Remote Ruby

On this episode of Remote Ruby, we have an awesome guest joining us. Today, we have Ken Collins, who’s a Principal Engineer and Cloud Architect at Custom Ink, an active member in the Ruby community for over fifteen years, a Microsoft open source contributor, PC Gamer, and an AWS Serverless Hero. We have so much to discuss today, as Ken fills us in on Lamby, Custom Ink, how Lambda evolved, a gem called Lambdakiq, and if you’re looking for cost optimization, why Lambda is the best compute service out there. We’ll also learn how CloudFormation can help developers, how CloudWatch Events is used, and we’ll hear about the different database options Amazon has such as Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB, and RDS. If you’ve never used Lambda, it’s a good time to try it out. Andrew realized he’s in the perfect place to try it since he recently built a proxy one. Download this episode to learn much more! [00:01:52] Ken tells us about himself and his background[00:04:47] Custom Ink makes some great products, and we’ll learn how Lamby came to be, the stuff they build, the cool tech behind it, and the services, such as AWS Lambda.[00:08:16] How did Lambda evolve?[00:09:17] Ken details what the OCI format is, and how Lambda works compared to deploying to a traditional server. We hear about Lambda releasing Function URLs, a free API gateway, and what it does.[00:12:16] We hear the whole process from end-to-end, starting from a web request, what happens, how it gets to Rails, Dynos are running, the database gets affected, and how those containers can be used for other things like an event driven architectures.[00:16:03] Chris asks Ken how Kubernetes and Lambda compare. Also, we hear how background jobs and cron jobs fit in, and a gem that Ken wrote called, Lambdakiq.[00:20:30] How does Ken manage connections being made and the events being sent to the right place? Also, Chris wonders if CloudFormation is something you should learn as one of the starting points or you should later for it to be more useful, and Ken tells us about the AWS Cloud Development Kit and what it does.[00:24:10] Amazon has many different database options and Ken explains that you can use any database you want, wherever you want.[00:25:39] Ken explains the differences between Aurora Serverless, DynamoDB, and RDS.   [00:30:23] We’re going back to talking about Lambda now and Ken tells us about their website, a documentation website where they cover things, and a Quick Start Guide on how you can deploy a new Rails APP on Rails 3.2 to Lambda in 5 minutes.[00:33:02] Chris mentions how Taylor Otwell modified Laravel to run on Lambda, and Vapor is their tool for deploying to Lambda.[00:36:25] Are there any gotchas? Chris heard people were talking about Rails being slow to boot and issues with connecting to your Lambda to a VPC was slow. Ken tells us the VPC has been solved very well.[00:39:31] Ken and Chris chat about the hardest things are learning and change management, like setting up CI for the first time can be challenging, Heroku is amazing but has its limits, and using CloudWatch Logs which is a change for people. Also, Ken shares a hotspot with Lambda, and he tells us about Lambda Punch and New Relic. [00:42:47] Ken tells us to use CloudWatch Events for setting up Cronjobs that run on a schedule.[00:44:51] Chris wonders if there are concerns or ways you have to change th Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Welcome to Remote Ruby and thanks for joining us!  Today, we have the most boring guest joining us…we’re kidding of course!  Our guest is Matt Swanson, who’s the CTO at Arrows and author of Boring Rails.  He’s taking over Jason’s spot today to bring us all the “spicy takes.”  Now that we’ve got your attention, you’re probably wondering what these “spicy takes” are.  We’ll just give you a little teaser…a new tool may replace Git in the next five years and contributing to open source is terrible advice for new programmers. We’ll also find out why testing and automated tests are so important, Matt explains how they prioritize features for customers at Arrows, he highlights two open source projects for people learning Ruby and Rails, and we find out Arrows is hiring Product Engineers.   Download this episode now to hear much more![00:01:00] Chris brings up Matt’s post from two weeks ago on Action Mailer stuff that you should go read.