--- title: "Tenderlove's Ruby powered Ruby JIT" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 571 published_at: "2021-09-23" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/571" --- Plus producing e-books with Ruby, a new book from Jemma, and a big JRuby release. | #​571 — September 23, 2021 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/571) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/ej2qarpsgbp4xiww8hta.jpg)](https://nts.strzibny.name/ruby-for-ebook-publishing/) [Using Ruby for Ebook Publishing](https://nts.strzibny.name/ruby-for-ebook-publishing/) — The author of _Deployment from Scratch_ enumerates how he uses Ruby in the publishing process, including PDF (and PDF preview) generation, text manipulation, image preview, and more. I'm always a fan of using Ruby as glue in non-Web scenarios like this! Josef Strzibny [TenderJIT: A JIT for Ruby, Written in Ruby](https://github.com/tenderlove/tenderjit) — An interesting project being worked on by esteemed Ruby and Rails core team member Aaron ‘tenderlove’ Patterson. If this sort of thing interests you, he’s running a live session on September 30 which digs into how JITs work and how to implement one, and you can [register here](https://www.hexdevs.com/open-source-thursdays/expert-sessions-with-aaron-patterson-sep-30th/). Aaron Patterson [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/b88d1e2e.png)](https://www.hookrelay.dev/?utm_source=rubyweekly) [Building a Reliable Webhook Delivery System Sucks](https://www.hookrelay.dev/?utm_source=rubyweekly) — Skip the grunt work and let Hook Relay manage all your webhooks for you. Inbound and Outbound? ✅ Automated retries plus delivery history for your users? ✅ Visualize Stripe-quality webhooks for your app, [now click here](https://www.hookrelay.dev/?utm_source=rubyweekly) to make it a reality in minutes. Hook Relay sponsor [Building a Real-Time Chat App in Rails with ActionCable and Turbo](https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/chat-app-rails-actioncable-turbo/) — A walkthrough creating users, chat rooms, and private chats using the shiniest, new tools in Rails. Abiodun Olowode (Honeybadger Development Blog) [JRuby 9.3.0.0 Released](https://www.jruby.org/2021/09/22/jruby-9-3-0-0.html) — The popular JVM-based (Java 8-17 supported, as well as OpenJDK) Ruby implementation gets a new release which is now updated to be compatible with Ruby 2.6.8 standards (in comparison, JRuby 9.2.x was/is Ruby 2.5 compatible). JRuby Core Team 📕 [Preorder for 'Ruby GC in Under Two Hours' Book](https://jemma.dev/book/) — Jemma Issroff (of _Tip of the week_ fame, amongst other things) has been writing a book on the Ruby garbage collector that is focused on loading you up with info in as short a time as possible. Mark this down and sweep it up? Jemma Issroff Jobs [Senior Software Engineer (Remote in the US)](https://grnh.se/bf97c4df4us) — Snapdocs is now a [Unicorn](https://snapdocs.com/press/snapdocs-named-to-the-2020-cb-insights-fintech-250-list-of-fastest-growing-fintech-startups/) with a $1.5B+ valuation. We’re a SaaS product disrupting the mortgage and real-estate industry. Join our growing distributed team. ROR, Go, Postgres, React, TypeScript, AWS. Snapdocs [Senior Ruby Engineers | Remote US/EMEA | Full-Time](https://orbit.love/weloveruby) — Orbit is building mission control for communities like Kubernetes and CircleCI. Join our remote team that values empathy and the occasional space pun. Orbit [Find Ruby Jobs Through 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) — Create a profile on Hired to connect with hiring managers at growing startups and Fortune 500 companies. It's free for job-seekers. Hired 📕 Articles & Tutorials [How to Reduce Memory Bloat in Ruby](https://blog.appsignal.com/2021/09/21/how-to-reduce-memory-bloat-in-ruby.html) — A handful of tips, but with more of an introduction to some of what’s going on behind the scenes in Ruby regarding memory management. Kumar Harsh ['Move Over Rake, Thor is the New King'](https://technology.doximity.com/articles/move-over-rake-thor-is-the-new-king) — Rake is the longest running and most popular task runner in the Ruby space but [Thor](https://github.com/rails/thor) presents a compelling alternative (and is reasonably long running itself). Ben Simpson [Free Index Advisor for Postgres: Get Ideal Index Recommendations](https://pganalyze.com/index-advisor?utm_source=RubyWeeklySecondary09232021) — Paste your query and schema data and the pganalyze Index Advisor recommends the ideal index that covers a specific query. pganalyze sponsor [Let's Read _Eloquent Ruby_, Chapter 4](https://dev.to/baweaver/let-s-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-4-c0m) — The latest chapter in Brandon’s walk through Russ Olsen’s _Eloquent Ruby_ covers some string methods. Brandon Weaver [Buffered IO Streams in Ruby](https://blog.thegnar.co/ruby-io-buffer) — Ruby IO may not immediately write where you are asking it to. This post looks at where data written to a stream goes and when it may or may not be committed where you would expect it to. Kevin Murphy [Use `compact_blank` to Remove Empty Strings from Arrays and Hashes](https://andycroll.com/ruby/compact_blank-remove-empty-strings-from-array-and-hash/) — A nicety in Active Support and an alternative