--- title: "Notebook-style Ruby coding with Jupyter Notebooks" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 739 published_at: "2025-02-20" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/739" --- Plus Phlex 2.0, guiding LLMs to write better Rails 8 code, and more on that Ruby Game Boy emulator. | #​739 — February 20, 2025 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/739) Together with [![reinteractive\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_900,h_186/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:9/goq5p4n0bj1gcxvxkfel.png)](https://reinteractive.com/service/code-care) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ylq1rmutpjqjjco0xrfb.jpg)](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2025/02/14/ruby-3-4-2-released/) [Ruby 3.4.2 Released](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2025/02/14/ruby-3-4-2-released/) — It’s not just Christmas Day when we get new Ruby releases, it seems to have extended to Valentine’s Day too 😍 This is one of the scheduled routine updates to meet the goal of releasing a new stable Ruby update every two months and solely [fixes some bugs](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/releases/tag/v3_4_2) this time. Takashi Kokubun [The State of Security in Rails 8](https://greg.molnar.io/blog/the-state-of-security-in-rails-8/) — Greg gave [▶️ a talk about Rails security](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3DgOix0rIg) at _Rails World_ and while you _could_ just watch it, maybe you’d prefer his writeup here. Greg Molnar [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/9b6f8a0c.png)](https://reinteractive.com/service/code-care) [Seamless Rails Upgrades: Fixed Price Maintenance](https://reinteractive.com/service/code-care) — Upgrading RoR can be daunting. Outdated gems, breaking changes, & limited resources often hinder smooth transitions. We offer expert Rails maintenance at a fixed monthly price, your application remains secure, performant, minimal business disruptions. reinteractive / CodeCare sponsor **IN BRIEF:** - Gift Egwuenu shares [the latest monthly RubyGems update.](https://blog.rubygems.org/2025/02/16/january-rubygems-updates.html) Ruby Central also has [its own monthly update.](https://rubycentral.org/news/ruby-centrals-oss-changelog-february-2025/) - 🇺🇸 The [Sin City Ruby conference](https://www.sincityruby.com/) takes place this April in Las Vegas for the last time ever, but even if you can't make it, they're hosting a virtual event called [Sinful Sunday](https://www.sincityruby.com/sinful-sunday-1) on March 2nd where you can hang out with Sin City Ruby's speakers online in a moderated conversation. - 🎤 Jean Boussier went on the _Rails Changelog_ podcast to [▶️ talk about performance optimization and tuning Rails app performance.](https://www.railschangelog.com/29) [Boosting JRuby Startup with AppCDS and AOT Caching](https://blog.headius.com/2025/02/boosting-jruby-startup-with-appcds-and-aotcache.html) — JRuby’s maintainer shares the results of an ahead-of-time caching feature being previewed in JDK 24 and how it can benefit JRuby startup times. _“A huge improvement you’ll get for free”,_ he says. Charles Oliver Nutter ▶[Why to Use Jupyter Notebooks with Ruby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c5-VEx4Wgw) — There have been a few attempts at bringing ‘notebook’ style programming, commonly associated with Python, to Ruby (such as with [IRuby](https://github.com/SciRuby/iruby?tab=readme-ov-file)) but Landon does a good job of explaining the _why_ and the benefits here. Landon Gray [Camera Access with Hotwire Native](https://leonvogt.com/camera-access-with-hotwire-native) — [Hotwire Native](https://native.hotwired.dev/) is 37signals’ Rails-aligned (but _not_ Rails exclusive) framework for building native mobile apps from webapps. Leon Vogt [Honeybadger Keeps Getting Better](https://www.honeybadger.io/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2025-02-14-rubyweekly-link) — Honeybadger delivers real-time insights with performance and uptime monitoring, log management, and support for 10+ languages. [Your favorite error tracker just leveled up. →](https://www.honeybadger.io/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2025-02-14-rubyweekly-link) Honeybadger sponsor 📄 [How I Implemented a Game Boy Emulator in Ruby](https://sacckey.dev/posts/implementing-a-game-boy-emulator-in-ruby/) – We linked to [the emulator](https://sacckey.github.io/rubyboy/) last week, but just noticed they also wrote up _how_ they did it. Sacckey 📄 [Upgrading a Rails App to Tailwind CSS v4](https://hybrd.co/posts/upgrading-a-rails-app-to-tailwind-v4) – [Tailwind CSS v4.0](https://tailwindcss.com/blog/tailwindcss-v4) landed in January and is a major update to the popular styling framework. Jeremy Smith 📄 [Deep Dive Into Action Controller's Strong Parameters](https://blog.saeloun.com/2025/02/18/deep-dive-into-rails-action-controller-strong-parameters/) Prasanth Chaduvula 📄 [How a Ruby Upgrade Broke MS Edge Support in a Rails App](https://danielabaron.me/blog/ruby-upgrade-broke-ms-edge/) Daniela Baron 📄 [How Write Barriers Help Ruby's Garbage Collector](https://patshaughnessy.net/2025/2/18/write-barriers) Pat Shaughnessy 