🍑 Newsletter WoR #54: AI powered development, chill email replies, the color of the year...

A monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web

In this issue, we ask ourselves how AI can help us with our day-to-day dev workflows, how we can lighten our test suites and spot the right bugs, and we check out inspiring interviews of women in tech…

😚 French version (version française) | 🤌 Italian version (versione italiana) | 🤝 Spanish version (versión española)

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Web News 🗞️

🔮 Coding in the future

It’s now been over a year since the ChatGPT tsunami came over us. Did you try it or not try it? Heard from those who swear by it, or even sworn by it yourself? Are you afraid that AI will take over our jobs, or unsure how to incorporate it in yours? 

Jennifer Riggins’ article explores creative ways to integrate AI into our work. It does mention Google services, but beyond that it shows very interesting insights on how AI can assist a developer’s typical workday. 

✨Google’s Duet AI Launches GenAI across Full SDLC in the Cloud - Jennifer Riggins

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Ruby and Rails News 🛤️

📜 On the frontend front line

Sometimes life goes by so quickly that one day you’re just working away as usual with AJAX in your Rails frontends, and then the next day BOOM the new kids Turbolinks and Hotwire are all over town and you’re so lost you don’t even know how to begin asking questions. 

Fortunately, Bhumi’s latest newsletter is here to brief you. 

✨How did we go from AJAX to Turbolinks to Hotwire? A brief web history -Bhumi

🤏 News in a Nutshell

• Elise Schaffer is the new host of the Ruby on Rails podcast. She has been invited to the Code and the Coding Coders who Code it podcast in which she recounts her podcasting experience and her TDD (Test Driven Development) course. She also shares her Vim tips!   

• Rewinding to some BaseCamp news that stood out this year: in September Turbo ditched Typescript, Kamal proposes to help us deploy web apps from bare-metal to cloud VMs.

• Oops, we forgot to tell you about what's new in Rails 7.1!

• Aestimo Kirina takes us through how to create a Ruby app with Sinatra.

• Amanda Bizzinotto from FastRuby.io does the math and answers the big question: How Much Does it Cost to Upgrade Rails?

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Ruby Tip 💎

🐙 polymorphic_url

Just like a URL wizard, this Ruby on Rails method receives a polymorphic object and adapts to its type and instance to generate the corresponding route.

Generating a URL for a comment related to a post:

post_comment = Post.find(1).comments.first
polymorphic_url(comment)  # => "/posts/1/comments/1"

Generating a URL for a comment related to an article:

article_comment = Article.find(1).comments.last
polymorphic_url(article_comment)  # => "/articles/1/comments/2"

You can also add an action or a format:

edit_polymorphic_path(@post)           # => "/posts/1/edit"
polymorphic_path(@post, format: :pdf)  # => "/posts/1.pdf"

✨ActionDispatch::Routing::PolymorphicRoutes

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On the Web 🕸️

🫡 So long Twitter

The long descent of Twitter (nope, we will not call it X) into hell never ceases to amaze. Wired published a fascinating interview of Del Harvey who was in charge of the moderation on the platform for 13 years. She delves into Twitter’s history, from Justin Bieber’s Brazilian fans to the Capitol attack.

✨Twitter’s Former Head of Trust and Safety Finally Breaks Her Silence - Lauren Goode

🧐 Testing means Doubting

Let’s face it: sometimes, we just wanna skip the tests. In her blog article, Louise Gibbs looks at different ways to limit coverage and to get by with less tests (spoiler: communication is key).

✨Reducing Scope (Let’s Test Less!!!) - Louise Gibbs

💌 Return to sender

It’s Monday, you’re in a good mood to start your week, when suddenly Kevin from accounting decides to ruin your day with a vicious little email. Before you jump on the keyboard to answer, take some time to read this article from Elizabeth Danziger.

✨How to Respond to an Upsetting Email - Elizabeth Danziger

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Some Code 💻

🧑‍✈️ Houston, we have a Copilot

Rizèl Scarlett wrote a 9-part guide on how GitHub’s AI Copilot can help with our dev flows. In the part we’ve shared below, we discover how Copilot explains the code it generates and translates it into another programming language. In other parts, we use it to convert JavaScript code to TypeScript, to get useful engineering tips… and other tips to tickle our testing fancy! 

✨Use Copilot to Write and Translate a Binary Search Algorithm - Rizèl Scarlett

♻️ No losers, no winners, only game changers

Let 2024 be the year when we stop the eternal monolith vs microservices battle! Why not choose what’s most suited to the product? In this video dating back to 2017 Aimee Lucido relates what happened to the Uber Android app - a good showcase for the value of adapting to a company’s needs. 

✨ Uber Technology Day: Monorepo to Multirepo and Back Again - Aimee Lucido

🔎 Sherlock Holmes in therapy

Tracking and solving bugs should be a pretty straightforward affair: we hear of an error (either reported by a user or by our monitoring alerts), we look for the source of the error, find it, solve it, add a little regression test and we’re good to go. Right? 

Right. In theory. 

… or we hear of an error that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the bug we’re working on, or all hell broke loose and we can’t see what broke in the first place. Read on to find out how Problem Detection can either foster or hinder Problem Resolution. 

✨What’s Difficult About Problem Detection: Three Key Takeaways -Emily Arnott

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Fun 🎉

🍑 Peach and love

Every year Pantone chooses a Color of the Year. For 2024, the title goes to Peach Fuzz which “captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It’s a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, soul.”  Time to be GENTLE, y’all! 

✨Envelop Yourself in PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz - Laurie Pressman

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Events 🎡

✨No more events as the year is coming to a close, here are some replays instead! ✨

🎟 Womxn in APIs, Paris - December 6-8 

This event offers a series of talks about APIs. It promotes diversity with about fifty womxn speaking (a mere 16% of the lineup, but still) and a space dedicated to workshops on team diversity and career advice. 

You can catch up on the videos on API Days’ YouTube channel.

✨ API Days - Paris

🪓 Breaking Barriers: tech made by women

Aside from brutally firing women who raise concerns about the biases of their AI algorithms, Google has created a network called WomenTechmakers where you can become an ambassadress and attend regular events. It’s a space to talk about career opportunities and leadership with brilliant women in the field. Here are interviews that the network has run with women in tech around the world.

✨Women Techmakers Spotlight

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Editors: Aurelie, Camille, Lucille and Juliette
English version: Marine and Jade
Italian version: Paola
Spanish version: Kattya