--- title: "Rust's Ratatui comes to Ruby for building great TUIs" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 784 published_at: "2026-01-22" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/784" --- Plus a comparison of background job systems from a 2026 perspective, and a quick Pickaxe update. | #​784 β€” January 22, 2026 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/784) Together with [![FastRuby.io\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_467,h_106/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:14/y65nyff19ylf5udphsq4.png)](https://go.fastruby.io/csw) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/lnujmrdjhs2cjzhtjxiu.jpg)](https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/) [RatatuiRuby: A Fresh Way to Build Terminal UIs in Ruby](https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/) β€” [Ratatui](https://ratatui.rs/) is a popular Rust library for building fast, modern terminal user interfaces, and RatatuiRuby brings it to Ruby too. Despite being in beta/pre-release, this is an incredibly solid effort and I had fun playing with it_(above)._ Kerrick Long πŸ’‘ This is an active moment for Ruby TUIs with Marco Roth's [efforts in bringing Charm's powerful TUI tooling](https://marcoroth.dev/posts/glamorous-christmas) from the Go world into Ruby too. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/7d18bfb1.png)](https://go.fastruby.io/csw) [Stuck on Rails 4.2? Need Estimates for Budget Approval?](https://go.fastruby.io/csw) β€” Stop postponing your upgrade. Get a thorough action plan and estimates backed by 50,000 dev/hours of historical data. CISOs and CFOs love our Rails upgrade roadmaps. Don’t have the budget for a [Roadmap](https://go.fastruby.io/csw)? Get our [AI-enhanced Rails roadmap](https://go.fastruby.io/tsg) for $0. The Rails Upgrade Roadmap sponsor [Considering GoodJob, Solid Queue, Sidekiq, and Active Job in 2026](https://island94.org/2026/01/goodjob-solid-queue-sidekiq-active-job-in-2026) β€” The Ruby ecosystem is lucky to have many options for running background jobs. Here, Ben, the maintainer of [GoodJob](https://github.com/bensheldon/good_job), shares his genuine thoughts on choosing between the options, built upon his years of Rails experience. He finds merits in each option, depending on the specific scenario. Ben Sheldon **⚑️ IN BRIEF:** - πŸ“• [The 6th edition of _Programming Ruby_ is now in beta.](https://pragprog.com/titles/ruby6/programming-ruby-4-6th-edition/) The _Pickaxe_ book, as it is commonly known, is set for final publication in March and covers Ruby 4.0 in depth. - Saroj Maharjan, one of the coordinators of Ruby's participation in _Google Summer of Code_, wrote in asking us to share the news that [the Ruby GSoC team is looking for ideas](https://github.com/rubygsoc/rubygsoc/wiki/Ideas-List-%282026%29) for projects across the Ruby ecosystem that could join in and accept contributions from GSoC 2026 participants. - Eileen Uchitelle [ran into an odd bug in Bundler 4.0.1](https://github.com/ruby/rubygems/pull/9213) when using gems across multiple sources. The fix, in Bundler 4.0.4, may have [caused another related issue, though.](https://github.com/ruby/rubygems/issues/9258) One to keep an eye out for. - πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ή [RubyConf AT](https://rubyconf.at/) is taking place in Vienna, Austria this May 29-31. Ticket sales open_tomorrow._ 🧢 [Building a Ruby Pattern Generator for a Crochet Circle](https://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/crafting-code-building-a-ruby-pattern-generator-for-a-crochet-circle) β€” A delightfully crafty use case for Ruby and a great example of using code to enhance a hobby. Mary Lee [Ruby 4.0's New `Ruby::Box` for In-Process Isolation](https://prateekcodes.com/ruby-4-introduces-ruby-box-for-in-process-isolation-part-1/) β€” A quick practical look at Ruby 4.0’s highly experimental [β€˜Box’](https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/4.0/Ruby/Box.html) mechanism for loading libraries into isolated execution contexts. Prateek Choudhary [The #1 Time-Series Database Built on Postgres](https://www.tigerdata.com/timescaledb?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ruby-weekly-newsletter) β€” TimescaleDB extends Postgres with hypertables, 95% compression, and continuous aggregates. [Start building for free](https://www.tigerdata.com/timescaledb?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ruby-weekly-newsletter). Tiger Data (creators of TimescaleDB) sponsor πŸ“„ [Beware the `grpc` Gem and Ruby 4.0](https://ryanbigg.com/2026/01/beware-grpc-gem-and-ruby-40) – If you're seeing very slow bundle times with Ruby 4.0, this might be why. Ryan Bigg πŸ“„ [Building Smart Retry Strategies in Rails with Error-Aware Delays](https://codewithrails.com/blog/rails-smart-retry-strategies/) Code with Rails πŸ“„ [How Active Storage Variants Work to Transform Images](https://www.writesoftwarewell.com/transform-images-with-activestorage-variants-rails/) Akshay Khot πŸ“„ [Getting Started With Vite on Rails](https://www.fastruby.io/blog/getting-started-with-vite-on-rails.html) Julio Lucero πŸ“„ [How I Read a Pull Request](https://kevinjmurphy.com/posts/how-i-read-a-pr/) Kevin Murphy πŸ›  Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/zjwmliqlxg1ouxbp2skh.jpg)](https://github.com/puma/puma/releases/tag/v7.2.0) [Puma 7.2: The Fast Multi-Threaded HTTP Server for Ruby Apps](https://github.com/puma/puma/releases/tag/v7.2.0) β€” You can now set auto worker count via the DSL (`workers :auto`) and [HTTP parsing has been made 17% faster!](https://github.com/puma/puma/pull/3825) Plus the usual bugfixes and refactoring. Nate Berkopec [From Prompt Engineering to LLM Cost Monitoring. What Can We Do for You?](https://sinaptia.dev/services/intelligent-rails-applications?