blog of Marian Posăceanu - rubyist most of the time

Pull requests are an important part of programming culture.

I’ve been reading a lot about search lately: kNN, BM25, RRF and related ideas, both within Elasticsearch and in isolation.

Lately I've started to put my turntable back into working order.

It's been a while since I've posted, for obvious reasons a lot has changed in the realm of programming.

I love iTerm2, but it can be sluggish sometimes on my old late 2016 MacBook Pro.

Originally published after the 2023 Friendly.rb conference in Romania, this is an archival account of that talk.

Whilst I consider myself an audiophile, I also like to think I’m a pragmatist i.e. best of both worlds: don’t go over the top with snake oil gear but at the same time recognise that sound quality plays a pivotal role in how I listen and enjoy music.

As someone who finds solace in the rich nuances of sound, I often draw parallels to the world of development.

I was thinking of the old conundrum of how we perceive the objective world or reality - it’s always through our limited sensory organs.

Lately I'm also running macOS virtualized for testing various apps.

I was reading this article , and it raises quite an unexpected question - "Can we consider logging as a code smell"?

I'm not sure why RVM is still my default Ruby version manager, but the issue at hand should be reproducible on rbenv too.

I like to use Rollbar 's default plan for small apps or prototypes that are works in progress.

Historical note: these are macOS Sierra 10.12-era procedures.

This article reflects the 2016-era Rails asset pipeline—Ruby Sass, libsass, Compass, therubyracer, and Node.js 6—and is not current Rails asset guidance.

There are cases where ownership of the data consumed by a fleet of microservices is distributed across several systems of record.

I started out with Java as my professional language and before I discovered Ruby, PHP was my main programming language of choice for new projects.

This article describes a 2017 JRuby, concurrent-ruby, and RSpec setup.

I'm not really sure why taking screenshots in macOS defaults to PNG file format.

I can't even remember the last time I ran rvm implode, I'd reckon I've been using RVM for about three years.

Editor’s note (2026): This describes a 2010 jQuery and script-loader setup.

Editor’s note (2026): This is a 2010 architectural sketch, not a current Rails security tutorial.

Editor’s note (2026): Here “NLP” refers to neuro-linguistic programming, not natural-language processing.

Anyone who has written a little PHP knows what the flush() family of functions do.

Historical Windows/Firefox optimization (2010)—do not move a current browser profile using these instructions.

As the host OS I use Windows 8 (just upgraded to 8.1), Well, why, one might ask?

Archive note (2026): The opening paragraph contains the corrupt fragment I’vevolatile and utopic place most of the time.; it cannot be reconstructed safely and is left untouched pending an original source or backup.

Almost five years since the last post about How to Web [0] - wow, that's a large slice of the space-time continuum.

After working with Rails for some time, you start nitpicking about how to improve it.

Historical instructions (2010)—do not follow on a current machine.

Ruby 2.1 was released this Christmas, great news everyone!

Back in the day (i.e. when Firefox's version was a single digit) font rendering was at its best on Mozilla's browser.

On UNIX-like operating systems (e.g.

Modules are useful for highly specialized code that can be injected into other classes for fun and profit or for creating namespaces.

I was cruising around my Github notifications and I found an interesting open issue created by Jim Weirich : “The Semantic Rule for { } vs. do/end” in the Ruby style guide repository .

Editor’s note (2026): The first definition link is no longer a dependable source.

Every artisan at a certain point in time just stops and starts thinking about the inner workings of his craft.

There are words in programming that look like jokes.

Editor’s note (2026): This is a contemporaneous conference report from 2010.

Great news everyone!

Ruby's standard library and Rails's PostgreSQL adapter use by default version 4 UUIDs.

Editor’s note (2026): This is a strongly worded 2010 opinion, not hiring or accessibility guidance.

Editor’s note (2026): This essay uses information-theory entropy as a metaphor for uncertainty in life; it does not claim that the mathematical definition directly models a human life.

Archive note (2026): The conference URL and discussion refer to the 2010 event.

Historical and safety note (2026): Firebug reached end of life; its functionality moved into Firefox’s built-in Developer Tools.

Half-life (t1/2) is the amount of time required for the amount of something to fall to half its initial value.