--- title: "Matz's 'Extreme Vibe Coding' opens RubyConf" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 809 published_at: "2026-07-16" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/809" --- Plus how to start a Ruby event, lobste.rs moves to SQLite, and SimpleCov hits 1.0. #​809 β€” July 16, 2026 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/809) 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/2yi) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/lrk9bsnienbuenrt2hqz.jpg)](https://marcoroth.dev/posts/introducing-insta-snapshot-testing-for-ruby) [Introducing Insta: Snapshot Testing for Ruby](https://marcoroth.dev/posts/introducing-insta-snapshot-testing-for-ruby) β€” Instead of hand-writing expected values, tests assert against a _recorded snapshot_ of your code's output. When it changes, an interactive CLI shows the diff for you to accept or reject. Extracted from [Herb](https://herb-tools.dev/) and supports Minitest and RSpec. [GitHub repo.](https://github.com/marcoroth/insta-ruby) Marco Roth [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/05375153.png)](https://go.fastruby.io/2yi) [🚨 Behind on Rails? 7.2 Goes EOL in Less Than a Month…](https://go.fastruby.io/2yi) β€” Rails 7.2 reaches end of life next month. We've put 60,000+ hours into Rails upgrades, with real case studies and open source Claude Code skills. Upgrade with us or [add capacity to your engineering team](https://go.fastruby.io/ds6). Rails upgrades by experts, not guesswork. FastRuby.io | Rails Upgrade Services sponsor [lobste.rs Migrates from MariaDB to SQLite](https://lobste.rs/s/ko1ji1/lobste_rs_is_now_running_on_sqlite) β€” The [lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs/) programming link aggregator is built on [an open source Rails app](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters) and, after a process spanning years, has now switched entirely to SQLite on a single instance. A good real-world case study for the Rails-on-SQLite era. Dziedzic, Harkins, et al. πŸ’‘ The Lobsters team wanted to detect when SQLite was doing inefficient full table scans. Aaron Patterson [comes to the rescue with how to do just that](https://tenderlovemaking.com/2026/07/15/detecting-full-table-scans-with-sqlite/), wondering if it could be a useful warning in Rails generally. **⚑️ IN BRIEF:** - [Ruby 4.0.6](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2026/07/14/ruby-4-0-6-released/) has been released as a minor routine release, while [Ruby 3.3.12](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2026/07/16/ruby-3-3-12-released/) brings security fixes for `erb` and `net-imap`. - Matz opened [RubyConf](https://rubyconf.org/) this week with _"Extreme Vibe Coding"_ where he shared his take on AI's role in development work. No video yet but it's mentioned in [𝕏 posts here](https://x.com/garyhtou/status/2077093895125569869), [here](https://x.com/kcdragon_/status/2077081216453398566), [here](https://x.com/joemasilotti/status/2077079025269477735), and [here](https://x.com/inazarova/status/2077100046399729697). Video as soon as we get it! - Spinel isn't just Matz's AOT Ruby compiler, it's also [the name of the Spinel Cooperative](https://spinel.coop/blog/meet-spinel/), a group of Rubyists working on [rv](https://github.com/spinel-coop/rv/) and other tools. [How to Start a Ruby Meetup](https://guides.rubyevents.org/meetups/) β€” Fantastic advice for putting on your own Ruby get-together. The guidance is generic enough to work for technical meetups of any flavor. If you do well, there's also [a guide to putting on a Ruby _conference_](https://guides.rubyevents.org/conferences/). The Ruby Events Team πŸ’‘ If you'd rather _attend_ a Ruby event, [this RubyEvents.org page](https://www.rubyevents.org/events) has you covered. β–Ά[Ten Talks from Brighton Ruby 2026](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG4Kzg-MIgJw) β€” Talks from last month's [Brighton Ruby](https://brightonruby.com/) event, including [▢️ 10 Cool Things You Probably Didn't Know About Rails i18n](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1u8ZWCSuA0) and [▢️ From Rails 3.0 to Rails Edge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJhHXU99ZFs&list=PLG4Kzg-MIgJw&index=10), a 15 year Rails upgrade journey covering what it takes to get 300 engineers comfortable shipping on unreleased Rails versions. YouTube [Where AI Belongs in a Rails Product](https://sinaptia.dev/posts/building-an-ai-powered-commercial-intelligence-dashboard/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2026q3&utm_content=sponsored) β€” A Rails case study on RubyLLM agents, synthetic data, and knowing when not to use an LLM. SINAPTIA sponsor πŸ“„ [Never Escape This Ruby Loop (Also, Here's How)](https://dev.to/pocke/never-escape-this-ruby-loop-also-heres-how-4kfi) – Is there a truly infinite loop in Ruby? Almost! Some fun poking here. Masataka Pocke Kuwabara πŸ“„ [Rails 8.1's Deprecated Associations and How to Fix Them](https://www.fastruby.io/blog/rails-8-1-deprecated-associations.html) – _"Rails 8.1 lets you explicitly mark outdated or obsolete associations as deprecated."