🐈 Newsletter WoR #64: a new Ruby framework, better design conversations, adapting your terminal...

A monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web

Aug 01, 2025

In this issue, we talk about how the web is changing with generative AI, a new controller-less Ruby framework, we step into the shoes of a Chief Data Officer…

😚 French version (version française)

Web News 🗞️

🦅 Vultures Are Coming
Some are worried about the web’s business model: websites aren’t visited (so ads aren’t clicked) while content is pumped out by generative AI. Cloudflare for instance decided to unearth 402 Payment Required, and others are saying they can make a profit out of it.
✨ The Companies Betting They Can Profit From Google Search’s Demise - Katherine Blunt

🤏 News in Brief

Vercel acquired NuxtLabs. Look, if we also had raised 536 millions we would also make impulse purchases (or create a conglomerate). Just over a week later Nuxt announced its v4; no lazying around here!
Vite released its v7
Google presented its CLI (Command Line Interface) for Gemini, and it’s open-source
Do you also have exciting side projects to share with the world? At any rate, Turso does: they’re re-writing SQLite in Rust
AWS is getting into Artificial Intelligence Integrated Development Environment (AI IDE) with Kiro
Are devs doing well? You’ll find out in the State of Devs 2025
ECMAScript 2025 took place and you can find new features in JavaScript

Ruby and Rails News 🛤️

🆕 Brut
A new Ruby framework is rolling into town, and it’s not MVC (*gasp*). Interesting fact: it’s using the Hippocratic License. We’ve never heard of this license before in a tech context, but it has ethical principles, just like its oath counterpart. Not sure that Meta will adopt this license for React though.
✨ Brut RB, Conceptual Overview

🤏 News in Brief

The new On Rails podcast by the Rails Foundation had Rosa Gutiérrez as their first guest to discuss technical decisions behind Solid Queue
Andrea Fomera launched a beta version of RubyEnv, for a better Ruby development experience on MacOS
A new gem, ClaudeOnRails, based on ClaudeSwarm to get a swarm of specialized agents for Rails
Let’s take a deep breath and dive into JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation thanks to Abiodun Olowode in Advanced JIT compilers for Ruby: TruffleRuby and JRuby
A little throwback thanks to Cassey Lottman’s article: Frontend Assets in Ruby on Rails Through the Years (warning: some frustration might resurface)
Speaking of assets, here is From Rails to JavaScript: A spectrum of integration options by Valerie Burzynski
Another throwback article: RailsConf Nostalgia: Remembering ActiveResource by Mary Lee
Tess Griffin recaps the last RailsConf and her love for Dungeons & Dragons, which this editor approves
Le Wagon created a new bootcamp dedicated to AI: Build the future:
AI Software Development bootcamp

Rails Tip 💎

Contextual validation with :except_on

In Rails 8 you can now ignore a validation in one or multiple contexts, using :except_on.

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates :birthday, presence: { except_on: :admin }
end

user = User.new(name: "Ada")
user.save(context: :admin) # 👌 No validation error on :birthday

✅ Compatible with :on to apply only in some contexts.

🎉 Very useful for adapting business rules according to usage contexts (API, admin, workflow, etc.).

✨ See Rails 8 changelog

On the Web 🕸️

🤖 The Terminator Will Never Stop
The book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI has gotten a lot of attention since its release in May. Its author warns of the dangers of generative AI due to the power of companies that develop it, and the impact that they have on the planet or in their negotiation with countries.
✨ OpenAI is a private EMPIRE that DESTROYS the planet and democracy: interview with Karen Hao - Karen Hao
(Note: the interview is in English despite the French thumbnail and title)

💬 Let’s Discuss
Prior to the launch of a second edition, the first edition of the book Conversational Design is available as a free download. According to its author, better interfaces require better conversations to understand the users’ needs and vocabulary. All of this starts with thoughts written down, rather than through images.
✨ Conversational Design - Erika Hall

🤏 News in Brief

An article that starts innocently by asking how to organize books in libraries, which leads to presenting an algorithm and how it works. It’s a good introduction for our readers that aren’t developers, and it’s of course interesting for everyone else.
✨ An Algorithm for a Better Bookshelf - Erica Klarreich
A 30-year throwback on why Website Builders didn’t take off, and why they’re still not widely used today.
✨ Why visual website builders didn't take off - Salma Alam-Naylor

Some Code 💻

🎛️ Taking Responsibilities
An example of how a developer integrated AI in their workflow: first as a learning tool, then as a consultant, finally as an employee thanks to orchestration. There’s also a case study as a concrete example.
✨ From Executor to Orchestrator: My Journey Building with AI Agents - Kechie Anyanwu

❤️ It Doesn’t Have to Be One or the Other
Speed vs technical debt. The author—who started her career as a QA engineer—offers to move past this binary vision so that quality becomes everyone’s responsibility. This is done by building processes that allow teams to make conscious decisions.
✨ 4 ways to ship smarter, not just faster - Ana Filipa Silva

💻 Making a Comfy Nest Out of Your Terminal
After getting frustrated by VSCode lagging with vim, and trying out nvim, the author now uses tmux with a few tweaks to make it work for them. But they’re thinking of moving to kitty, and we might join them since we follow mascot-driven development.

✨ how i use my terminal - Jynn Nelson

🤏 News in Brief

We’ve already featured Nadia Odunayo who develops The StoryGraph, a solid alternative to Goodreads (if these two names don’t ring a bell they’re apps that let you keep track of your readings for these ancient artifacts called books). We had missed her bi-weekly development diary though, so we’re sharing it now.
✨ The one-woman dev team diaries - Nadia Odunayo
Same here, a podcast that we’d completely missed, but that has a new guest every month and discusses a wide array of topics.
✨ Women In Tech Podcasts - Hosted by Eva Lettner
A little bit of system design doesn’t hurt (except when it’s a mandatory step in an interview process that already had 5 steps, thanks).
✨ Building a Billing Usage Recovery System - Kaavya Antony
Following Kechie Anyanwu’s article presented above, another example of working with coding agents.
✨ Autonomous coding agents: A Codex example - Birgitta Böckeler
We’re not sure if we talked about the popover API for HTML, but you can learn more about it in this article.
✨ What is popover=hint? - Una Kravets
A few videos from Moar Serverless 2025:

Fun 🎉

👾 How Does This Actually Work?
We always like articles that delve into old hardware. The Game Boy is positively retro now and it up brings delightful childhood memories like summer road trips spending hours catching Pokémon in the back of the car.
✨ More than you wanted to know about how Game Boy cartridges work - Allison Parrish

🐈 A Suffering Simulator
Okay we might be exaggerating but this game 1) has an email inbox interface; 2) has you start as a newly-hired Chief Data Officer and you have to make decisions that have an impact on budget, quality of data, company profit and reputation. Not stressful at all then!
✨ Who's the best CDO? - Charlotte Ledoux

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Editors: Camille and Juliette
English version: Jade

Women On Rails Newsletter - International Version

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