--- title: "Breaking the ice with frozen string literals" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 773 published_at: "2025-10-30" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/773" --- Plus Rails 8.0 gets a reprieve, and a creative way to eradicate `nil` woes. | #​773 — October 30, 2025 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/773) Together with [![JudoScale\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,e_trim,w_500,h_122/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:9/uimgjqpabq3x7sq0q631.png)](https://judoscale.com?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=effective-autoscaling) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/vnqdnlvzilusnjztyqnl.jpg)](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/10/28/string-literals.html) [Frozen String Literals: Past, Present, Future?](https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/10/28/string-literals.html) — You’ll either have written or seen `# frozen_string_literal: true` at the top of numerous Ruby files, but why is it there, what does it do, and is it always going to be necessary? Jean explains all in quite some depth. Jean Boussier [Parsing: How Ruby Understands Your Code](https://patshaughnessy.net/2025/10/27/parsing-how-ruby-understands-your-code) — Pat, working on a new version of his popular _Ruby Under a Microscope_ book, is sharing excerpts as he goes, including this basic look into Ruby’s (relatively) new Prism parser. Pat Shaughnessy [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/2677b158.png)](https://judoscale.com?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=effective-autoscaling) [3 Signs of Effective Autoscaling](https://judoscale.com?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=effective-autoscaling) — Use the right metrics (request queue time & job queue latency) / Check metrics every 10 seconds / Easy to understand and configure. Judoscale does what the others don’t. Automatic scaling that just works. Judoscale sponsor ['We Want to Move Ruby Forward'](https://andre.arko.net/2025/10/26/we-want-to-move-ruby-forward/) — Former maintainers of the RubyGems and Bundler projects aren’t exactly happy with [the outcome of their recent imbroglio](https://socket.dev/blog/ruby-core-team-assumes-stewardship-of-rubygems-and-bundler) with Ruby Central, but are prepared to support the [transition of the projects to the Ruby core team](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2025/10/17/rubygems-repository-transition/) and end the dispute. André Arko, et al. 💡 Ruby Central has also [issued its latest 'source of truth' update](https://rubycentral.org/news/source-of-truth-update-friday-october-24-2025/) on its position and what it intends to do next. **⚡️ IN BRIEF:** - [Rails 7.0.10, 7.1.6, 7.2.3, 8.0.4, and 8.1.1 have been released](https://rubyonrails.org/2025/10/29/new-rails-releases-and-end-of-support-announcement) and it's the end of the road for 7.0 and 7.1 as both versions are now at their 'end-of-life'. The good news, though, is **Rails 8.0 support has been extended by 6 months** and will receive bug fixes till May 7, 2026. - 🤖 [llm_rescuer](https://github.com/barodeur/llm_rescuer) is a comedic experiment to eradicate `nil` related problems by using an LLM to hallucinate responses to method calls on `nil`. What could go wrong? - 🇧🇷 [Tropical on Rails 2026](https://www.tropicalonrails.com/en/) is a Ruby event taking place in Brazil next April and tickets became available_today._ Boa sorte! - ⛰️ [The talk videos from Rocky Mountain Ruby](https://www.rubyevents.org/events/rocky-mountain-ruby-2025), which took place earlier this month, are now available to watch online. - Someone asks, [is this year's Ruby release going to be 3.5 or 4.0?](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657) It remains a mystery for now.. [Approaches to Code Highlighting in Rails Apps](https://avohq.io/blog/code-highlighting-with-rails) — Whether building a blog, CMS, or some sort of dev tool, you might want to do syntax highlighting in Rails views and this post explores a few ways to do it (most of which you can adapt for non-Rails use, too). Exequiel Rozas [How to Send RCS Suggested Replies with Ruby on Rails](https://developer.vonage.com/en/blog/how-to-send-rcs-suggested-replies-with-ruby-on-rails) — Explore RCS in Rails! Learn how to send RCS suggested replies in a Ruby on Rails app using the Vonage Messages API. Vonage sponsor 📄 [Warbled Sidekiq: Creating a Zero-Install