[00:04:48] Matt has some spicy takes he wants to talk about, and he starts with the spiciest thing, and tells us about a new tool that may replace Git in the next five years.[00:10:35] It’s spicy take #2, and Andrew wants it at a Maximum level of hot. Matt tells us that contributing to open source is terrible advice for new programmers, and Andrew and Chris share their take on this. [00:17:19] Matt highlights two open source projects for people who are learning Ruby and Rails that simulate real work and they are the umbrella of the Ruby for Good project and Forem project. Chris shares a college story when he was building a Rails app, ran into a bug, and wanted to fix it.[00:21:13] Chris brings up the most common advice you see given always is, “Take it with a grain of salt.” Also, he explains why building features is the thing to focus on the most as a developer.[00:25:39] Matt explains why testing and automated tests are so important, and there’s a discussion about VIM.[00:28:54] Chris asks Matt how they prioritize features and things for customers, and what they use for custom domains.[00:37:43] Chris talks about Hatchbox, how he learned so much from building the first version and making things simple, not building team support was an issue, and switching from Vimeo to Wistia for GoRails videos, but now looking at other options.[00:44:06] Matt tells us about a feature in Arrows where they wanted people to have the ability to do embeds.  [00:46:21] Arrows is looking to hire people for that Product Engineer role so please reach out to them. [00:48:02] What does Matt mean by scrappy, not crappy, when it comes to building, and he explains something he shared from someone recently on Twitter where you can build a mini form inside of an onboarding plan.  [00:56:15] Chris brings up how they recently had Derek Sivers on as a guest where he talked about when he’s writing his Ruby code he tries to put as much logic and functions in Postgres.[00:59:24] We end with Matt teasing a few last spicy takes for a future episode that you will want to hear.[01:03:21] Find out where you can follow Matt on the web.Panelists:Chris OliverAndrew MasonGuest:Matt SwansonSponsor:Honeybadger Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:01:52] There’s a Remote Uber Eats Food Review going on here.[00:07:20] Andrew explains the new Stimulus Outlets API and what it does.[00:12:58] Jason talks about this week and dealing with isolated things that are decoupled and battling race conditions with events firing. Chris mentions it has concurrency problems and makes things much harder.   [00:16:14] Speaking of webhooks, Jason shifts gears and tells us about a Tweet from Wes Bos that ruined his morning. Also, he explains that he’s only been doing connected webhooks on Job Boardly, what he did with stripe event, and wonders if Chris encountered what he did with stripe event.[00:20:04] When Jason looked into Stripe event, he noticed you can give multiple signing secrets since there’s a separate secret for each connect and regular and we find out how it’s used.[00:22:30] In case you didn’t know, Stripe event isn’t a Stripe package, it’s a third-party gem for processing stripe webhooks and the guys explain how it works. Also, Chris talks about the friendly id history feature and Jason tells us about using routing constraints. [00:26:05] Chris feels like not enough people use the routing constraints and Jason details what routing constraints does and how he uses it with a board constraint.[00:31:48] What’s the downside to current attributes and we’ve got concurrency problems, bro! [00:34:55] Chris gives a shoutout to Carlos Antonio who’s working on fixing up Responders and Devise, which is so needed. Also, he shares one of the Jumpstart customers talking about integrating with an API that doesn’t have a Ruby gem, and Chris tells us he had a trick up his sleeve and what he did. [00:43:17] Andrew shares a pro tip of creating class methods, and we hear about a new little gem Chris started working on called, ReviseAuth, and he’s looking for contributors.Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverAndrew MasonSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterViral review of Olive Garden makes 85 year old grandma internet star (yahoo! news)Stimulus Outlets Stripe_event 2.7.0Wes Bos TweetFriendly_id 5.5.0Carlos Antonio TwitterRails adds ‘authenticate_by’ method when using ‘has_secure_password’ReviseAuthRuby Radar TwitterRuby for All Podcast Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:00:10] Jason tells the story of getting Derek on to be on this podcast, that started with Chris telling Jason about a book that he thought he should read. [00:03:32] Derek shares his story of how he got into programming. [00:06:56] Derek explains when he learned Ruby and his Rails history, which he used to rewrite CD Baby. [00:13:24] Derek gives the best analogy for what it’s like to do two years of work and then decide this isn’t working and push the work aside.[00:13:57] We find out where Ruby fits into Derek’s life, post CD Baby, what kind of things he builds with Ruby these days, and his experience in the Ruby community. [00:17:10] When Derek was first learning programming, he explains his only interest in it was to help musicians.[00:21:12] Derek has some blog posts about ways to use the database and he tells us about a RailsConf talk from 2012 with Rich Hickey on YouTube that is the single most influential talk of his life and how it completely changed the way he approaches programming. [00:28:18] Whoa! Derek tells us he doesn’t use bundle, and only uses two gems, pg, the PostgreSQL connector and Sinatra. [00:30:58] Jason wonders if code is still fun for Derek when he has to make updates or changes.[00:32:05] In one of Derek’s books, he mentions he has a database of people he interacts with so he can remember, and he tells us more about that.[00:36:11] We hear Derek’s philosophy on how he sees himself, and he explains that you give a different answer based on who you’re with. [00:42:17] Find out how Derek hosts all his stuff since he stopped using Git, where he hosts it, and how he gets the code there. Also, he tells us he wrote on his blog why he loves the OpenBSD. [00:44:37] Does Derek ever feel like the simplicity comes with, I need to do something, but now I have to build up things in order to do this complex thing? [00:49:10] Derek shares what it means to be philosophical and why he gets philosophical about programming.[00:55:17] Much of Derek’s history is as a musician, and Jason just wonders if he’s ever had the opportunity to intersect programming in music. Also, he tells us how he uses Stripe as his payment processor.[00:58:30] We end with Derek emphasizing for everyone to check out Rich Hickey’s RailsConf 2012 talk on YouTube, and if you’re a programmer, please email Derek since he LOVES talking tech. Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverGuest:Derek SiversSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterDerek Sivers TwitterDerek Sivers WebsiteDerek Sivers StoreDerek Sivers Tech Blog Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Welcome to a special episode of Remote Ruby! Today’s episode is the RubyConf Home Edition panel where we’ll be talking about all things Hanami. Jason is joined by Brittany Martin, Engineering Manager at TextUs and co-host of The Ruby on Rails Podcast, and together and they’ll take on the role of the moderators. They are also joined by a respected group of panelists. First, we have Luca Guidi, who’s the Hanami author, on dry-rb core, and Backend Architect at Toptal. Then we have Tim Riley, who’s Principal Engineer at Buildkite and a core team at Hanami, dry-rb, and rom-rb, and finally, Peter Solnica, who’s a Senior Software Engineer at Valued.app and a core team member at Hanami, dry-rb, and rom-rb. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn more! [00:02:01] We start things off with Luca, creator of Hanami, telling us where we went to get from 1.0 to 2.0, and Tim and Peter give an intro to Hanami, dry-rb, and rom-rb. [00:05:18] How did this amazing team decide what direction they were going to take and how long they wanted it to take to go from Hanami 1.0 to Hanami 2.0?[00:07:40] Luca, Tim, and Peter talk about what their roles were on the team.[00:11:59] Peter details what part of Hanami 2.0 he’s most proud of, what dry system is, and its impact on Hanami.[00:15:24] Tim and Luca share what their favorite parts/most proud features are of Hanami 2.0.   [00:19:16] How does Roda factor in the Hanami 2.0 story?[00:23:10] Now we get to hear Jason’s initial impression of Hanami 2.0 so far, and two things he’s most excited to learn about.[00:27:35] We hear Tim, Peter, and Luca’s views on where they see Hanami’s place in the ecosystem.