Write Software Well

Dropping a column from a database table is one of the simplest possible migrations, if you just look at the syntax.

These are my notes from the first few chapters of Refactoring Databases by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage.

Last year, I announced plans to rewrite this blog in Ruby on Rails.

This post is part of a series on Active Storage internals.

Two days ago, Rails added a new feature that makes working with bearer tokens easier.

While going through recently merged PRs in Rails, I came across a new feature from DHH, that handles a common concern in app configuration: managing credentials across different configuration backends in a single, consistent manner.

People usually read fiction before going to bed.

Active Storage is a wonderful library for managing file uploads in Rails.

TL;DR: You can and should use localhost in development.

I recently added sitemaps to a few Rails-based marketing sites I manage for clients, and within weeks, we saw a noticeable boost in search traffic.

While reading the source code for the Maybe project (which is a really good Rails codebase that follows most of the Rails best practices and conventions), I came across this code in the router config file.

Over the past year, I’ve started heavily using AI tools like Cursor and ChatGPT in my everyday development workflow.

While debugging a Rails app, sometimes it's useful to see the full list of callbacks that are set to run before, after, or around a controller action, in the exact sequence they will run.

If you’re an experienced web developer looking to go freelance, or just line up a few solid side gigs, there’s a simple shift that can make your life much easier: stop targeting upwork / individuals / mom-and-pop shops, and sell to businesses.

This is the seventh post in the series on Rails controllers.

This is the sixth post in the series on Rails controllers.

Vibe coding is overrated.

TL;DR: If you don't want to read the >3000 word post, here's the gist: X-Sendfile (or a variation of it, such as X-Accel-Redirect) is an HTTP response header used by web servers (like Nginx, Apache, or Thruster) to efficiently serve files to clients witho…

I’ll start with a confession: I’m still quite new to the world of performance analysis and optimization.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.