📄 [Instrumenting Thread Stalling in Ruby Apps](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/01/23/io-instrumentation.html) Jean Boussier 📄 [How Ruby Shaped DNSimple’s Growth](https://rubycentral.org/news/company-spotlight-how-ruby-shaped-dnsimples-growth/) Ruby Central 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/a2dyowfyavtims6zquul.jpg)](https://www.phlex.fun/) [Phlex 2.0: Component-Oriented Server-Side Rendered Views Library](https://www.phlex.fun/) — A way to build HTML, SVG and CSV views directly in Ruby in an object-oriented fashion with components that are simple Ruby classes. It’s pure Ruby and can be used with any Ruby framework, though [phlex-rails](https://github.com/phlex-ruby/phlex-rails) makes it particularly easy for Rails apps. [The docs](https://www.phlex.fun/introduction/) are good and communicate the idea well. Joel Drapper 🤖 [Basic Rails 8 Techniques Boiled Down for AI / LLMs](https://gist.github.com/peterc/214aab5c6d783563acbc2a9425e5e866) — I’ve been indulging in some AI powered development, largely with [Aider](https://aider.chat/) (think Cursor, but at the terminal), and have found LLMs do poorly with Rails 8-isms due to a lack of training on Rails 8 docs and content. These boiled down docs can be passed to LLMs as context (or ‘rules’ in Cursor) to steer them more in the right direction. Peter Cooper [🚀 FastRuby.io Makes Your Rails Upgrade Delightfully Boring with Bonsai](https://go.fastruby.io/upgrade-experts) — The team behind [RailsBump.org](https://RailsBump.org) offers gradual, 0-downtime upgrades — transform your engineering culture with our experts. Bonsai | Upgrade Experts sponsor [FaviconFactory: Generate Favicons from an SVG](https://github.com/3v0k4/favicon_factory) Riccardo Odone - [RuboCop Performance 1.24](https://github.com/rubocop/rubocop-performance) – Official RuboCop extension focused on code performance checks. - [Rdkafka 0.21](https://github.com/karafka/rdkafka-ruby) – Fast Kafka client library based on `librdkafka`. - [Tailwind CSS for Rails 4.1](https://github.com/rails/tailwindcss-rails/releases/tag/v4.1.0) - [RubyGems 3.6.4](https://blog.rubygems.org/2025/02/17/3.6.4-released.html) - [Passenger 6.0.26](https://blog.phusion.nl/2025/02/19/passenger-6-0-26/) - [redis-rb 5.4](https://github.com/redis/redis-rb) 📰 Classifieds 🐌 [If your Rails team needs a little boost…](https://sinaptia.dev/services/staff-augmentation/) We can augment your team with devs to help you keep up with your delivery schedule. [Test us!](https://sinaptia.dev/services/staff-augmentation/) --- 🚗 [Plate to VIN in One Call](https://api.carsxe.com/vehicle-plate-decoder?utm_source=Cooper+Press&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Cooper-press-feb-20) – The Plate Decoder API turns license plates into full vehicle data instantly. [See it work](https://api.carsxe.com/vehicle-plate-decoder?utm_source=Cooper+Press&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Cooper-press-feb-20). --- 🧑‍💻 **Need top tech talent?** [TECLA](https://www.tecla.io/network/nearshore-ruby-on-rails-developers) connects you with expert LATAM developers—bilingual, time zone-aligned, and pre-vetted for fast hiring. [Start hiring today!](https://www.tecla.io/network/nearshore-ruby-on-rails-developers) 📢 Elsewhere A quick roundup of some of other interesting updates or useful resources in the broader developer landscape: - The main browser vendors have a program for aligning on implementing new Web platform features in concert called _Interop._ [The priorities for Interop 2025 have been revealed,](https://webkit.org/blog/16458/announcing-interop-2025/) giving us a glimpse of what most mainstream browsers will (hopefully) support in a year's time, including anchor positioning, Core Web Vitals, view transitions, and even more WebAssembly support. - 🐍 Python and Ruby are roughly in the same class performance-wise but a new interpreter in Python 3.14, coming later this year, [promises to deliver up to a 30% speed boost](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3820890/a-new-interpreter-in-python-3-14-delivers-a-free-speed-boost.html) with no code changes required. - [The XOR operator, and logic gate, explained.](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/xor/) (You can use XOR yourself in Ruby with the `^` operator.) [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/wohnnpwces5vr6eaztbj.jpg)](https://github.com/hanshuaikang/Nping) - [Nping](https://github.com/hanshuaikang/Nping) is an interesting new `ping` tool that supports pinging multiple addresses concurrently and shows latency in a visual chart display at the terminal. - Most of them don't apply to Ruby, but I found [this walkthrough of NASA's "10 rules for software development"](https://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc345/resources/nasa-10-rules.htm) quite interesting. The closest Ruby parallel I can think of is the [spaceship `<=>` operator!](https://dev.to/jblengino510/the-spaceship-operator-in-ruby-2fmk) Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/cooperx86) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict). Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). 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