_ Julio Lucero πŸ“„ [A Gentle Introduction to Git Worktrees](https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2026/07/introduction-git-worktrees/) – For when you need to check out multiple branches into separate directories simultaneously. Nicholas C. Zakas πŸ“„ [6 Security Settings Every GitHub Maintainer Should Enable This Week](https://github.blog/security/6-security-settings-every-github-maintainer-should-enable-this-week/) Joseph Katsioloudes (GitHub) πŸ›  Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/bec9jocalnscznnmf29k.jpg)](https://github.com/simplecov-ruby/simplecov#readme) [SimpleCov 1.0: Code Coverage for Ruby](https://github.com/simplecov-ruby/simplecov/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#100-2026-07-12) β€” The popular code coverage tool hits v1.0 after 15+ years at 0.x, bringing together a new report UI, redesigned configuration API, and improved parallel testing support. No release post means I might need to blog about this soon as it's a neat tool! Berlin et al. [AppSignal for Startups: Up to 50% Off the Full Platform](https://blog.appsignal.com/2026/07/06/introducing-appsignal-for-startups.html?utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=rubyweekly&utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_content=sponsored-link) β€” Bootstrapped startups get up to 25% off ongoing; YC teams up to 50%. The full platform, not a cut-down tier. AppSignal sponsor [Shopify’s Ruby Style Guide 3.0](https://github.com/Shopify/ruby-style-guide) β€” As one of the largest employers of Rubyists, Shopify is keen to enforce a particular way of writing Ruby there. This style guide is their attempt at that, and is also packed into a special RuboCop cop: `rubocop-shopify`. The rules have [changed somewhat in this new version](https://github.com/Shopify/ruby-style-guide/releases/tag/v3.0.0). Shopify [minitest-strict: Stricter Assertions for Minitest](https://github.com/sferik/minitest-strict) β€” _"Minitest's built-in assertions are lenient in ways that can mask bugs"_, says Erik, whose library redefines several assertions to require strict boolean values, plus adds `assert_true`, `assert_false` and `assert_eql`. Erik Berlin πŸ’‘ As part of working on the [`http` gem](https://github.com/httprb/http), Erik also made [minitest-memory](https://github.com/sferik/minitest-memory/) which provides assertions for tracking memory allocations. [BinData 3.0: A Declarative Way to Read/Write Binary Data](https://github.com/dmendel/bindata) β€” Rather than messing around with `unpack`, this makes working with data at the bit/byte level declarative and Ruby-like ([example](https://github.com/dmendel/bindata?tab=readme-ov-file#what-is-bindata)). Dion Mendel - [Torch.rb 0.25](https://github.com/ankane/torch.rb) – LibTorch-powered deep learning library from Andrew Kane, the creator of pgvector. - [The Git Gem 4.4](https://github.com/ruby-git/ruby-git) – Wraps `git` to enable easier access from Ruby. - [Shrine 3.9](https://github.com/shrinerb/shrine/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#390-2026-07-13) – Popular file attachment handling toolkit. - [RubyGems and Bundler 4.0.16](https://blog.rubygems.org/2026/07/10/4.0.16-released.html) πŸ“° Classifieds πŸ”¬ Stop shipping untested AI code. Undercover CI shows [4 ways to catch it in your dev workflow](https://undercover-ci.com/blog/feedback-loops-for-agentic-coding). --- πŸš€ On Hatchbox? Add [AppSignal](https://www.appsignal.com/hatchbox?utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=rubyweekly&utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_content=classified) in two clicks for error tracking, host metrics & Sidekiq alerts. [Hatchbox customers get 10% off](https://www.appsignal.com/hatchbox?utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=rubyweekly&utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_content=classified). πŸ“’ Elsewhere in the ecosystem [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/ebjhrkuhptc4knqacmej.jpg)](https://github.com/EvanLi/Github-Ranking/blob/master/Top100/Ruby.md) - ✨ This week, I stumbled upon [this table of the top 100 starred Ruby repos on GitHub](https://github.com/EvanLi/Github-Ranking/blob/master/Top100/Ruby.md). How far can you go before you find something new to you? - Adrian Marin recently unveiled a big [Avo 4 release](https://avohq.io/blog/avo-4) – [Avo](https://avohq.io/) is a powerful commercial Rails admin framework/template, though with an LGPLv3 licensed core you can use for free on hobby/personal projects. - Ollie Williams does a feature-by-feature audit of what build tools still do for frontend developers in 2026 and asks: [do we still _need_ build tools?](https://olliewilliams.xyz/blog/no-build/) - GitHub's [Dependabot is now giving packages a three-day default cooldown](https://github.blog/changelog/2026-07-14-dependabot-version-updates-introduce-default-package-cooldown/) before opening version update PRs, though security fixes are exempt. - [A scrolling visualization of the ~200ms life of an HTTP request.](https://200ms.thenodebook.com/#act-0-prologue) Goes surprisingly deep into the details. 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/).