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2026q1&utm_content=sponsored) β€” We identify what's worth building with AI, test prompts against your data, optimize for cost, and ship to production. [Let's talk](https://sinaptia.dev/contact-us?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2026q1&utm_content=sponsored). SINAPTIA sponsor [POSSE Party: 'Quit Social Media by Posting More'](https://posseparty.com/) β€” A source-available ([GitHub repo](https://github.com/searlsco/posse_party)) Ruby app enabling you to _β€œPublish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”_ (a.k.a. [POSSE](https://indieweb.org/POSSE)) which is a concept for blogging on your own site and having the content pushed out to social networks for you. Justin Searls [Redis::Objects 2.0: Map Redis Types Directly to Ruby Objects](https://github.com/nateware/redis-objects) β€” An idiomatically Ruby interface to the Redis data structure server that avoids the usual mess of ORMs (since ORMs don’t naturally fit with the lighter Redis approach). Nate Wiger - πŸ€– [RubyLLM 1.11.0](https://github.com/crmne/ruby_llm) – Unified API for working with AI models and services. Say hello to xAI/Grok in this version. - [Sidekiq::Throttled v2.1.0](https://github.com/ixti/sidekiq-throttled) – Concurrency and rate-limit throttling for Sidekiq. [Changelog.](https://github.com/ixti/sidekiq-throttled/blob/main/CHANGES.md#210---2026-01-20) - [Rage 1.20.0](https://github.com/rage-rb/rage/releases/tag/v1.20.0) – Fast web framework for API-first apps that's compatible with Rails. - [Shoryuken 7.0](https://github.com/ruby-shoryuken/shoryuken) – Efficient thread-based message processor for Amazon SQS. - 🎨 [Color 2.2](https://github.com/halostatue/color) – RGB, CMYK, HSL, and other color space manipulation library. - [Listen v3.10](https://github.com/guard/listen) – Listens to file modifications and notifies you about changes. - πŸ€– [MCP Ruby SDK v0.6](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ruby-sdk) – Official Ruby SDK for the Model Context Protocol. - [resque-scheduler v5.0.0](https://github.com/resque/resque-scheduler) – Job scheduling system built on top of Resque. - [Byebug v13.0](https://github.com/deivid-rodriguez/byebug) – Long-standing feature-rich debugger for Ruby. - [Phlex 2.4.0](https://github.com/yippee-fun/phlex) – Build object-oriented web views in pure Ruby. - [Faker v3.6.0](https://github.com/faker-ruby/faker/releases/tag/v3.6.0) – Library for generating realistic fake data. πŸ“° Classifieds πŸ’Έ Overpaying for hosting? Judoscale saves you 33% or your money back. [Autoscale your web and workers](https://judoscale.com/ruby-weekly-33?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=ruby-weekly-33&utm_content=overpaying-for-hosting) on any platform in minutes. --- ♦️ Build Ruby apps that never lose state, even when things fail. Learn by building an app from scratch in a [free Temporal Ruby SDK course](https://learn.temporal.io/getting_started/ruby/hello_world_in_ruby/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=newsletter-2026-01-22-ruby-weekly&utm_content=ruby-weekly-build-app-ruby). πŸ“’ Elsewhere in the ecosystem Some other interesting stories in the broader landscape: - πŸ€– Whether you agree or not, Ryan Dahl, the original creator of both Node.js and Deno, drew much attention with [a provocative post on X](https://x.com/rough__sea/status/2013280952370573666) where he shared a thought on the changing role of software engineers in an agentic world, namely: _"the era of humans writing code is over."_ Meanwhile, though, [DHH says AI isn't ready to replace junior developers yet.](https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/ai-can-not-replace-junior-programmers) - 🐘 If you're a Postgres user, you might enjoy [this article on alternatives to 'soft deleting'](https://atlas9.dev/blog/soft-delete.html) where rather than use a boolean or datetime flag, you could use a trigger to move a row to an archive table or capture deleted rows from the WAL for archival. - πŸ”Ž The VS Code team has explained [how they implemented a new, fast client-side docs search system](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2026/01/15/docfind) for the VS Code site using WebAssembly. You can use their [docfind engine](https://github.com/microsoft/docfind) yourself too, and [there's a live demo](https://microsoft.github.io/docfind/) showing off its speed on an index of 50,000 articles. - A fun read about [the techniques involved in creating an ASCII text renderer for graphics.](https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering) Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/cooperx86) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict). Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email](https://rubyweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or [Stop getting this newsletter.](https://rubyweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) Β© Cooper Press Ltd Β· Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom Other weekly newsletters we publish include [Postgres Weekly](https://postgresweekly.com/), [React Status](https://react.statuscode.com/), [Frontend Focus](https://frontendfoc.us/), and [JavaScript Weekly](https://javascriptweekly.com/).