Executable for the JVM](https://blog.headius.com/2025/10/warbled-sidekiq.html) – [Warbler](https://github.com/jruby/warbler) is a tool to package Ruby apps into `jar` files and [Sidekiq](https://sidekiq.org/) is a Ruby app, so.. Charles Oliver Nutter 📄 [The Journey to the Perfect Type Signature in Ruby](https://joel.drapper.me/p/ruby-type-sig/) Joel Drapper 📄 [A Rails 8 Upgrade Story: Building Momentum](https://blog.planetargon.com/blog/entries/a-rails-8-upgrade-story-building-momentum-without-a-rewrite) Jaison Coelho (Planet Argon) 🤖 [Our 10 Rules of Using Coding Agents](https://blog.cloud66.com/our-10-rules-of-using-coding-agents) Khash Sajadi (Cloud 66) 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/erde5czlsugxiq6tmvtq.jpg)](https://railspulse.com/) [Rails Pulse: Performance Monitoring and Debugging for Rails Apps](https://railspulse.com/) — If you don’t want to pay for a third party performance monitoring service, this is a new open source option you can include into your app as a Rails engine. You get an interactive dashboard with response analytics, query performance, trend analysis, and more. Rails Pulse Team 💡 [Rails Performance](https://github.com/igorkasyanchuk/rails_performance) is another well-established option in this space. [🧠 Smart Rails Applications Are Not the Future, They're the Present](https://sinaptia.dev/posts/building-intelligent-applications-with-rails?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2025q4&utm_content=sponsored) — We identify problems worth solving with AI and [implement cost-effective solutions](https://sinaptia.dev/blog/tags/ai/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2025q4&utm_content=sponsored) that save significant organizational time. SINAPTIA sponsor [Benchmark 0.5: Ruby's Built-In Way to Benchmark Code](https://github.com/ruby/benchmark) — Benchmark is one of those gems that’s included with Ruby but that can also be upgraded separately. [v0.5 adds a new `Benchmark.ms` method](https://github.com/ruby/benchmark/pull/38) (which you might recognize from Rails’ equivalent monkeypatch) for returning results in milliseconds instead of seconds. Ruby Core [llm-docs-builder: A Tool for Making Documentation AI-Friendly](https://mensfeld.pl/2025/10/llm-docs-builder/) — A library that transforms Markdown documentation into an AI-optimized format for use by LLMs. Maciej is eating his own dog food too as it’s extracted from how his [Karafka](https://github.com/karafka/karafka) Kafka library does it for its own docs. Maciej Mensfeld [pg_easy_replicate 0.4: Switch Databases with Minimal Downtime](https://github.com/shayonj/pg_easy_replicate) — A Ruby-powered orchestrator to simplify the task of setting up logical replication between two Postgres databases then letting you switch over to the newer one with minimal downtime. Shayon Mukherjee - [WebMock 3.26](https://github.com/bblimke/webmock) – Library for stubbing and setting expectations on HTTP requests. - [SuperDiff 0.17](https://github.com/splitwise/super_diff) – Library that displays differences between complex data structures in a clearer format. - [ActsAsParanoid 0.11](https://github.com/ActsAsParanoid/acts_as_paranoid) – _Soft delete_ for Active Record. Now supporting Rails 8.1. - [rbspy 0.39.0](https://github.com/rbspy/rbspy) – The sampling CPU profile adds support for Ruby 3.3.10. - [Haml 7.0](https://github.com/haml/haml) – Niche HTML templating engine. - [minitest-rails 8.1](https://github.com/minitest/minitest-rails) 📰 Classifieds ❤️ RubyCI: How to get almost free [unlimited CI minutes for a year](https://go.ruby.ci/ruby-yearly). With 2 minutes setup. --- 🤯 Your monolith might be your secret business weapon. A rush to microservices could undermine alignment. [Challenge what you think you know](https://link.testdouble.com/7e70a8). 💡 A Bundler-related heads up.. Are you, like me, a little lazy and just tend to run `bundle` on its own rather than `bundle install`? If so, you'll need to stay alert when Bundler 4 lands as [by default `bundle` will print a help message instead.](https://github.com/ruby/rubygems/commit/b2472e7b82a0f58623341d5469aeb10034b3d301) It's no problem, though, as you can set a default command with `bundle config --global default_cli_command` to restore the prior functionality if you like. _Thanks to Étienne Barrié [for noticing this change.](https://ruby.social/@bihi/115441005886705762)_ 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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