--- title: "RubyConf’s 'Shark Tank' moment with The Ruby Runway" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 785 published_at: "2026-01-29" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/785" --- Plus the `rails stats` for 37signals' Basecamp, and how to scan your Gemfile for vulnerable dependencies. | #​785 — January 29, 2026 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/785) Together with [![Testdouble\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_1280,h_279/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:22/fuxab1jg21v6anerbqwg.png)](https://link.testdouble.com/5c122d) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ta8saa7bte18phxphr9p.jpg)](https://rubycentral.teamtailor.com/jobs/6963879-rubyconf-pitch-competition-the-ruby-runway) [The Ruby Runway: A RubyConf Pitch Competition](https://rubycentral.teamtailor.com/jobs/6963879-rubyconf-pitch-competition-the-ruby-runway) — RubyConf has launched a competition for Ruby-powered startups to take the stage at RubyConf and compete for various cash prizes and awards. You need to represent a business using Ruby at its core, and not have raised more than $500k so far. The submission deadline is February 28 — and if you can't enter, RubyConf is [looking for reviewers and judges](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeNzOxWPT9a_le_DXwVBqn8Xg4IeMMAP4nHjuwfgFWIwsWrdg/viewform) for the entries. Ruby Central [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/714e806e.png)](https://link.testdouble.com/5c122d) [Anyone Can Code: Software Is Having Its _Ratatouille_ Moment](https://link.testdouble.com/5c122d) — AI tools aren't replacing developers—they're being used to reframe who gets to build. Dave Mosher on why hoarding technical ability is the wrong response, and what quality really means when anyone can cook. Test Double sponsor [Optimistic UI in Rails with Optimism and Inertia](https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/optimistic-ui-in-rails-with-optimism-and-inertia) — Your users want expect snappy UIs and implementing a so-called ‘optimistic’ UI can help provide that experience, even while things are still working in the background. This post shows off using Inertia to make implementing an optimistic UI in a Rails app trivial in a mock Kanban board app called Izzy (inspired by [Fizzy](https://www.fizzy.do/), we suspect!) Svyatoslav Kryukov (Evil Martians) 💡 We somehow missed that [Fizzy](https://www.fizzy.do/), 37signals’ newest app that launched last month, is also, like Campfire, an open-source-ish project, with [a Rails codebase](https://github.com/basecamp/fizzy) that you can install yourself or read to see 37signals’ in-house Rails style. **⚡️ IN BRIEF:** - 🔧 [Ruby 4.0 is now available in the Microsoft Store](https://rubyinstaller.org/2026/01/27/ruby-4.0-available-in-microsoft-store.html), thanks to the efforts of the [RubyInstaller for Windows](https://rubyinstaller.org/)project. - Want to chat with other Rubyists old-school forum style? The [Ruby Users Forum](https://www.rubyforum.org/) has just launched. - 🤖 Did you know there's a [Ruby AI podcast?](https://www.therubyaipodcast.com/2388930) It's not AI generated, but hosted by three Rubyists and usually featuring a guest, such as [this recent episode with Evan Phoenix.](https://www.therubyaipodcast.com/2388930/episodes/18457774-real-vs-fake-ai-with-evan-phoenix) - Charles Nutter has been adding [the ability to use a WebAssembly build of Ruby's Prism parser to JRuby](https://github.com/jruby/jruby/pull/9184) as a way to maintain Ruby language compatibility without a native library requirement. - 🇹🇭 [RubyConf Thailand 2026](https://rubyconfth.com/) takes place _this weekend_ (January 31 – February 1) in Bangkok. A few tickets remain. - 🇫🇮 [tiny ruby conf](https://helsinkiruby.fi/tinyruby/) is headed back to Helsinki this October 1. [`Ruby::Box`: Rethinking Code Reloading With Isolated Namespaces](https://rubyelders.com/writings/2026-01-ruby-box-reload.html) — A rethinking of hot reloading a Ruby app that doesn’t fight Ruby’s global object space (thanks to 4.0’s experimental Box feature). It only supports simple Rack apps right now, but the author has hopes it could evolve. Josef Šimánek [What Finally Posting _Rails UI_ to Hacker News Taught Me](https://railsui.com/blog/what-finally-posting-rails-ui-to-hacker-news-taught-me) — Practical advice on what to think about when sharing a project (in this case, a new commercial [suite of components and themes for Rails](https://railsui.com/)) in a popular space. Andy Leverenz [Rails Upgrade Plans Backed by 60,000+ Dev/Hours, Not AI Hallucinations](https://go.fastruby.io/real-human) — Real humans, real experience. Give your CFO a budget they can trust. A thorough action plan delivered in 2-3 weeks. The Rails Upgrade Roadmap sponsor 📄 [What 'Shoulda Matchers' Is Actually Doing For You](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/what-shoulda-matchers-is-actually-doing-for-you) – What code like `it { is_expected.to ... }` is actually doing behind the scenes. Matheus Sales 📄 [A Simple Tailwind CSS Setup for Jekyll](https://andycroll.com/ruby/simple-tailwind-css-4-setup-for-jekyll/) – How to set up Tailwind with Jekyll using the `jekyll-tailwind` gem. Andy Croll 📄 [Rendering Seismic Observation Data with Ruby](https://rubystacknews.com/2026/01/27/ruby-rendering-seismic-observation-data/) Giménez Silva Germán Alberto 📄 [How I Actually Use AI to Write Rails Code](https://mariochavez.io/desarrollo/2026/01/26/how-i-actually-use-ai-to-write-ruby-on-rails-code/) Mario Alberto Chávez 