🎀 Newsletter WoR #62: building a website without a framework, managing your manager, CSS carousels...

A monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web

In this issue, we write less about AI (we also have a right to disconnect!), but we’re catching up on Rails news from the past two months, we come across new frameworks, we’re linking code and music, we get to laze around thanks to Excel…

😚 French version (version française)

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Web News 🗞️

The big Google commotion, a.k.a. Google I/O 2025, brought on a lot of announcements that were round up in Rachel Andrew’s video: What’s new in web.

🤏 News in Brief

• Everyone shared this already, but since we don’t mind following the herd from time to time, here it is: Plain vanilla, or how to build a website using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript. After all, wouldn’t the world be nicer without frameworks?

• Redis 8.0 was released, and it’s now open source again following last year’s mini-scandal

• GSAP, a tool that lets you build very stylish animations, is now completely free!

• More frameworks! One in Rust, feather, because why not?, and Hyper that presents itself as an alternative to React

• 2021 called and Google decided to transform its logo using gradients

• JavaScript turned 30 (history recap here) while Moore’s Law turned 60!

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Ruby and Rails News 🛤️

📄 Where Did This Paper Go?
We should always think of the end-user. Imagine trying to fill out a form that also requires a document to be uploaded… and bam! A validation error on one of the form fields results in the document having to be uploaded again. Okay, it’s clear that there are more important issues in life, but this one is an easy fix using Stimulus.
✨ Active Storage & Form Errors: Preventing Lost File Uploads in Rails - Daniela Baron

🤏 News in Brief

• Ruby Europe, unite! Ruby Europe wants to grow its community and has a number of initiatives in the pipeline. If you’d like to help you can fill out this form to express your interest in joining the team.

• 2025 marks the last year of RailsConf organized by Ruby Central, as they decided to focus back on Ruby. Rhiannon Payne, marketing director, discusses what’s in store for the conference and upcoming initiatives from Ruby Central.
  ✨ Ode to RailsConf - Rhiannon Payne

• Speaking of dev communities, here is a summary from a Ruby meetup that took place in Kathmandu, Nepal, where amongst other things, Prepsa Kayastha presented Our Rails Horizontal Sharding Journey.
  ✨ More Than Code: Highlights from The Ruby Community Meetup in Kathmandu, Nepal - Alaka Acharya

• Videos from Balkan Ruby 2025 were published, and we were able to find talks from two developers with close to 20 years of experience with Ruby on Rails.
  ✨ Adapting and Thriving: Insights from a 16-Year Project Journey - Denitsa Belogusheva
  ✨ Beyond the Hype: Practical lessons in Long-Term Rails maintenance - Julia López

• At RubyKaigi 2025 we fell down the rabbit hole of character encoding using Ruby.
  ✨ Ruby Taught Me Encoding About Under the Hood - Mari Imaizumi

• Becky Searls, personal trainer, tells us how she built a RoR strength-training app with the help of her husband.
  ✨ Better With Becky with Becky Searls - The Ruby on Rails Podcast

• What are the advantages/disadvantages of TypeScript when compared Ruby and Elm? Aji Slater discusses this and also gives advice based on their experience of AI as a code companion.
  ✨ Learning Typescript with Aji Slater - The Bike Shed

• As for Ruby, ZJIT (a new just-in-time compiler) was merged, and version 3.5 is working on a top-level Namespace. You can read the proposal or dive into the current docs for this feature.

• Some code snippets: Nidhi Sarvaiya presents auto submit with Rails and Stimulus, or also params.expect avec Rails 8; Bhumi teaches us the powerful bin/rails runner command, and Alba Rosttöpfer shares how much she enjoys the RubyLLM gem.

• Ruby and AI don’t rime in English, but OpenAI didn’t forget about it and just released a Ruby SDK for their API: openai-ruby.

• Liam ERD, a tool to generate pretty diagrams of our database, works with RoR!

• We can’t help but preach to the choir by sharing these three articles discussing SaaS businesses using Rails: The One-Person Framework in Practice; How We Fell Out of Love with Next.js and Back in Love with Ruby on Rails & Inertia.js; Nobody Codes Here Anymore.

