Ruby Memes 2026-10-15: Pencils Down!

The Smart Rubyist #1: I prefer to be in the top 10% developers who train AI with new ideas

The Smart Rubyist #1: I prefer to be in the top 10% developers who train AI with new ideas

https://x.com/AndyObtiva/status/2109689588474163310?s=20

The Smart Rubyist #1: I prefer to be in the top 10% developers who train AI with new ideas #ai #ruby #rails #rubyonrails #smart #rubyist #smartrubyist https://t.co/rNVRrVPeMi

— Andy Obtiva (Code Master) (@AndyObtiva) October 12, 2026

Related: Dissecting DHH's RailsWorld 2026 Keynote Speech from a Software Engineering Point Of View

Ruby Memes 2026-09-30: DHH's AI Vision

 

Montreal.rb September 2026: Ruby Version Managers in 2026

The video and slides for the Montreal.rb September 2026 talk "Ruby Version Managers in 2026" have been published! 

Talk Description:

It is often useful to install more than one Ruby version on one's machine, whether to explore newer Ruby versions before committing to them on a Rails project, or to support multiple Rails projects running on multiple Rubies. Additionally, being able to scope gems by a Ruby project can be very helpful in ensuring the safety of running a Ruby app in complete isolation from other Ruby apps. The Ruby ecosystem contains multiple Ruby Version Managers that help with installing Ruby and scoping Ruby gems by project. This talk will cover the common Ruby Version Manager options in 2026, such as RVM, RBENV, CHRUBY, and ASDF.

YouTube Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFMQOkEZUSc

Presentation Slides: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vR_uc-FSdvKmMT0gzRRK-qJ-JSUsPgrOeDVNKQHoUoLIbYLvI_YF2lQB9qJ09_rz4ir_T2v_qwVq4zN/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=60000

October 2026 Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup Announced: A Peek Under the Hood of Solid Queue

The October Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup has been announced. The next meetup talk will be "A Peek Under the Hood of Solid Queue" by Robert Jakubowicz. Also, the meetup will include a book club discussion at the end for the O'Reilly book "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" 2nd edition. Read the first 60 pages for this meetup if you want to participate. 

RSVP link: 

https://www.meetup.com/montrealrb/events/313731032/ 

Talk Description: 

In this talk, we'll explore the source code of the Solid Queue gem and look at the lifecycle of a Rails background job. We'll look at concurrency, the interactions between the supervisor, dispatchers, and workers, and how coordination happens between them. 

This talk assumes you've used or are familiar with background jobs in a Rails application. 

Speaker Bio: 

Robert Jakubowicz is a Full Stack Software Developer with over 15 years of experience building and scaling web applications. 

His interests range from product engineering that improves user experience and drives business outcomes to distributed systems, databases, and web performance at scale.

Dissecting DHH's RailsWorld 2026 Keynote Speech from a Software Engineering Point Of View

Dissecting DHH's RailsWorld 2026 Keynote Speech from a Software Engineering Point Of View:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsM8Ej-em8I

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles 2026-09-17

The life of a Ruby dev in 2026! I made an effort to post a recorded talk that I gave at my local Montreal Ruby meetup as a helpful gesture for the benefit of the Ruby community at large. And, I suddenly see a comment (included below) get posted in the Ruby subreddit, which reeks of hate and discrimination against me personally and has no respectful conduct of appreciation for a service done during my free time for the benefit of others. Who allows trash people like that into the Ruby subreddit?!! So, the commenter literally discriminates against me and expresses hate against me, saying he wants me to "drop out". I don't even know the commenter. I never did anything bad to hurt the commenter. Quite the contrary. I posted a helpful post for the benefit of the commenter and everyone in the Ruby community. Still, the commenter wants me to "drop out". Next, he mentions that the Montreal Ruby meetup has dwindled to a handful of people after I took over it with a very hateful negative tone, when in fact, without me, the group had ZERO attendees and was dead for years, and I revived it in 2022 with the help of another co-organizer, growing the group again to more than ZERO attendees. That's the opposite of what that commenter tried to allude to. Let alone, I am literally the most consistently present Ruby dev at those meetups, and I am the only Ruby dev from the Montreal Ruby community in the last 4 years who has presented at RubyConf multiple times and has supported many Ruby open-source projects while winning awards for 2 of them from Matz. 

Besides, even if the group had dwindled down to a few members compared to pre-Covid numbers. That is the responsibility of the attendees slacking and switching to other languages. I know a number of past attendees of the meetup who have switched professionally to Elixir, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and other programming languages. While I am disappointed in their decision, it is 100% their loss not mine if they don't use Ruby anymore and don't attend the Ruby meetup. I still believe Ruby is the most fluent, expressive, elegant, productive, and maintainable programming language for general business application development, and I think that other languages are either inferior, like JavaScript & Python, or are considered premature optimizations that aren't truly needed in 90% of business usecases, like Elixir and TypeScript. Still, if that's what other devs chose, it's their responsibility alone.

The haters in the Ruby community have shown their face very explicitly now and it's no longer a matter of pretending to be non-haters while hiding under plausible deniability. The hate is very explicit, real, and fully exposed for everyone to see.

