đ¶ Newsletter WoR #60: AI everywhere, DEI is dead (?), more humans in DevOps solutions...
A monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web
In this issue, we talk a lot, a lot, a lot about AI because we canât escape it, we review our sorting algorithms, we want a more ethical web, we learn about security best practicesâŠ
đ French version (version française)
Web News đïž
We were only gone a short while and now that weâre back it seems like all newsletters talk about it: Claude, Cursor, AI agents, MCP servers, vibe coding⊠Wow, wow, letâs calm down! Letâs start off with a bit of political thinking with Molly Whiteâs article âWait, not like thatâ: Free and open access in the age of generative AI, because weâre tired of companies feeding off the work of others for free without offering anything in return. We also recommend LĂ©onie Watsonâs talk, AI and Accessibility: the Good, the Bad, and the Bollocks, that we found enlightening.
If you do want to join the hype, there are courses from Microsoft (Generative AI for Beginners and AI agents for beginners) or videos from Shruti Kapoor (AI Agent? Explain me like I am five notably). We even found two articles on MCPs: What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)? How it simplifies AI integrations compared to APIs by Norah Sakal, and A Deep Dive Into MCP and the Future of AI Tooling by Yoko Li. Thatâs it; youâre now up to date!
đ€ News in Brief
A faster TypeScript, written in Go: Microsoft is using the language of its nemesis Google. A modern tale of Romeo and Juliet
Lynx, used by TikTok notably, is going open-source. Weâll see if that makes React Native tremble
A book that piqued our curiosityâLooks Good to Me: Constructive code reviews by Adrienne Braganzaâto not be afraid to stick out your neck during code reviews
Ruby and Rails News đ€ïž
đ± Spring sorting
Julie Kent continues her series of articles on sorting algorithms in Ruby. After Bubble Sort, Selection Sort and Merge Sort, we can now learn about Insertion Sort. The article explains the algorithm using a Romanian folk dance, and we learn when the proposed solution is more suitable than the .sort method provided by Ruby.âš Understanding the insertion sort algorithm in Ruby - Julie Kent
đ€ News in Brief
Surprises and investigations when migrating from Rails version 6.1 to 7.0
âšMigrating From Rails Secrets to Credentials - Daniela BaronWhen other frameworks talk about us: Rails views, web components, React. Why make a choice?, Why Ruby on Rails still matters and our favorite evergreen: JavaScript Fatigue Strikes Back
Ruby LLM has just been published. And they say that AI and Ruby arenât compatible
CFPs for Rails World (Amsterdam - September 4 and 5) and Euruko (Viana do Castelo - September 18 and 19) are open until April 10th
Sidekiq 8.0 was published
Rails 8.0.2 was published with some fixes
On the Web đžïž
đ + != +
In a nutshell: today's Big Tech companies are resting too much on their laurels and are only interested in their growth, with no respect for the end-user (does ad-fueled doom-scrolling sound familiar?). This is an opportunity for more ethical alternatives, many of which are presented in this article. For example, we discovered Diem, which wants to become the search engine for women and non-binary people.âš Growth at all costs is destroying the internet. PR maven Ed Zitron says thatâs an opportunity for startups - Rebecca Bellan
đ° DEI is dead, long live FAIR
Two years ago we wrote about DHH (creator of Rails) and his attacks on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) foundations. Now it looks like he found others to join the cause. Lily Zhang recaps why these policies are criticized in the first place, and offers a new framework: FAIR (Fairness, Access, Inclusion, Representation).âš What comes after DEI ? - Lily Zheng
đ For more balanced teams
â10x Engineersâ are those who are supposed to be 10 times more productive than others. This isn't how the article puts it, but it's ultimately an individualistic, ego-reinforcing vision of work. Charity Majors, on the other hand, proposes that organizations should be responsible for raising everyone's level (but given that Microsoft and Meta have just fired âlow-performingâ employees on a massive scale, a revolution based on sociology of work and organizations isn't going to happen any time soon).âš In Praise of âNormalâ Engineers - Charity Majors
đ€ News in Brief
âNullâ doesnât play nice with databases and the life of people with this name becomes complicated
âšWhen Your Last Name Is Null, Nothing Works - Oyin AdedoyinThe European Accessibility Act comes into effect in June 2025 so itâs time to get familiar with it
âšUnderstanding the European Accessibility Act (EAA) - LĂ©onie WatsonHow to have an impact as a Staff Engineer between engineering and business development
âšBe the best ally to your business development team - Janani SubbiahA plea for richer interactions with our screens
âšOur interfaces have lost their senses - Amelia WattenbergTeach to learn (no, itâs not a contradiction)
âšTeach to Learn: Why Sharing What You Know Makes You Smarter - Bethany CrystalHow to keep team members that like to be challenged
âšThe Hidden Ways Leaders Unintentionally Punish Their Top Performers - Claire Lew
Some Code đ»
đ€ Putting humans back at the center of DevOps
An interesting take on automation in DevOps/SRE because Courtney Nash has a background in cognitive neuroscience. She argues that automation changes the nature of work rather than making it disappear, and sometimes makes us more fragile when incidents occur. Thatâs when we have to get our hands dirty.
âš Resilience, Observability and Unintended Consequences of Automation - Courtney Nash
đĄïž Safety first
The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) published in January its Best Current Practice for OAuth 2.0 Security et Kim Manda summarized the main recommendations (and yes, CORS is in there).
âš OAuth 2.0 Security Best Practices for Developers - Kim Maida
đ€ News in Brief
A hack to lazy load background images off-screen without JavaScript
âš Lazy Load Background Images with the IntersectionObserver API - Anna MonusReal Infrastructure as Code rather than Infrastructure as Configuration
âš Yoke is really cool - Xe IasoIf you think than em and rem are the only ways to have text adapting to screen size, think again
âš Reimagining Fluid Typography - Miriam SuzanneImpossible to summarize this article because of the cute cat cursor running along on the screen
âš how to gain code execution on millions of people and hundreds of popular apps - evaWe were wrong, itâs about the destination
âš Event Destinations: A Faster Alternative to Webhooks - Loraine LawsonA series of five articles to learn Zod, a schema validation library for TypeScript
âš Learn Zod So You Can Trust Your Data and Your Types - Diana MacDonaldWe started off with a problemâcentering text on a imageâand ended up doing a deep dive in CSS solutions
âš A Deep Dive into the Inline Background Overlap Problem - Ana TudorFor accessibility, relying on automation (with tools like Lighthouse) isnât enough
âšWhy Automated Accessibility Testing Isn't Enough - Lena Yen
Over the years, some issues got lost in translation and you couldnât read them, thatâs why weâre 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 September 2023.
Fun đ
đ± đ¶ Meow meow, woof woof
Follow your chaotic-good alignment and encrypt your secrets using meowing or barking.âš PurrCrypt - vxfemboy
đźâđš We breathe
Who said that the Internet and mental health canât get along ? Here Jess Lambert used pure CSS (no JavaScript, thank you) to make a little square to practice square breathing.âš Square Breathing - Jess Lambert
đïž When life gives you lemonsâŠ
What do you do when your office building gets tagged? Use the tag to create a new typeface, of course.âš Revenge Font
đź AI should also be allowed to have fun
AI is ready to replace us all, even streamers!âš ClaudePlaysPokemon
In this edition we tried to provide more links than usual, the idea of course being not to read everything (well, feel free), but so that you can find a few topics that interest you and dig into them, or come back later for resources as your career evolves.
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Editors: Camille and Juliette
English version: Jade