Ruby Rogues

AI agents are no longer just tools we manually wire together—they’re starting to build themselves. In this episode of Ruby Rogues, I caught up with Valentino Stoll to explore a fascinating idea: autogenetic (self-generating) AI agents and what they mean for how we write software in Ruby. We dig into Valentino’s experimental Ruby gem, agentic, and talk about plan-and-execute workflows, self-assembl...

In this solo episode, I sit down to unpack my thoughts on DHH’s RailsWorld keynote and what it means for those of us building modern Rails apps. There’s a lot to love about Rails right now — from the push toward simplicity and reducing needless complexity to powerful new features landing in Rails 8.1 like Markdown rendering, offline mode, structured events, push notifications, and more. I also div...

In this solo episode, I open up about what’s been going on behind the scenes with Ruby Rogues and why you’ve been hearing more solo shows from me lately. Between new full-time work, family life, and shifting schedules among the panelists, it’s been a wild stretch — but I’m committed to keeping the show coming to you every week. From there, I dive into something that’s been on my mind for a while n...

In this solo episode of Ruby Rogues, I’m unpacking one of the biggest stories in the Ruby world right now: the tension between Ruby Central and core RubyGems contributors. I share what I’ve learned from talking to people across the community and why this issue is more complex than it looks on social media. From the origins of Bundler and Ruby Together to the recent creation of gem.coop, I trace ho...

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, I sit down with Mike McQuaid, lead maintainer of Homebrew, to talk all about building and distributing CLIs. We dig into the practical steps for turning small scripts into reliable command-line tools, why Ruby is a great starting point, and when you might want to reach for Go or Rust instead. We also explore the challenges of distributing CLIs across macOS, Linux, a...

Hey everyone, Charles Max Wood here! It’s great to be back behind the mic with Ayush Nawatia for another episode of Ruby Rogues. This time, we’re diving into the fascinating world of Ruby community resources with two amazing guests: Adrien Poly and Marco Roth. They’re the creators behind RubyEvents.org , an ambitious project that’s aiming to centralize and modernize access to Ruby-related videos,...

In this episode, we had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Carmine Paolino — an AI innovator, Ruby enthusiast, and all-around tech wizard. From his early days automating PC games at age five to building cutting-edge AI tools in Berlin, Carmine’s journey is as inspiring as it is impressive. We dove deep into his latest creation: RubyLLM, a Ruby gem that simplifies working with large languag...

Hey folks, in this week’s episode, I sat down with the incredible Ridhwana Khan — a South African technical writer for the Rails Foundation and lead engineer at Circle. We had a fantastic chat about all things Ruby on Rails, but especially the underappreciated art (and science!) of writing documentation. Ridhwana took us behind the scenes of the official Rails Guides — how they’re updated, expande...

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, Charles Max Wood and Ayush Nwatia welcome back guest Stephen Margheim to dive deeper into the evolving world of SQLite. Stephen explains that with Rails 8, SQLite has reached a major milestone: it now supports a fully production-ready, server-driven web application experience with no compromises. He walks us through the big improvements, like better transaction hand...

In this episode, we dove into a topic that’s been on our minds — how to navigate change with purpose instead of fear. Whether it's personal transformation, career pivots, or unexpected life shifts, we talked about what it takes to stay grounded and aligned during times of transition. We opened up about our own experiences with change — the messy middle, the doubts, the resistance — and how we’ve l...

In this episode of the Ruby Rogues podcast, we dive deep into the world of Hotwire Native with our special guest, Joe Masilotti. Hosted by Charles Max Wood, along with panelist Ayush Nwatiya, we explore the evolution from Turbo Native to Hotwire Native and the exciting new features and improvements that come with this transition. Joe shares insights from his journey of writing "The Rails and Hotwi...

In this episode of Top End Devs, we dive deep into the realm of security within the Rails ecosystem with our guest, Greg Molnar. Known for his expertise in this field, Greg joins our panelists Valentino Stoll and host Charles Max Wood to unravel the intricacies of security measures and updates in Rails 8 and 7.2. From exploring built-in features like rate limiting, authentication generators, and p...

Welcome back to another episode of the Top End Devs podcast! Today, we have an exciting lineup featuring our host Charles Max Wood and special guests Robbie Russell from Planet Argon, along with panelists Ayush Nawatia and Valentino Stoll. This episode dives deep into the insights from the latest Ruby community survey conducted by Robbie Russell. We explore topics such as the rise of Stimulus JS i...

