--- title: "How Rails gets made" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 552 published_at: "2021-05-13" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/552" --- Plus the history of RSpec, a dive into Ruby object IDs, and Glenn flips out. | #​552 — May 13, 2021 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/552) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/doih9bpccbxlfrrxjhia.jpg)](https://www.stevenrbaker.com/tech/history-of-rspec.html) [The History of RSpec](https://www.stevenrbaker.com/tech/history-of-rspec.html) — The story of RSpec’s emergence is one of the most organic developments we’ve ever read. Steven is full of gratitude (along with some regrets) about his contribution and how the community ran with it. Steven R. Baker [The Room Where It Happens: How Rails Gets Made](https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-how-rails-gets-made/) — Richard is a Rails committer (not core member) writing about his observations of how Rails gets made along with his observations on current events in an effort to add to the conversation about the framework’s future (see [last week’s issue](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/551) for more on said events). Richard Schneeman [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/c9ee5431.png)](https://www.cloud66.com/rails/?utm_source=-&utm_medium=-&utm_campaign=RubyWeekly-21-q2-1) [Deploy Rails Apps with Cloud 66](https://www.cloud66.com/rails/?utm_source=-&utm_medium=-&utm_campaign=RubyWeekly-21-q2-1) — Deploy and manage your Ruby on Rails applications to any cloud or server. From code to production in minutes. Build great web applications faster, and let us take care of your infrastructure. 4-week free trial + extra $100 free credits with the code:`Ruby-Weekly!` Cloud 66 sponsor [Spelunking Ruby Gems](https://ideas.bywetransfer.com/story/spelunking-ruby-gems) — An “old school” (meaning using `puts` and `raise`!) debugging effort through AWS gems that helped WeTranfer remove some unnecessary HTTP requests and gain a nice performance boost. Fabio Perrella [Rails Feature Flags: Now So Flippin' Easy You Won't Believe It](https://www.johnnunemaker.com/rails-feature-flags/) — Flipper 0.21 is out and has a ton of flippin’ new conventions to make using feature flags with Flipper and FlipperCloud very, very easy. You’re going to flip! (_Editor: That’s enough flipping now, Glenn.._ 😆) John Nunemaker **QUICK BITS:** - Ruby 3.1 is adding [Array#intersect?](https://bigbinary.com/blog/ruby-3-1-adds-array-intersect) as a quick way to tell if two arrays have any elements in common. - In Jemma Issroff's latest look at Ruby's garbage collector, she's [dug into object IDs.](https://jemma.dev/blog/gc-object-id) She also covered [compaction](https://jemma.dev/blog/gc-compaction) if you missed that one. - Gift Egwuenu has put together the latest monthly [update on the RubyGems project](https://blog.rubygems.org/2021/05/11/april-rubygems-update.html). - Jason Swett has put together [a list of Rubyists to follow on Twitter](https://www.codewithjason.com/rubyists-follow-twitter/). 📘 Articles & Tutorials [The Five Rules of Simple RSpec Tests](https://solnic.codes/2021/05/11/the-5-rules-of-simple-rspec-tests/) — _“The 5 “rules” I try to follow in order to write simple RSpec tests.”_ Having worked on over 100 libraries, Piotr knows his stuff. Piotr Solnica [Some Useful Active Support Features You May Not Have Heard Of](https://kukicola.io/posts/useful-active-support-features-you-may-not-have-heard-of/) — A look into some of the things ActiveSupport offers, such as callbacks, configuration, thread current attributes, and encryption. Karol Bąk [A Semantic 'Blind Spot' in `case`?](https://blog.arkency.com/semantic-blind-spot-in-ruby-case-statement/) — The `mutant` gem finds a gap in coverage where other gems did not. I’m not entirely convinced better covered equals better code in this case though. PAWEŁ PACANA [Monitor and Understand the Architecture Around Your Ruby Apps](https://epsagon.com/try-epsagon-today/?utm_source=advertisement&utm_medium=cooperpress&utm_campaign=rubyweekly) — Epsagon helps correlate metrics, logs, and traces for Ruby apps and troubleshoot effectively using payload information. Epsagon sponsor [Using Sinatra to Mock Shopify API Calls in Rails Test Suites](https://nextlinklabs.com/insights/using-sinatra-to-mock-3rd-party-apis-inside-a-rails-test-suite) — Inspired by another gem `fake_stripe`, NextLink improved the consistency and execution time of their test suite with a simple Sinatra app. Colin Soleim [How to Build a Read Model with Rails Event Store Projection](https://blog.arkency.com/how-to-build-a-read-model-with-rails-event-store-projection/) — Support calculation-intensive reports with a denormalized approach that builds the calculations progressively based on events. SZYMON FIEDLER [Throttling Database Load with Vitess](https://kirshatrov.com/2021/05/02/vitess-throttling/) — Vitess helps scale large clusters of open-source databases (MySQL and MariaDB, rn) and they recently added throttling support, which Kir shows us how to use here, along with a Ruby program to test it out. Kir Shatrov [Start With High-Level Tests](https://www.tomdalling.com/blog/mentoring/start-with-high-level-tests/) — A quick primer on how to TDD by starting big and working toward the edges. Tom Dalling [Three Ways To Avoid Duplicate Sidekiq Jobs](https://blog.appsignal.com/2021/05/12/three-ways-to-avoid-duplicate-sidekiq-jobs.html) Nikola Đuza [Top Ten `git` Tips and Tricks](https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/git-tricks/) Julie Kent Jobs [Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer (Remote)](https://nebulab.com/careers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rw) — Join our distributed team and build high-volume eCommerce applications in a workplace made by developers for developers. Nebulab [Sr. Ruby Engineer at Propelor (EST Time Zones, Remote)](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2255010679/) — Interested in Fintech? Join our core team building the AI that will level the playing field for self-directed investors. Propelor [Find Ruby Jobs with Hired](https://hired.com/join/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_campaign=%28b2c%29%28l-all%29%28r-all%29%28cooper-rubyweekly%29&utm_content=find-your-next-job) — Take 5 minutes to build your free profile & start getting interviews for your next job. Companies on Hired are actively hiring right now. Hired 🛠 Code and Tools [RQRCode 2.0: A Ruby Library for Generating QR Codes](https://github.com/whomwah/rqrcode) — It lets you choose a size, set an error correction level, and can output as SVG, PNG, or even ASCII. Curiously my phone couldn’t scan the ASCII version until I gsubbed the ‘x’s to ‘O’s :-) Duncan Robertson [active_period: Smart-Period Aims to Simplify Time-Range Manipulation](https://github.com/billaul/active_period) — This has some handy time range (to the day) syntactic sugar enabling the checking if a date is in a range, creation of unbounded date ranges, or counting days in a range. billaul [Enforce Code Standards Automatically with Lightweight Static Analysis](https://semgrep.dev/?r=cr) Semgrep sponsor [Sinew 3.0: A DSL for Structured Web Crawling](https://github.com/gurgeous/sinew) — Has a built-in caching system and, as of this week’s release, uses Faraday. Adam Doppelt [factory_bot 6.2: A Library for Setting Up Ruby Objects as Test Data](https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_bot) thoughtbot, inc. [Derailed Benchmarks 2.1.0: Benchmarks for Your Whole Rails App](https://github.com/schneems/derailed_benchmarks) — _“A series of things you can use to benchmark a Rails or Ruby app.”_ Richard Schneeman Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/peterc), [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict) and [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email address](https://rubyweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or[Stop getting this newsletter](https://rubyweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom