--- title: "This week's Ruby news, issue 245" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 245 published_at: "2015-05-07" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/245" --- This week's Ruby news, issue 245 This week's Ruby and Rails news[Read this e-mail on the Web](http://rubyweekly.com/issues/245) Ruby WeeklyIssue 245 — May 7, 2015 Justin Weiss[How to Speed Up ActiveRecord with A Little Tweaking](http://blog.codeship.com/speed-up-activerecord/)Reducing the amount of database work needed in an app by using caching is a great first step, but what can you do when you finally need to optimize database use? Nando Vieira[Creating Custom Minitest Reporters](http://nandovieira.com/creating-custom-minitest-reporters)One plus for RSpec is its high quality output, but you can easily write your own Minitest ‘reporters’ too to get any sort of output you want. Here’s how. RubyGems[RubyGems Passes 5 Billion Downloads; 101,000 Gems Total](https://rubygems.org/stats)The [Ruby5 Podcast](http://ruby5.envylabs.com/) noticed that RubyGems.org has passed 5 billion downloads. SemaphoreSponsored[Semaphore CI is free for open source and private projects](https://semaphoreapp.com/)Test and deploy your projects directly from GitHub or Bitbucket with zero setup, fast execution, and expert support. Join GitLab, 500px and many more organizations who have improved their productivity with Semaphore. [![Semaphore\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/d9f7c49e.png)](https://semaphoreapp.com/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) Hal Fulton[The Ruby Way's Author Looks Back at Eight Years of Ruby](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2350703)Hal Fulton, author of The Ruby Way (the [3rd edition](http://www.informit.com/store/ruby-way-solutions-and-techniques-in-ruby-programming-9780321714633) of which came out recently), reflects on some of the many changes Ruby has experienced in less than a decade. Jan Lelis[Numerous String#unpack and Array#pack Examples](http://idiosyncratic-ruby.com/4-what-the-pack.html)`String#unpack` and `Array#pack` provide handy ways to both create and parse lower level representations of data. This article-meets-cheatsheet shows off a variety of ways they can be used. Jeroen van Baarsen[How to Use Rubocop in Your Workflow to Enforce a Ruby Style Guide](https://intercityup.com/blog/integrate-rubocop-in-your-workflow.html)Rubocop is a static code analyzer for Ruby that follows a community-built Ruby style guide. This post shows how to integrate it with your development workflow. Official Rails Blog[Rails and Ruby Google Summer of Code 2015 Projects](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2015/5/2/welcome-to-gsoc-15/)Includes things like enhancements for the asset pipeline, evented file system monitoring, cookie refactoring, and improvements to [RubyBench.org](http://rubybench.org/). Jobs - [Senior Ruby Engineers at Bugcrowd (San Francisco, CA)](https://angel.co/bugcrowd/jobs/33735-ruby-on-rails-developers?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email)We are looking for senior Ruby engineers to join our highly technical team who are well versed in both building and breaking highly secure software systems. If you've worked on technical or development services we'd love to talk. Bugcrowd - [Full Stack Developer at AlphaSights (New York, NY)](http://engineering.alphasights.com/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email)Write high quality and maintainable code. Be trusted to act autonomously and influence process/workflows, product direction, and technology choices. Work in a project team with two-week iterations. AlphaSights - [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 Ruby developer. See if you have what it takes. TopTal In brief - [Want to share your Ruby knowledge with a global audience? Apply today.](http://www.pluralsight.com/teach?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) news Actively seeking Ruby experts to join our tight knit family of passionate teachers and earn royalties. PluralsightSponsored - [Testing Async Emails, The Rails 4.2+ Way](https://blog.engineyard.com/2015/testing-async-emails-rails-42?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Rails 4.2+ makes it easy to send emails asynchronously but how can you reliably test it’s all working? Engine Yard - [Setting up Atom for Rails Development](http://www.developingandrails.com/2015/04/setting-up-atom-for-rails-development.html?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Miguel Parramón Teixidó - [How to Store Emoji in A Rails App with A MySQL Database](https://blog.arkency.com/2015/05/how-to-store-emoji-in-a-rails-app-with-a-mysql-database/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Leans on the ‘utf8mb4’ character set in MySQL 5.5.3+. Arkency Blog - [Metaprogramming Dynamic Methods: Using public_send](http://vaidehijoshi.github.io/blog/2015/05/05/metaprogramming-dynamic-methods-using-public-send/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Vaidehi Joshi - [Weird Ruby Part 4: Code Pods (Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas)](https://blog.newrelic.com/2015/04/30/weird-ruby-part-4-code-pods/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial A look at closures in Ruby, why you’d want to use them, when, and what type suits which situation. Jonan Scheffler - [Building An Event Sourced Application using rails_event_store](http://blog.arkency.com/2015/05/building-an-event-sourced-application-using-rails-event-store/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Mirosław Pragłowski - [Speed up Rails with Nginx’s Reverse Proxy Cache](https://mattbrictson.com/nginx-reverse-proxy-cache?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Matt Brictson - [Mocking With RSpec: Doubles and Expectations](https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/mocking-with-rspec-doubles-and-expectations?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Marko Anastasov - [Working with the Postgres JSON Column Type in Rails 4](http://blog.chadwilken.com/json-with-postgres-in-rails/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) tutorial Chad Wilken - [Opbeat = Ops for developers](https://opbeat.com/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=rubyweekly100&campaign=rubyweekly) tools We'll show you the code that is breaking, who wrote it, and how it is affecting performance. [Ruby Weekly readers get $100 credit.](https://opbeat.com/?utm_source=rubyweekly=ad=rubyweekly100=rubyweekly) OpbeatSponsored - [How Much Testing Is Too Much?](http://www.justinweiss.com/blog/2015/05/04/how-much-testing-is-too-much/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) opinion Justin Weiss - [RSpec Matcher for Checking Whether A Class Inherits From Another](https://github.com/fny/rspec-inherit_from_matcher?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Faraz Yashar - [pluck_to_hash: Extend ActiveRecord's #pluck to Return a Hash](https://github.com/girishso/pluck_to_hash?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email) code Girish Sonawane Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/peterc) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict), and published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). Send feedback by simply replying to this mail. Want to sponsor an issue? See our [media kit.](https://cooperpress.com/mediakit) Want to post a job? 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