Ruby Rogues The New Era of Rails: Markdown, Offline Mode, and Smarter Dev Tools - RUBY 681
Nov 23, 2025
DHH's keynote sparks an exploration of the exciting new features in Rails 8.1, including Markdown support and offline mode. Emphasizing simplicity, the discussion tackles deployment complexities and the innovative Kamal tool. The debate between microservices and monoliths highlights Rails’ power for most applications. Charles shares insights on self-hosting and impending projects, like a SaaS platform using the latest Rails capabilities. Additionally, he dives into the potential of push notifications and structured events to enhance productivity.
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Deployment Complexity Is Often Overengineered
- Charles Maxwood argues modern deployment pipelines add unnecessary complexity compared to simple pushes like old FTP deploys.
- He finds tools like Kamal simplify deployments and could enable Heroku-like workflows without expensive PaaS vendors.
Runtime Edit To Deploy Config For Tenants
- Charles describes how he patches deploy.yaml by calling a server endpoint to add tenant domains before deploying with Kamal.
- The script edits deploy.yaml each deploy to include new subdomains and works well for his multi-tenant app.
Kamal Could Power A Heroku Alternative
- Charles envisions a Kamal-based system that provisions services (Redis, etc.) and scales servers automatically like a cheaper Heroku alternative.
- He sees value in a managed deploy tool that monitors capacity and spins up nodes for you.