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/agswksbuojxyqhfzqvhm.jpg)](https://github.com/rubysec/bundler-audit) [bundler-audit: Vulnerability Detection for Dependencies](https://github.com/rubysec/bundler-audit) — A tool that goes through your `Gemfile.lock` and looks for vulnerable gems (using the [Ruby Advisory Database](https://github.com/rubysec/ruby-advisory-db)), insecure gem sources, and provides advisory information. It even works offline and can output JSON for CI integration. RubySec [Ruby Classifier 2.2: Text Classification Made Simple](https://rubyclassifier.com/) — A _very_ long-standing project gets a major update with new classification options, better performance, and [some new guides](https://rubyclassifier.com/docs/guides/) to get you started with k-Nearest, TF-IDF, LSI, and Bayesian classification. Lucas Carlson et al. [Rails Deployments That Scale — Cloud 66 for Rails](https://www.cloud66.com/products/rails/) — Used by today's best Rails companies, with asset pipeline, console access, ActionCable & zero-downtime. Cloud 66 sponsor [Mudis: Fast, Thread-Safe, In-Memory, Sharded LRU Cache](https://github.com/kiebor81/mudis) — A pure Ruby in-memory cache (with a snapshot-based ‘soft persistence’ option). Useful for apps where a full Redis install is overkill for doing a little caching. Can integrate with Rails and Hanami. Kieran Borsden 🤖 [ChaosToTheRescue: LLM-Powered Method Generation and Rails Error Rescue Suggestions](https://github.com/codenamev/chaos_to_the_rescue) — _“This experiment explores how much uncertainty Ruby code can tolerate before it stops feeling deterministic.”_ Please don't put this into prod! 😅 Valentino Stoll [xsv 1.2: Fast, Lightweight XLSX (Excel) Parser Library](https://github.com/martijn/xsv) — A spreadsheet parsing library that sticks to the basics: _“It strives to be minimal in the sense that it provides nothing a CSV reader wouldn’t.”_ Martijn Storck - [Devise 5.0](https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/blob/v5.0.0/CHANGELOG.md#500rc---2025-12-31) – Flexible authentication for Rails. A breaking release due to removing deprecations, dropping support for old versions of Ruby and Rails, and introducing Rails 8 support. - [ActiveType v2.8.0](https://github.com/makandra/active_type) – Rails presenter and form model library providing ActiveRecord-like features for non-database-backed or extended models. - [RubyCritic 5.0](https://github.com/whitesmith/rubycritic) – Get quality reports for Ruby code through static analysis. - [AcceptLanguage](https://github.com/cyril/accept_language.rb) – `Accept-Language` HTTP header parsing library. - [Grape 3.1](https://github.com/ruby-grape/grape) – Opinionated framework for building REST-like APIs. - [Dalli 4.2](https://github.com/petergoldstein/dalli) – High-performance `memcached` client. - [Redlock 2.1](https://github.com/leandromoreira/redlock-rb) – Redis-based distributed locking. - ⭐ [RubyGems 4.0.5 and Bundler 4.0.5](https://blog.rubygems.org/2026/01/29/4.0.5-released.html) - ⭐ [Rails 8.1.2](https://rubyonrails.org/2026/1/22/rails-version-8-1-2-has-been-released) 📰 Classifieds 🐡 Bloated jobs killing your worker memory? The “dedicated worker” pattern might help. ([It worked for Justin.](https://judoscale.com/blog/priced-out-of-heroku?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_content=it-worked-for-justin)) --- 🔬 Shipping AI code? [Undercover](https://undercover-ci.com/) catches untested methods in your PRs before you merge. Coverage percentages won't. Free for open source. 📢 Elsewhere in the ecosystem Some other interesting stories in the broader landscape: ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/pyvrbwotfjdph2o3xfqr.jpg) - Over on X, [DHH posted the `rails stats` output](https://x.com/dhh/status/2016449600257720742) _(see above)_ for 37signals' flagship _Basecamp_ app, which is now entering development for Basecamp 5. He says: _"So that's now a 12(!) year-old code base, and we're able to run the entire test suite in just 45 seconds on a local 16-core AMD Linux box."_ - Julia Evans (the [original creator](https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/06/12/a-weird-system-call-process-vm-readv/) of [rbspy](https://github.com/rbspy/rbspy)) wrote up [her notes on starting to use Django](https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/01/27/some-notes-on-starting-to-use-django/) and has some reflections on how it compares to Rails. She found Django's explicitness easier to return to after months away, but really appreciates both the ORM and the auto-generated admin interface. - OpenAI shares [the story of how it's scaled Postgres to serve 800+ million users.](https://openai.com/index/scaling-postgresql/) The interesting technical point is they're only using _a single primary_ (coupled with many read replicas) to do so. - A well-known JavaScript developer explained [how he ported 100k lines of TypeScript to Rust](https://blog.vjeux.com/2026/analysis/porting-100k-lines-from-typescript-to-rust-using-claude-code-in-a-month.html) using Claude Code. The languages aren't important; it's really about the insights in nudging agentic tools to get through such tasks. - 🕹️ The creator of Three.js (known as mrdoob) has created [a Three.js-powered port of 1996's _Quake_](https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/) – [here's the source.](https://github.com/mrdoob/three-quake) You can learn more about this project [in this X thread.](https://x.com/mrdoob/status/2015076521531355583) 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|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · 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/).