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On the Web 🕸️

🎶 Music, Maestro, Please!
We know that looking for a new job now isn’t fun for devs with experience, but it’s even more difficult for folks switching careers. So here is a little ode to diverse backgrounds—in this case—a musician that turned to code. Because after all, resilience comes from diversity.
✨ “Music and code have a lot in common” - Jessica Wilkins

🤹 Managing Your Manager
Having effective 1:1s, using your manager to make decisions for you, sharing everything that you’ve been working on, asking to be included on new projects, are among some of that advice that can help boost your career.
✨ What “managing up“ really means: A Practical Guide to Working with Your Manager - Busra Koken

🏋️‍♀️ Strengthening Your Creativity
Doomscrolling not only makes us want to curl into a ball and reminisce simpler times when we could play in the mud, but it can also hurt our creativity. You’ll find here some tips on how to strengthen a muscle atrophied by years of algorithmically-selected images being thrown at you.
✨ Boosting Up Your Creativity Without Endless Reference Scrolling - Marina Chernyshova

🤏 News in Brief

• Presenting your work online is important but it can also be difficult, so if you’re struggling to update your online portfolio this rant will make you feel less alone.
  ✨ I hate my portfolio - Valeria Yakovchik

• Some humility and feedback on leadership
  ✨ Dumb Leadership Mistakes I’ve Made - Laura Tacho

• Some vibe coding in action
  ✨ She Built an App with AI - No Code Needed with Sandra Djajic - Superhuman Ai Podcast

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Some Code 💻

📮 Building in the Open
Last November Heroku shared its Twelve-Factor Manifesto, an update on the famous development commandments (there are 12, not 10 because none got lost along the way!). In this podcast we learn more about the big projects Heroku has been working on in the last two years, how these have a direct impact on customers and how Heroku follows their principles by building in the cloud while being open to feedback.
✨ How Heroku Is ‘Re-Platforming’ Its Platform - Betty Junod

🎀 Optimizing Without Losing Your Mind?
This post looks back on code optimization: the ones that don’t that mix up well with others, the ones that require some math, the ones that are incompatibles, problems in compilation or in docs.
✨ Why performance optimization is hard work - Alisa Sireneva

🎠 You Spin My Head Right Round, Right Round
Oh carousels! They seem to only work on Instagram and should pretty much be banned from every other website. But if you have to use them, you’ll be glad to hear that they can now be made using pure CSS. We’re just wondering if they are truly production-ready.
✨ Are 'CSS Carousels' accessible? - Sara Soueidan

🤏 News in Brief

• What makes a good impression on a developer? A well-stocked snack stash? (Yes.) But having friendly code that’s understandable regardless of years experience, is also important.
  ✨ Mercedes Bernard: Friendly Code Welcomes Everyone In - Maintainable Software Podcast

• Long gone are the days when we recorded information on clay tables. Here Sally Hall discusses the differences between paper and digital data structures.
  ✨ Paper Data Structures with Sally Hall - The Ruby on Rails Podcast

• A little bit of ChatGPT bashing because it doesn’t know how to write CSS either.
  ✨ ChatGPT and the proliferation of obsolete and broken solutions to problems we hadn’t had for over half a decade before its launch - Ana Tudor

• Pretty CSS to add curved box cutouts on a card.
  ✨ Curved Box Cutouts in CSS - Preethi Sam

• Making peace ChatGPT not only requires good prompts, but also integrating it without being afraid of using its API, which you’ll learn how to do in this tutorial.
  ✨ Build a Python + ChatGPT-3.5 Chatbot in 10 Minutes - Jessica Wachtel

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Fun 🎉

📚 I Can Show You The World
Forget everything we said about the end of creativity because of doomscrolling and images being thrown at you, because it’s exactly what this site offers (but without ads or AI content generated every three posts). The images are actually sourced from public domain content—so we’re not really changing sides, are we?
✨ Public Work

🧑‍💼 Yes, I’m Working
Games like Solitaire, Worldle, Battleship, 2048, etc. but as Excel spreadsheets to be able to kill time without being caught if you’re stuck in a bullshit job.
✨ Bored Spreadsheet

🪪 Would You Like My Card?
A fun project: publishing your business card as a little npx package.
✨ Turning Feedback Into Features: Building My npx Business Card - Ashley Willis

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Editors: Camille and Juliette
English version: Jade