In this episode of Top End Devs, host David Camira is joined by panelists Luke Stutters and John Epperson, along with special guest Jesse Spivak, a senior engineer at Ibotta. Jesse shares his experiences and insights from a challenging project at Ibotta, where he navigated through four critical mistakes. These included choosing the wrong technology, siloing work, falling into premature optimizatio...

Ivan Nemytchenko is a freelancer. He's a speaker and conference organizer. Ivan spoke at RailsConf about abstract object-oriented programming ideas and how they can be expressed with pictures. The discussion goes into learning processes and how to create visual representations that help people understand Ruby, Rails, or other concepts. Links Chernoff Faces dmikhr/DudeGL  - "Anthropomorphic UML": v...

Kyle d'Oliveira (Clio) shares his survival tips for dealing with tens of thousands of commits, massive migrations and the very limits of databases. We discuss the lessons learned from Rails megaprojects and how to use these tips in your own projects to reduce technical debt and tools to keep your monolith majestic when the code won't stop coming. Links GitHub's Online Schema Migrations for MySQL G...

In this episode, Charles and Valentino dive into the complexities of software design decisions with the esteemed guest, Uncle Bob Martin. They explore the pivotal question: How do you evaluate frameworks and dependencies in your projects? Uncle Bob shares his seasoned perspective on choosing frameworks based on an application's long-term goals and complexity, emphasizing the importance of thoughtf...

Different doesn’t need to be worse. Dmitry Tsepelev tells us how to make the most of using GraphQL with Rails, the advantages over REST-based API queries and best practices for security and schemas. Links https://github.com/anycable/anycable https://graphql-ruby.org/ https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/persisted-queries-in-graphql-slim-down-apollo-requests-to-your-ruby-application https://evilmart...

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, we talk with Ufuk about how Shopify made the transition to using Sorbet and about the benefits they felt they received from implementing it. Ufuk also reveals a little bit about how Shopify transitioned to fully remote and about how that will be the default moving forward. Picks   Luke -  https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf John - Walmart Grocery Pickup Dave -  https://...

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, Chelsea Troy teaches us to hone our debugging skills to a razor-sharp edge. We learn how to actively improve debugging skills, train troubleshooting instincts and practical strategies for tackling brain-bending bugs. Sponsors Mailtrap Links https://chelseatroy.com/2020/01/13/a-framework-for-debugging/ Picks Luke -  https://rclone.org/ John -  Large Mouse Pads John -...

This week, our host Charles Max Wood sits down with co-host Valentino Stoll to dive deep into the cutting-edge tools and strategies in AI development and integration. Valentino shares his go-to resources, including Langchain and Rails plug-ins like RAIX and Ray, to enhance applications with AI. They discuss the nuances of agent-based systems, Justin Bowen’s frameworks, and AI engines from industry...

In today's episode, they dive deep into the fascinating intersections of system security, rapid development, and the human factors that influence them, with our esteemed guest Emil Kampp. Emil, a seasoned expert in critical infrastructure and fintech, shares his experiences and strategies for using Ruby on Rails to achieve unparalleled speed and robust testing in development. They explore the nuan...

Today, they delve deep into the world of application deployment with our special guest, Josef Stribny, a freelance software engineer and author of "Deployment from Scratch" and "Kamal Handbook". Joined by the insightful panelists, Valentino and Ayush, they explore the intricacies of deploying applications using Kamal, a minimalistic deployment tool inspired by Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeie...

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, guest Jonathan Reinink joins the Rogues to talk about what Inertia.js is and why Rails developers would want to use it. Links https://inertiajs.com https://reinink.ca/articles/introducing-inertia-js https://reinink.ca/articles/getting-started-with-inertia-js https://remoteruby.transistor.fm/66 https://www.fullstackradio.com/episodes/127 Picks Luke -  The Kubernetes...

 In today's episode, they dive deep into the world of AI, technology, and Ruby on Rails with our special guest, Gustavo Valenzuela. Charles and Valentino unpack everything from community-driven insights and AI advancements to the fascinating board game "Star Realms." They explore Gustavo’s journey, his innovative platform "Startups on Rails," and how it aims to document companies powered by Ruby o...