🫶 Newsletter WoR #59: a better web, preview for Ruby 3.4, how to not break into in tech...
A monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web
In this issue, we dream of another web, we are in awe of the possibilities offered by Rails 7, we are tired of BS toxic positivity, we discover Igbo, we celebrate Windows 95 with Eurovision…
😚 French version (version française) | 🤌 Italian version (versione italiana) | 🤝 Spanish version (versión española)
The newsroom is going on vacation! 🏖️ 🕶 We’ll we back in your inbox early September!
Web News 🗞️
🫶 Is a Better Web Possible?
Was the web better when it was ran by overlord Hamtaro? (For Gen Z readers: you had to be there.) Can we dream of another web than the current one where we are constantly tracked, targeted by ads or restricted to what content algorithms want us to see? Molly White gives us some hope in her article.
✨ We can have a different web - Molly White
🤏 News in Brief
We are welcoming Threlte, a new 3D framework uniting Three.js and Svelte. If you’re allergic to React it’s an alternative to React Three Fiber
Figma explained why they migrated from they own programming language to TypeScript, a good inspiration to let go of past decisions that no longer work and start fresh (yes)
Remix v3 merges with React Router v7, a good inspiration to set your ego aside too (yes yes)
Vercel raised $250 million. Who in the room hasn’t tried Next.js (by Vercel), show yourself!
Google I/O’s pre-show by Marc Rebillet will surely go down in the history of computer science, as did Steve Ballmer during the launch of Windows 95. But if you’re interested in tech news you should have at Una Kravets’s talk about the latest in Web UI
Angular 18 is available!
Ruby and Rails News 🛤️
📈 Take Just What You Need
N+1 database queries lead to performance issues. But are you using best practices when making queries? Katarzyna Melon-Markowska covers this topic so that you can be covered.
✨ N+1 in Ruby on Rails - Katarzyna Melon-Markowska
🤏 News in Brief
It’s not Christmas yet but you can already have a look at the preview for Ruby 3.4!
Development of Rails 8 has started, and Kamal (Basecamp’s deployment system) was added by default
If you have a Ruby opinion you’d like to share with someone other than your console (indeed, your console is a person), it’s time to take the survey from Planet Argon: Ruby on Rails Community Survey!
Vercel now support Ruby 3.3, yeah!
Thoughbot updated their Ruby Science for the latest Ruby and Rails versions
Talks from Tropical.rb, the Latin America Ruby conference, have been published
Ruby Central announced that RailsConf 2025 will be the final one and that they will focus on the Ruby ecosystem
Rails Tip 💎
`select` with hashes as arguments: now possible with Rails 7.1Rails 7.1 finally lets us use pass a hash or an alias in ActiveRecord’s #select and #reselect query methods! 🥁
BEFORE
Post
.joins(:comments)
.select(
"posts.id as post_id, posts.title as post_title,
comments.id as comment_id, comments.body as comment_body"
)AFTER
Post
.joins(:comments)
.select(
posts: { id: :post_id, title: :post_title },
comments: { id: :comment_id, body: :comment_body}
)✨ Rails now allows hashes as arguments for `select`
On the Web 🕸️
🙃 The Sky is the Limit
“You’ll get there! I’m sure you can do it!” proclaims an overexcited CEO to employees distressed by the sudden and dramatic increase in company objectives. These last few years, work environment has become a major criteria for employee retention. Forced to adapt their speech, some managers and leaders have abandoned old-school scolding in favor of a positive communication style, which sometimes borders on the absurd. This is known as toxic positivity and it can cause some damage.
✨ Does Your Boss Practice Toxic Positivity? - Mita Mallick
🙅🏽How to (Not) Break Into Tech
We talk a lot about what’s needed to break into tech. We don’t talk enough about what not to do. Fortunately M’kya Gonzales, who has been working for over a year in cybersecurity, compiled a list of traps to avoid.
✨ Stop doing these 5 things if you want to break into tech - M’kya Gonzales
🙏 Thank You
There is no web without women. It’s good to know, but it’s even better to have an actual list of examples available next time you’re mansplained that no woman ever contributed to computer science.
Some Code 💻
➖ Small But Not so Mighty
Do you ever daydream and wonder “why don’t we talk about minifying CSS anymore?” Turns out it’s not even because JavaScript frameworks are already so heavy for your browser. It has more to do with HTTP/2 and modern compression algorithms.
✨ Why don’t we talk about minifying CSS anymore? - Salma Alam-Naylor
🇳🇬 The first Igbo API
Lagos was dubbed the African Silicon Valley so let’s stop by Nigeria and learn about the Igbo language spoken by over 40 million people. Ijemma Onwuzulike created an English-Igbo open-source API that contains 4,500 words and 18,000 sentences, complete with pronunciation. We learned that “science (and technology)” translates to “ǹkànụzụ” (pronunciation here).
✨ Igbo API - Ijemma Onwuzulike
🤓 Preparing for a System Design Interview
Your System Design technical interview is tomorrow and you don’t know where to start? Roopa Kushtagi is the person you need in your life. In this article we are sharing, she goes over the main topics that can come up in these interviews. We also highly recommend stopping by her YouTube channel Tech&Career Bytes, a trove of resources on this topic.
✨ Roadmap to Prepare for a System Design Interview: A Beginner’s Guide - Roopa Kushtagi
Over the years, some issues got lost in translation and you couldn’t read them, that’s why we’re translating and sharing those progressively. They will also be a glimpse from the past. Thanks to Marine for her precious translations and Jade for her reviews !
This one is from October 2023:
Fun 🎉
🎨 Art and Games
If you’re tired of ugly AI-generated images, rest your eyes for a moment with this journey into video games made with illustration and painterly art (thanks to the work of artists that are most likely underpaid based on what we know of the video game industry, but yeah.)
✨ Level up: exploring the artistic side of video game design - Angelica Frey
✨Bonus: ✨
(Or this link, if the first one isn’t available in your country)
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Editors: Aurelie, Camille, Lucille and Juliette
English version: Jade
Italian version: Paola
Spanish version: Kattya