ Why on-call pain is a sociotechnical problem - Charity Majors
🔋 Steady Motivation
New year, new resolutions! But how to stay motivated in the long run? It’s not about energy but about discipline — Shruti Kapoor shares with us all her tips to build a more efficient workflow.
✨ How to stay motivated as a developer, build a habit system, and stop procrastinating - Shruti Kapoor
Some Code 💻
🧰 The SVG Toolbox
Personally, I only do backend development. So when someone tells me I need to fix something related to an SVG, I start shedding some tears. But crying time is over because this world is full of wonderful people like Mariana, who offers us a very detailed article with 6 common problems and how to fix them.
✨ 6 Common SVG fails and How to Fix Them - Mariana Beldi
😣 Not So Accessible
This article is not new but unfortunately still very current. Accessibility is vital in a world where everything happens online and ensures we don’t leave people living with a handicap behind. Holly shares with us a list of her frustrations when a website is not adapted to screen readers. Read and learn.
✨ 5 Most Annoying Website Features I Face as a Blind Screen Reader User-accessibility - Holly Tuke
☁️ The Head in the Clouds
People say that Cloud Programming is the future. And the future, it’s tomorrow. So let’s get it today! Darcy puts us a step ahead with a list of languages for Cloud Programming.
✨ 11 Cloud Programming Languages Developers Need to Know - Darcy DeClute
Fun 🎉
🔑 Keep Your Keys Close
We could have named that part “horror story that will keep you awake at night” for this issue. Despite the cute pink background, and a style so ‘90s from this blog, the article we share this week is terrifying. This is about the hacking of an airline, and how maia got access to a lot of sensitive data from them.
✨ How to completely own an airlane in 3 easy steps - maia arson crimew
Events 🎡
🦚 Tech and Ethics - January 24
Choices we make today impact the industry, our customers, and shape the future of technology and developers. How do we continue to innovate while keeping ethical practices and processes?
✨ Starting the Conversation: Tech Ethics - Women Who Code Berlin
🎤 Conference in Oakland, CA, USA - January 28, in person
Tech Intersections provides a space for the women of color most underrepresented in tech to come together and learn from each other’s successes, challenges, and experiences.
We know not all our readers live in California, but this kind of event is so rare that we couldn’t not promote it!
✨ Women of Color in Computing - Tech Intersections
☕ Buy us a coffee to support the newsletter 🍰 Thank you NotMoebius for your support!
✨ Join us: meet-up | twitter | website
Editors: Aurelie, Camille, Lucille and Juliette
English version: Aurelie
Italian version: Paola
Spanish version: Kattya