---
title: "This week's Ruby news, issue 239"
publication: "Ruby Weekly"
issue: 239
published_at: "2015-03-26"
canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/239"
---

This week's Ruby news, issue 239

This week's Ruby and Rails news[Read this e-mail on the Web](http://rubyweekly.com/issues/239)

Ruby WeeklyIssue 239 — March 26, 2015

Henry Chinner[How to Implement A Simple Neural Network in Ruby](http://www.rubylab.io/2015/03/18/simple-neural-network-implenentation-in-ruby/)A tutorial on creating a simple feed-forward neural network that can classify hand written digits. Focuses on implementation rather than theory.


Jamis Buck[Playing with Constants, Methods, and Superclasses](http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2015/3/24/playing-with-constants-methods-and-superclasses.html)Beautifully described as ‘a few curious Rubyisms of dubious use, which may yet be worth knowing about’ by a very long-time Rubyist.


Jeroen van Baarsen[Upcoming Changes in Rails 5.0](https://intercityup.com/blog/upcoming-changes-in-rails-5-0.html)It’s not only RailsConf that’s around the corner, Rails 5.0 is too. Jeroen recaps a few of the things we should expect.


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Riding Rails[Rails 4.2.1 and 4.1.10 Released](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2015/3/19/Rails-4-2-1-and-4-1-10-have-been-released/)After four release candidates, so you should be safe to go!


The Hybrid Group[Artoo: A Ruby Framework for Robotics & Physical Computing](http://artoo.io/)Playing with robots isn’t just for Node developers. Artoo is a modern robotics framework with support for 15 different platforms.


Will Jessup[How to Write A Template Engine in 30 Lines of Code](http://bits.citrusbyte.com/how-to-write-a-template-library/)Something you need to do at least once in your life.


Nick Gauthier[Using Docker to Parallelize Rails Tests](http://blog.codeship.com/using-docker-to-parallelize-rails-tests/)Docker provides a way to ‘containerize’ services, but you can also use it for testing a Rails app within a consistent, predictable environment (ideal for parallel testing).


Jobs

- [Senior Full-Stack Engineer using Ruby on Rails (Technical Lead) at Babbel](https://babbel.workable.com/jobs/7252?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email)With up to 120,000 downloads per day and more than 8,000 hours of language learning content, Babbel the market leading online-learning app, is looking for a full-stack Ruby engineer. Babbel (Lesson Nine GmbH)
- [Senior Rails Developer (f/m) at Drooms GmbH](https://recruitingapp-5120.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/163/Description/2?customer=5120)We are looking for excellent developers with deep domain knowledge, plenty of hands-on experience, a "just do it" attitude, and a passion for building awesome stuff and a desire to disrupt industries. We like to work with flat hierarchies and a great sense of teamwork. Drooms GmbH
- [Freelance with Companies like Airbnb, IDEO JPMorgan](http://www.toptal.com/developers?utm_source=ruby_weekly&utm_medium=cpm-newsletter&utm_campaign=ruby_weekly_job)Work on special projects with great companies through Toptal. Set your weekly/hourly rate, and work from anywhere in the world as an elite HTML5 developer. See if you have what it takes. TopTal

In brief

- [Help Fund Rails Girls Summer of Code 2014](http://railsgirlssummerofcode.org/campaign/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news 
Rails Girls Summer of Code is again offering three month scholarships to programming newcomers. Rails Girls
- [Ruby Together Now Sponsoring RubyBench](https://rubytogether.org/news/2015-03-21-sponsoring-rubybench?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news Ruby Together
- [The Minitest Cookbook](http://chriskottom.com/minitestcookbook/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news 
A (paid) ebook that provides the most complete guide to Minitest (as now supplied in the Ruby standard library) I’ve seen so far. Chris Kottom
- [Building a Stateless Rails API with React and Twitter OAuth](http://fredguest.com/2015/03/06/building-a-stateless-rails-api-with-react-and-twitter-oauth/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Fred Guest
- [Reverse Engineering Regular Expressions](http://tom-lord.weebly.com/blog/reverse-engineering-regular-expressions?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Tom Lord
- [Tips When Building an API using Rails](https://blog.jalada.co.uk/tips-when-writing-an-api-in-ruby-on-rails/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial David Somers
- [Ruby Timeout: How Does It Even Work?](http://flushentitypacket.github.io/ruby/2015/02/21/ruby-timeout-how-does-it-even-work.html?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Ronald Hong
- [Finding Things in Ruby's ObjectSpace](http://alanwsmith.com/finding-things-in-rubys-objectspace?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Alan W. Smith
- [Getting Started with RSpec](https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/getting-started-with-rspec?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Marko Anastasov
- [Implementing State Machines in Ruby](http://vaidehijoshi.github.io/blog/2015/03/24/a-machine-state-of-mind-part-2-implementing-state-machines/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Vaidehi Joshi
- [A Look at Ruby Introspection and Metaprogramming](http://www.leighhalliday.com/ruby-introspection-metaprogramming?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Leigh Halliday
- [A Video Summary of Bath Ruby Conference 2015](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em49QAJF-7Q) video YouTube
- [The Recipe for The Worlds Largest Rails Monolith](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naTRzjHaIhE) video Ruby On Ales 2015
- [Using automated testing? Coveralls helps you deliver better code](https://coveralls.io/?utm_source=cooperpress%20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=ruby&utm_campaign=2015) tools 
Line-by-line coverage reports stats help spot gaps where bugs hide. Get notified when coverage changes. Free for open-source. CoverallsSponsored
- [capistrano-db_sync: Fast and Sophisticated Remote Postgres Import in Ruby](https://github.com/rafaelsales/capistrano-db_sync?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tools Rafael Sales
- [Production-ready Redis for Ruby apps with top-tier support, analytics, and Resque integration](http://www.redisgreen.net/docs.html?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=perf1) tools 
Thousands of apps use RedisGreen to get the best support, analytics, performance and uptime for their Redis servers. Find out what a difference a well-managed in-memory datastore makes. RedisGreenSponsored
- [Ruby in Production: Lessons Learned](https://medium.com/@rdsubhas/ruby-in-production-lessons-learned-36d7ab726d99?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) opinion Medium
- [A List of Ideas for Improving Ruby during the Google Summer of Code](https://github.com/rubygsoc/rubygsoc/wiki/Ideas-List?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) opinion Ruby Google Summer of Code
- [Ruby Natural Language Processing Resources](https://github.com/diasks2/ruby-nlp?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code 
A collection of links to NLP libraries, tools and software. Kevin Dias
- [Ruby Object Mapper 0.6.0 Released](http://rom-rb.org/blog/2015/03/23/rom-0-6-0-released/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Piotr Solnica
- [vim-monster: Ruby Code Completion for Vim](https://github.com/osyo-manga/vim-monster?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code osyo-manga
- [OpenFastStruct: A Faster OpenStruct?](https://github.com/arturoherrero/ofstruct?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code 
Allows the simple definition of arbitrary attributes on an object but claims to benchmark 4x faster than OpenStruct. Arturo Herrero
- [Boolean2: A Ruby Constant That Is An Ancestor of true and false](https://github.com/janlelis/boolean2?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Jan Lelis
- [DeviceDetector: Fast User Agent Parser and Device Detector](https://github.com/podigee/device_detector?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code 
Parse user agent strings and detect the browser, operating system, device used, brand and model. Podigee

Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/peterc) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict), and published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/).
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