IRB.send :easter_egg, :dancing
I write about Ruby and related programming topics at mattbrictson.com/blog. Here are some articles I’ve posted recently:
- Simplify your Capybara selectors
- 7 Lesser-Known Features and Changes in Rails 7.1
- Automate Rails deployments with GitHub Actions
- The Gateway Pattern
- Advanced techniques for calling HTTP APIs in Ruby
I’m currently working on:
mighty_test – Minitest is the standard testing library for Ruby projects, but it lacks the DX polish that developers have come to expect from modern testing tools. My mighty_test gem gives Minitest a modern CLI with common-sense features like color output, fail-fast, CI integration, and interactive watch mode.
nextgen – I regularly update a Rails app generator with recommendations based on my latest Rails consulting work. Nextgen embraces the fact that every project has different requirements, and offers dozens of interactive options, including Vite for apps that need robust TS/React frontends.
tomo – This is my take on a modern alternative to Capistrano for deploying Rails apps. It focuses on a friendly developer experience: familiar SSH concepts, an intuitive CLI, well-documented extension points, and helpful error messages. I use tomo to deploy many of my side projects.
Other Ruby open source projects that I’ve built and continue to support:
- bundleup is a CLI for Gemfile upgrades. It’s a bit like
yarn upgrade-interactive, but for Bundler. - pgcli-rails plugs into Rails apps to replace the default database console with the more full-featured
pgcli. - gem is a GitHub template for building and maintaining gems.
I also serve as a core contributor and maintainer for the following Ruby projects: