Ruby: The Language That Peaked in 2007 and Nobody Told It

The DHH Kool-Aid Factory

The Performance Joke

• •Made coffee
• •Questioned their life choices
• •Learned JavaScript
• •Built the same app in Node
• •Deployed it
• •Stolen all your customers

Everything Is Possible, Nothing Makes Sense

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array.each { |x| puts x }
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array.each do |x| puts x end
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for x in array do puts x end
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array.map { |x| puts x }
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array.collect { |x| puts x }  # same as map because fuck you
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0.upto(array.length - 1) { |i| puts array[i] }
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array.length.times { |i| puts array[i] }
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while i < array.length do puts array[i]; i += 1 end

The Monkey Patching Pandemic

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class String
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  def length
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    "wouldn't you like to know"
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  end
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end
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# Congratulations! You've just broken every library in your project

• •Numbers have been taught to speak
• •Strings learned to fly
• •Arrays became self-aware
• •nil was redefined to equal true (I wish I was joking)

The Rails Trap

The Gem Ecosystem: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Bundle Install

• •All last updated in 2013
• •All with slightly different APIs
• •All monkey-patching core classes
• •All conflicting with each other
• •All with dependencies on specific Ruby versions that don't exist anymore

• •Will it work?
• •Will it download 400MB of dependencies?
• •Will it require a specific version of Ruby that you don't have?
• •Will it compile native extensions for 47 minutes?
• •Will it conflict with your other gems?
• •Will it summon Cthulhu?

Version Manager Hell

• •RVM (Ruby Version Manager)
• •rbenv (because RVM was too magical)
• •chruby (because rbenv was too complex)
• •asdf (because why have a Ruby-specific solution?)
• •Docker (because fuck it, containerize the pain)

"Okay, first install rbenv..."
"I use RVM"
"No, rbenv is better"
"Actually, chruby..."
[fistfight ensues]

The "Everything Is An Object" Lie

The Testing Cult

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describe "the thing" do
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  context "when stuff happens" do
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    let(:thing) { FactoryBot.create(:thing) }
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    before { stub_const("CONSTANT", "value") }
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    it "does the stuff" do
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      expect(thing).to receive(:method).with(anything).and_return(42)
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      thing.do_stuff
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      expect(thing).to be_valid
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      expect(thing).not_to be_invalid
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      expect(thing).to have_received(:method).twice
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    end
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  end
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end

The Syntax Sugar Diabetes

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class Person
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  attr_accessor :name
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  def initialize(name)
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    @name = name
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  end
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  def say_hello
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    puts "Hello, #{@name}!" unless @name.nil? || @name.empty?
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  end
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end

• •@ means instance variable
• •@@ means class variable
• •$ means global variable
• •: means symbol (which is like a string but not)
• •=> used to mean hash rocket but now : does too
• •&:method means convert symbol to proc
• •||= means assign if nil or false (not just nil!)

The Community's Death Rattle

The Metaprogramming Madness

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define_method :dynamic_method do |arg|
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  self.class.send(:define_method, arg) do
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    self.instance_variable_set("@#{arg}", yield)
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  end
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end

• •Their IDE gives up trying to understand what's happening
• •Their debugger commits suicide
• •New developers open the codebase and immediately update their LinkedIn

The 2.7 to 3.0 Betrayal

• •3x faster: Only on benchmarks nobody runs
• •Types: Optional type annotations that nobody uses
• •Breaking changes: Just enough to make upgrading painful
• •Actual improvement: Marginally better at being slow

The Real Tragedy

• •Convention over configuration
• •Developer ergonomics matter
• •Testing as a first-class citizen
• •Expressive, readable code

• •Performance? "Hardware is cheap!"
• •Maintainability? "Just read the tests!"
• •Static analysis? "That's what production is for!"
• •Debugging? "puts debugging is an art form!"

In Conclusion

• •The developers maintaining legacy Rails apps
• •The ops people dealing with Ruby's memory leaks
• •The new hires trying to understand metaprogrammed spaghetti
• •The companies trying to hire Ruby developers in 2023
• •The investors who bet on Ruby startups