Embedded Engineering & Codebase Rescue | Ally Piechowski

Almost every team I audit has a file like this: 1,900 lines, conditionals six levels deep, a comment at the top that just says “careful.”

On one production app I work on, a fresh Git worktree becomes runnable with one setup script: bin/setup Setup prepares the environment and exits, then the normal development command runs.

A competent outsider shows up with a small, clean fix.

The first thing I usually do when I pick up a new codebase isn’t opening the code.

On March 27, Ruby 3.2.11 shipped with a fix for CVE-2026-27820, a buffer overflow in Zlib::GzipReader.

A client’s team spent a week adding a CSV export to their admin panel.

Rails 8 wants you to drop Redis, Sprockets, and Sidekiq and adopt a full stack of database-backed infrastructure.

Rails 8 ships with Propshaft as the default asset pipeline for new applications.

In order to close a tab in vim, in normal mode type :tabclose (or the shorthand :tabc).

After doing this enough times, I’ve learned the first week isn’t about reading the code.

In order to open a new tab in vim, in normal mode type :tabnew.

Update — March 2026: This post was significantly expanded to cover additional pitfalls: association bleeding, STI subclass inheritance, multi-tenant security risks with unscoped, and the Rails 6.1 all_queries: true option.

In Ruby on Rails, strong_params are a necessity to work with ActionController parameters, but sometimes an exception of ActionController::ParameterMissing is thrown… Why?

warning: Using the last argument as keyword parameters is deprecated; maybe ** should be added to the call warning: The called method `test' is defined here Ruby 2.7 deprecated the use of hashes in the last argument of a method call.

In vim, one of the largest challenges is learning how to create, open, and manage buffers.

For example, if I want to find all users created within the last week, I would ask for all users from my User model in which the column updated_at is greater than 1 week ago, or 1.week.ago. 1.

While it is common to hold daily stand-up scrum meetings in the morning, this might not be the best fit for your team.

When test suites contain a lot of duplication, coupling occurs at an individual spec basis.

Every sourdough recipe calls for “fed” or “unfed” starter and almost none of them explain what that actually means.

Today, I want to get back into the swing of blogging with a brief overview of my relationship with my father over the past 21 years of my life.

A good developer takes a break before they get burned out.

Every developer has thought Am I really a developer or just a good googler?