to something like `.reject { |e| e.nil? || e&.empty? }` Andy Croll [Quick Tip: Going Cookie-Free with Rails](https://ryanfb.github.io/etc/2021/08/29/going_cookie-free_with_rails.html) — Respect your users’ privacy with this quick lambda. Ryan Baumann [Rails 7 Adds `weekday_select` and `weekday_options_for_select`](https://blog.saeloun.com/2021/09/22/rails-7-adds-weekday_options_for_select.html) — More useful new helpers for a common situation. Deepark Mahakale [Mapping Rails to Hanami](https://hanamimastery.com/episodes/8-rails-vs-hanami-mapping-frameworks) — A side-by-side look at the various abstractions of each framework, and while this definitely is Hanami-colored, the mapping is quite informative. Hanami Mastery [Teaching by Filling in Knowledge Gaps](https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/09/20/teaching-by-filling-in-knowledge-gaps/) — A good idea and something that used to really keep the blog ecosystem going at one point. Julia Evans 🛠 Code & Tools [Power Tools for Analyzing Your Heroku Logs](https://railsautoscale.com/heroku-logs-tools/) — The biggest tool here is Angle Grinder, a real-time log analysis tool that makes parsing, extracting, and aggregating bits out of your logs simple. Rails Autoscale [Taylor: An Open-Source Game Engine with Ruby Scripting](http://taylor.oequacki.com/) — Taylor is implemented in C++, but the scripting language is mRuby. Sean Earle [ActiveEventStore: Rails Event Store in a More Rails Way](https://github.com/palkan/active_event_store) — If you’ve used Rails Event Store, you know it’s great but pretty advanced. This is an effort to make using RES more like the other Active* frameworks. Vladimir Dementyev [Seamlessly Integrate Video into Your Ruby App](https://get.mux.com/2W5IIsa) Mux sponsor [RSpec Tracer: A Specs Dependency Analysis Tool](https://github.com/avmnu-sng/rspec-tracer) — Maintains a list of files used for each test which enables skipping tests in subsequent runs if none of those files change. Abhimanyu Singh [ffi-libc: Useful Ruby FFI Bindings for `libc`](https://github.com/postmodern/ffi-libc) — Bindings to the `libc` library which allow accessing certain low-level C functions that Ruby does not (e.g. `alarm(2)` and `getifaddrs(3)`). Postmodern [Ruby Packer: Pack a Ruby App into a Single Executable](https://github.com/pmq20/ruby-packer) Minqi Pan [Rambulance 2.0: Dynamically Render Error Pages or JSON Responses for Rails Apps](https://github.com/yuki24/rambulance) Yuki Nishijima 💡**Tip of the Week** ## General Delimited Input We sometimes see Ruby snippets like `%w(some strings)` or `%s(some other strings)` or `%Q(even more #{strings})`. It can be a little unclear what is happening. What's the `%` syntax? What do the different letters do? When are they uppercase or lowercase? This is usually referred to as _'general delimited input',_ although I've also heard this called _'percent syntax'._ Either way, it's a shorthand for creating strings, arrays, symbols, or regular expressions. And, as we'll see below, each different letter creates an object of a different class. With one exception, lowercase delimiters ignore interpolation, while uppercase delimiters compute interpolated values. General delimited input is used most frequently for constants which are arrays of `String`s, in codebases which prefer the syntax for multi-line strings, and for regexes. Let's take a brief tour of a handful of general delimited input syntaxes, and what they do: ### %w() or %W() - Arrays of Strings These split the arguments on space, and create arrays where each element in the array is a String - **%w()** no interpolation, so will split 'interpolated-looking' values on spaces too: ``` %w(some values #{1 + 1}) => ["some", "values", "\#{1", "+", "1}"] ``` - **%W()** with interpolation: ``` %W(some values #{1 + 1}) => ["some", "values", "2"] ``` ### %i() or %I() - Arrays of Symbols Same as above, except instead of strings, each element is a `Symbol`. - **%i()** no interpolation, so will split interpolated values on spaces too: ``` %i(some values #{1 + 1}) => [:some, :values, :"\#{1", :+, :"1}"] ``` - **%I()** with interpolation: ``` %I(some values #{1 + 1}) => [:some, :values, :"2"] ``` ### %q() or %Q() - Strings These will turn the argument into a string. - **%q()** no interpolation, so will split interpolated values on spaces too: ``` %q(some values #{1 + 1}) => "some values \#{1 + 1}" ``` - **%Q()** with interpolation: ``` %Q(some values #{1 + 1}) => "some values 2" ``` ### %s() - Symbols **%s()** no interpolation, so will split interpolated values on spaces too: ``` %s(some values #{1 + 1}) => :"some values \#{1 + 1}" ``` ### %r() - Regex **%r()** is the only exception to the capitalization / interpolation rule. `%r()` will give us a regex with interpolation: ``` %r(some values #{1 + 1}) => /some values 2/ ``` Hopefully next time you see, or need to use _general delimited input,_ you now know the appropriate delimiter to use. _Note: The characters delimiting the contents (`(` and `)` in the examples above) don't_ have _to be parentheses, but could be square brackets, braces, angle brackets, and others - but that's a tip for another day._ This week’s tip was written by [Jemma Issroff](https://twitter.com/jemmaissroff). 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