[00:32:31] Tim tells us about an app he wrote with some friends called “Decaf Sucks.” [00:34:52] Since it’s been a couple of controversial years for Ruby on Rails, Brittany wonders if any of the panelists see any opportunities to manage Hanami differently.[00:38:35] Find out what the Hanami community currently looks like, where do the community discussions happen, and how do people find out about Hanami.[00:40:13] We learn from the panelists if Hanami has any corporate sponsorship and how do we make sure that Hanami is sustainable.   [00:43:07] Peter, Tim, and Luca share some things they’re excited about with Hanami, plans for 2.1, and what they're thinking about as far as a timeline for the release.Moderators:Brittany MartinJason CharnesPanelists:Luca GuidiTim RileyPeter SolnicaSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterBrittany Martin TwitterThe Ruby on Rails PodcastLuca Guidi TwitterLuca Guidi-Ruby SocialTim Riley-Ruby SocialTim Riley WebsitePeter Solnica TwitterPeter Solnica-R Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Welcome to Remote Ruby and thanks for joining us! It’s a full house this week as Jason, Chris, and Andrew are back together! They also have a great guest joining them, Nadia Odunayo, who’s the Founder, CEO, and Software Developer of The StoryGraph, a book tracking, and recommendations app. Nadia spoke at the Rails SaaS Conference and her talk was titled, “Getting to one million users as a one-woman dev team.” After listening to this episode, you’ll understand why she’s such an engaging speaker.  Today, Nadia shares her journey of how she got into programming and building software apps, to being the Founder of The StoryGraph.  She shares some interesting things about scaling and Elasticsearch, we’ll hear about her project Speakerline, and we’ll find out how she got into public speaking and how her approach to conference speaking is like product building. Download this episode now to learn more! [00:04:07] Nadia tells us her background, what she does, and why she created The StoryGraph app.[00:07:24] We hear a great story on how Nadia got into programming. [00:11:31] Nadia explains how she first experienced Ruby at the Code First Girls program, and at the boot camp that was Ruby and Rails focused.[00:12:19] We learn about Nadia’s journey from working at Pivotal Labs to where she is today with The StoryGraph. [00:15:38] In Nadia’s talk she mentioned “financial independence” and Andrew wonders what kind of journey she takes when she builds these kinds of software apps.[00:19:59] The StoryGraph is written in Ruby and Jason wants to know if Nadia is still happy with her decision to use Ruby all these years later. [00:22:55] Nadia shares some interesting things about scaling.[00:29:13] Find out about Nadia’s journey with Elasticsearch. [00:36:00] Dark Mode is brought up which is the most requested feature on the app and Nadia tells us that she has been working on it. Andrew of course loves it, and he tells us about using Radix colors. [00:38:18] We hear how Nadia got into public speaking, a story about meeting Sarah Mei, her project Speakerline, and she shares advice to people who think public speaking is not for them.[00:47:42] Nadia tells us her approach to conference speaking is like product building, Jason tells us his talks got better when he started bringing other people in, and Andrew highly recommends Speakerline. [00:54:00] Find out where you can follow Nadia onlinePanelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverAndrew MasonGuest:Nadia OdunayoSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterNadia Odunayo WebsiteNadia Odunayo TwitterNadia Odunayo InstagramThe StoryGraphThe StoryGraph Twitter Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:03:40] Andrew tells us a little bit about a book he read recently called, ADHD 2.0, and Chris ponders the future of baby proofing his house.  [00:08:53] Chris got ahead over the past few months and finally recorded a new Screencast that will be out very soon, he patched a bunch of things in Pay on the Braintree side and tells us about the migration that was done. [00:16:29] When Chris runs this long running task, he explains how he just made it a rake task. Also, if you’re a student, and you want to use the GitHub Student Developer Pack to get GoRails for free, Chris shares the details. [00:23:34] Andrew brings up how he’s run so many data migration tasks as rake tests and discovering the Maintenance Tasks Gem from Shopify that you should check out. Chris tells us about a FREE GoRails episode Andrea Fomera did on Maintenance Tasks that is a must to watch.  [00:30:41] If you’re a Junior, listen here… Chris explains how it would be a good practice for you to get in the habit of going through things and try to figure out how you made those decisions and how you can improve those decisions now that you know better and make that run seamlessly. [00:32:42] Andrew talks about what he struggled with when he started out and how he wanted to get better at data modeling but didn’t understand how to do it, and we hear his thoughts on what he feels is the best way to learn.[00:33:24] We learn about an upgrade Chris needs to do on GoRails.[00:41:03] Breaking news… Andrew built and deployed his first Sinatra app, and we hear what it did.[00:47:38] Chris tells us about some little apps he made a while ago and what they did. Also, with the release of Ruby 3.2.0, there is some massive speed improvement with YJIT, Regexp, and a few other things, as well as some timeout things with Regexp.Panelists:Chris OliverAndrew MasonSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterADHD 2.0 by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D.GitHub Student Developer PackMaintenance Tasks-ShopifyGoRails How to manage and run Maintenance Tasks for Rails in Production with Andrea FomeraRuby 3.2.0 ReleasedRuby Radar NewsletterRuby Radar TwitterRuby for All Podcast Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

There’s some really great stuff happening today as Jason and Chris are here, and Andrew is away traveling for the holidays. Chris announces that GoRails is getting a BIG update this coming year and we’ll hear what’s going on, they discuss sales tax stuff being a pain and using metered billing in Stripe on the new Hatchbox.  Jason’s wearing his Christmas pajamas, so you know what that means… Ruby 3.2.0 is coming out soon, and we’ll find out some of the new features. And if you’ve been wondering when we’re going to get a Docker file for Rails, well now there are two, and Chris tells us about them. Also, the RailsConf Committee is looking for applicants for RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta, so if you’re interested go sign up! Download this episode now to find out more and Happy New Year! [00:03:21] What’s been good in the past four days? Well, Chris tells us GoRails is going to get a BIG update this coming year!  He wants to move everything over to Jumpstart and the first step will be moving over all the payments code to pay.[00:10:12] Chris talks about using metered billing in Stripe on the new Hatchbox.[00:15:54] Jason had some sales tax work going on at Podia which he was happy to not be doing that right before Christmas, and Chris explains why the sales tax stuff is such a pain. [00:18:09] Jason brings up having respect for the way the VAT works in the EU with each country having a tax rate, and the guys discuss sales taxes in states, Stripe acquiring TaxJar, and health insurance. [00:23:04] Someone’s wearing their Christmas pajamas so that must mean Ruby 3.2.0 is coming out! Chris mentions a Tweet about a performance improvement for YJIT.[00:25:17] As Jason looks through the Ruby 3.2.0 stuff, the WebAssembly stuff is the biggest part of it, and the guys chat about the to-do list somebody built and the date immutable class in the new Ruby release. [00:28:44] Jason brings up a Tweet from Kyle Keesling about a new API in Rails 7.1 with Active Record. [00:34:36] The RailsConf Committee is looking for applications, so if anyone is interested in getting involved go sign up! [00:35:49] If you’ve been wondering when there will be a Docker file for Rails…good news, there are two now, and Chris tells us about them.[00:39:05] Speaking of being horrified about security things, there’s an article how Okta’s source code has been stolen after their GitHub’s repositories got hacked. Also, the guys discuss Laravel. [00:41:49] Chris and Jason have a conversation about Crystal and how it’s such a cool language.Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterRuby.wasm todo listTweet from Kyle Keesling: Here’s a great new quality of life improvement that’s coming to Rails 7.1- ActiveRecord::Base::normalizesAdd ActiveRecord::Base::normalizes #43945 Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:04:42] Jason and Andrew had an incident at work, they were bamboozled, and we find out what happened. [00:05:40] In other Ruby news, here is where the laughs begin…Andrew sent a picture to Jason declaring that an adult human hand can fit inside an eagle’s talon. Is this true?[00:07:30] We find out what did Andrew do with code this week that was so terrible, and Andrew gives us an example of something he’s had to do three times, and Chris explains his issue with physically printing a PDF to debug.  Chris mentions a previous episode with Cameron Dutro and the ttfunk gem.  [00:14:44] “Tech the Halls” is happening at Podia where they’ll make some minor improvements to the app the last two weeks of the year, and Jason tells us how he finally went back to removing Webpacker work that he started two months ago.  [00:19:26] Chris tells us what he did with Stimulus imports stuff and then made the esbuild node module.[00:21:38] Jason brings up submitting and tells us about a function they use at Podia now where they look at form validity and using CSS will disable buttons if a form is not valid.  [00:22:37] Chris was searching for the issues about the form disabled stuff and found a PR that Sean Doyle made that is really cool and he explains it. Andrew gets triggered at something Jason said about Bootstrap. [00:29:25] The guys discuss building UI components, the React community doing a good job, and Jason thinks he should give Alpine a shot to see what happens. Speaking of Ruby, as part of Tech the Halls, Jason explains they’ve started to rename some models that have changed their domain naming in the past couple of years.[00:37:09] Andrew shares his thoughts on why bundle opening a gem should be the encouraged way to debug and he highly recommends using bundle open the next time you encounter an issue, and Chris shares some advice for juniors. Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverAndrew MasonSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterDavid Attenborough WikipediaRemote Ruby Podcast-Episode 134: Kubernetes, JSX for Ruby, and more with Cameron Dutrottfunk 1.1.1Hotwired Turbo-pull request-Toggle [disabled] on form submitter #386 (Sean Doyle)Tip: Search and debug gems with ‘bundle open’ (Boring Rails)Ruby Radar NewsletterRuby Radar TwitterRuby for All Podcast Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:02:16] Jason shares a story of Chris Seaton when he was on an earlier episode of a Remote Ruby Podcast.[00:03:34] Another Hanami livestream was done by Jason that you can check out now, and he tells us how they modified a Changeset to use bcrypt to encrypt a password.[00:07:56] Chris recommends checking out Advent of Code with CJ Avilla on YouTube.  Also, the guys share thoughts on the fear of rejection and the benefits of teaching, learning, and people learning with you when you may not know all the answers. [00:10:53] Find out about the Active Record Cookbook Jason’s been working on. [00:21:31] Jason talks about putting on the finishing functionality on their Tiptap Editor and the mechanism they have to come up with.[00:24:47] Chris gives a shout out to Konnor for releasing Rhino Editor v0.0.2 and tells us what it does. [00:28:21] Chris tweeted a Hotwire thing recently and he tells us the backstory and his goal to put a turbo frame around the reply button. [00:30:18] Andrew explains doing something really cool with the custom turbo stream action and does a shout-out to his co-worker Mario for coming up with the idea, and Chris brings up the original demo of chat room that DHH released when Hotwire came out and what happened. [00:35:14] Jason announces that he got Andrea to start loving React now, and Andrew rolls his eyes because Jason is about to reveal why React is sooo good!  [00:37:02] We learn that this week Jason has written pure CSS and Andrew overwrote bootstrap classes this week.Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverAndrew MasonSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Jason Charnes TwitterChris Oliver TwitterAndrew Mason TwitterRemote Ruby Podcast-Episode 26-Joined by Chris SeatonTwitch-Hanami livestream with Jason CharnesHanami TwitterAdvent of Code with CJ Avilla-YouTubeThe Anarchist Cookbook by William PowellRhino Editor v0.0.2Ruby Radar NewsletterRuby Radar TwitterRuby for All Podcast Chris Oliver X/Twitter Andrew Mason X/Twitter Jason Charnes X/Twitter