The RailsNotes Newsletter 🟥 ISSUE #22

🟥 ISSUE #22 (Ruby3.3x3.3, Happy Holidays, Giveaway and more!)

Author

Harrison Broadbent
December 23, 2023

2023 has been full of Ruby and Rails goodies! I hope you’re keen for Ruby 3.3’s imminent release, and for everything 2024 brings!

Welcome to The RailsNotes Newsletter — Issue #22! This is the final issue for 2023!

What a year! I started this newsletter mid-year when I was between jobs, and I’m stoked with how far it’s come! Over 600 of you amazing Ruby on Rails devs read my newsletter each week. On top of writing this newsletter, I’ve also —

  • ✍️ Written 21 Ruby on Rails blog posts for the RailsNotes Blog.

  • 📬️ Launched RailsNotes UI, a collection of ActionMailer email templates & components (and soon expanding beyond that 👀 ).

  • ⚙️ Launched RAILSG, a command generator for Rails generators.

  • 💎 Most recently published my first gem, BetterMailerPreviews, to improve on native Rails mailer previews (now with 120+ stars ⭐️ ! ).

What a year! I really want to thank you all for your support; Whenever I post a link to something new I’m working on, be it in this newsletter or on Twitter, you’re all super supportive and give it some great initial traction. It’s helped me get my blog up and running, and motivated me to work on all the projects above 👆️ Thank you very much!

This newsletter is a round-up. I’ve collected a couple of articles showcasing the Ruby and Rails developments that I found most exciting this year. There was a lot! I definitely missed a looooot of brilliant stuff; hopefully, this year was just a taste of more exciting stuff to come in 2024!

A Reminder about my Christmas giveaway! I’m giving away 2 copies of POODR (Practical Object-Oriented Design, using Ruby), a Ruby book I read and loved ❤️‍🔥 this year. You have 1 more day to enter! Refer someone to join this newsletter and you’ll both earn 1 entry!

I’m giving away 2 copies of POODR (great book) — each subscriber you refer will give you an entry into the draw!

This giveaway is open to anyone in the world! No matter where you live, I’ll do my best to get a copy delivered to you. I’m drawing winners tomorrow, on the 25th (happy xmas!)

With all that out of the way, let’s get into it!

~ ✨ FEATURED ARTICLE ✨ ~

left: Ruby 3.3, Right: Ruby 3.2, the crowd: all of us losing our minds at just how good YJIT and Ruby 3.3 are looking to be!

One of the most exciting things this year IMO has been watching YJIT continue to improve the performance of Ruby and Rails apps everywhere. With Shopify reporting a 15% speedup with Ruby 3.3’s YJIT, and Basecamp even higher at ~18%, it looks like most Rails apps are going to get a hefty speed bump when Ruby 3.3 releases this Christmas day 🎄 .

This article digs into some of the technical details behind these optimizations, some of the new features Ruby 3.3/YJIT will include, and some handy benchmarks to help visualize the improvements. TLDR; YJIT 3.3 looks to be higher performance and more memory efficient than Ruby 3.2! A massive win, it’s going to be very exciting to watch the developments for Ruby 3.4 and beyond!

The final cool thing this article touches on is that Ruby 3.3 is benchmarking at 3.3x faster than Ruby 2.7 on the optcarrot benchmark, the benchmark used for the Ruby 3×3 vision Matz announced in 2017. Hence, these performance improvements have been dubbed Ruby 3.3×3.3 📈😅 

The Shopify Rails crew has been absolutely on fire 🔥 this year, and the IRB improvements dropping in Ruby 3.3 are just the cherry on top. They’ve been publishing great work all year, and writing up great blog posts on the Rails at Scale blog, which I encourage you to read (it’s great stuff!).

Alongside this, they’ve also been heavy contributors to YJIT and Ruby 3.3 more broadly, released the Pitchfork application server, improved Sorbet and more!

The Ruby LSP (from Shopify) has started to get good! It’s been a slow journey, but Vinistock and the team are continuously improving it, and I find myself using it more and more.

It’s also laid the foundation for other LSP plugins to build on, giving us packages like the Rails LSP and Stimulus LSP. I’m extremely excited to see where these packages go in 2024, and what other LSP packages the community releases!

This year was the year of the Rails View layer. We had great PRs like this get merged in, offering more control and error handling on the frontend layer. We also had ViewComponents and Phlex continue to mature, and a bunch of UI kits and templates release or go into pre-release (shameless plug for my own, RailsNotes UI!).

~ ⚒️ HANDY TIP ~ 

→ Take a break!

This is a bit of a cop-out for this week’s “handy tip”, since I’m in a rush to finish off this newsletter and get started on my cooking from Christmas lunch tomorrow 😅 , but take a break! Enjoy yourself! You’ll come back to your work or projects feeling refreshed and ready to dive into things.

Counterintuitively, some of my best work and projects have been things I’ve tackled after a restful break, typically spent reading, running or experimenting with new hobbies.

Software engineering is a very brain-intensive activity (it tires the brain, rather than the body), and I find that giving the brain a rest helps me come back fresher and more motivated to work.

Regardless of whether you take a break or not, I hope you have a great xmas/holiday period and are excited for 2024!

~👀 BEHIND THE SCENES~ 

This is a private section 🔐 for readers with 2+ referrals!

I share behind-the-scenes updates on RailsNotes and RailsNotes UI (think traffic numbers, sales, upcoming updates etc.)

Want access? Learn about the ✨ referral program ✨ down below! 👇️ 

It’s been a busy year! I’ve launched a solid handful of new Rails stuff this year, the most popular of which is by far my blog. Here are the final stats as of the 24th of December; It’s unreal to think over 21k people have read one of my blog posts!

Stats for railsnotes.xyz this year 📈 

Lately, I’ve been focussed much more on RailsNotes UI (it makes the money after all 😅 🤑 ) but I’m excited to get back to writing a bit more in 2024. I’m aiming to get a couple of new email templates out, plus the RailsNotes UI Starter Kit, but after that it’ll be time to write! ✍️ 

Since I think it’s just you Stefan who can read this section for now, thank you for the referrals and I hope you have a great break!

~ 🌯 WRAP UP ~ 

Thanks for reading! The quick wrap-up for this week is — 

  1. It’s been a brilliant year for the Ruby and the Rails community, Ruby 3.3 is dropping imminently, and 2024 is going to be massive!

  2. This is your last chance to enter my Christmas book giveaway! Just refer someone to this newsletter using your special link, and you’ll both get an entry!

  3. Have a great holiday and new year! I’ll catch you back here in 2024! 🥳 

→ Big thank you 🙏 to [email protected] and [email protected] for referring your friends to the RailsNotes Newsletter!

Share the RailsNotes Newsletter!

Use your unique link below to refer new Ruby on Rails devs to this newsletter (and make me really happy!). I’ll reward you with coupon codes, access to a private section, and a free RailsNotes UI license key 👇️ 

  • [Refer 1] A small feature in the next newsletter (with a link to something you’re working on, or your socials)

  • [Refer 2] Permanent access to the behind-the-scenes section, above 👆️ 

  • [Refer 5] A $20 coupon for RailsNotes UI 📬️ 

  • [Refer 15] Free licence key for RailsNotes UI 🤑