So, who allowed the haters into the Ruby subreddit community and encouraged their hate by tolerating hateful comments that have a very negative tone like the comment shared above?

I checked the list of Moderators, and here is what I found from among older moderators that have been around for a long time (not all of them, but some of them for sure, excluding the AutoModerator).

Those moderators have allowed hate to fester in the Ruby subreddit for years while giving a group of haters a free pass to post hateful disrespectful comments with a very hateful discriminatory tone against a number of Ruby experts like me who have done more for the benefit of the Ruby community than all the haters combined through talks at RubyConf and RailsConf and open-source projects. I call them out for doing a very shitty job. They totally suck. 

None of the haters in the Ruby subreddit would pass the minimum criteria of respectful conduct to get hired at any of the good Ruby shops I've worked at. So, why allow any people who don't pass the minimum criteria of respectful conduct to be hired at good companies into a Ruby subreddit to begin with? Those people are no different from random hobos and drug criminals one encounters on the streets with their hateful discriminatory negative conduct. So, what on earth are they doing in a Ruby subreddit if they don't pass the minimum code of conduct needed to be hired at any respectful ethical good companies! This is either a case of double-standards, which would implicate some of the moderators above as practicing discrimination, or a case of intentionally simping to unqualified people to feel like "heroes" (the hero worship complex). It's bad in either way. Be better!!!

If the Ruby community was healthy, a Ruby dev oughta be able to share a video they recorded for the benefit of the Ruby community in peace and with complete dignity and respect. Unfortunately, that's not the case in 2026. The Ruby community has deteriorated into trash because of terrible mods like the ones above.

Montreal.rb February 2026 Crystal: Ruby with Static Typing

The video and slides for the Montreal.rb February 2026 talk "Crystal: Ruby with Static Typing" have been published! Keep in mind this was more of a "hey, I discovered something cool" talk at a casual Ruby meetup, not a comprehensive tutorial at a software conference. The talk has so much material (that could fill a 3 day bootcamp) that it had to fly through the material very quickly, which can be jarring. The real exciting bit to any real Rubyist though is that Crystal has similar syntax to Ruby's and similar performance to that of C/C++/Rust. That is extremely exciting and awesome!!! It means Rubyists don't have to struggle through C or Rust's syntax to get performance enhancement as they have a much more elegant option in Crystal.

YouTube Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UwWbQi-eEo

Presentation Slides: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRVWX6mMfCNA5WQo3q1PVu4ImlOq-wG_9Ekd6bRgF2U8fQoeq7FsHJ0z4Bx2Njgw-4ZUEHC64t9AOTx/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=60000

Talk Description:

Crystal is a relatively new programming language that aims to emulate Ruby's syntax as much as possible while supporting Static Typing.

Although Ruby remains the most convenient and productive programming language for business app development due to handling types automatically with Dynamic Typing, in about 1% of Business Software Development cases, Crystal can help out when there is a need for much higher performance in response-time-sensitive and performance-intensive computations.

In a recent RubyConf keynote speech, Matz (the creator of Ruby) compared using a Dynamically Typed language like Ruby to driving a car with an automatic stickshift and using a Statically Typed language like C to driving a car with a manual stickshift. Most of the time, the convenience and productivity benefits of automatic stickshift are more desirable to deliver value in a timely fashion to customers. But, every once in a while, driving manual could be a very useful alternative for the few cases that need it. As such, it is valuable to learn Crystal for the sake of augmenting Ruby with a language that trades off some programmer friendliness for performance whenever needed.

This talk will provide a general overview of the Crystal programming language and show some Crystal code examples.

Video: Glimmer DSL for Web 0.10.5 Before & After Mutations

Release video for Glimmer DSL for Web (Award-Winning Frontend Framework for Ruby on Rails) version 0.10.5 (Before & After Mutations): https://youtu.be/BJ0oSsyddMg

GitHub: https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-web

RubyGem: https://rubygems.org/gems/glimmer-dsl-web

Happy Glimmering!

Support Award-Winning Open-Source Projects for the Benefit of the Ruby Community!

I got a weird message from a dev on LinkedIn sharing with me a Frontend UI he built in Opal Ruby, supposedly as inspiration by my library Glimmer DSL for Web (award-winning Opal Frontend Framework for Rails). Except, he said at the end that he didn't use Glimmer DSL for Web, yet used Opal Ruby directly. The guy claimed he wanted to "experiment" with not relying on the MVC pattern. Except, every Software Engineer worth his salt should already know the difference between View code that mixes Model and Controller concerns by not relying on MVC (like Views from the early PHP era) and View code that separates them following MVC, which is what makes MVC so vital to ensuring correct separation of concerns, maintainability, readability, and simplicity. Such an experiment does not provide any new information that wasn't known 20 years ago. I took a look at his codebase. The code was very horrid and horrible. It was over-complicated. It was exactly what I built Glimmer DSL for Web to simplify and avoid. 

This is a big problem in the Ruby community today. Not building on top of good ideas already implemented and available in some open-source projects, yet re-inventing the wheel unnecessarily with inferior solutions. For example, I ran into a Rubyist who rewrote ERB to supposedly "improve" (inside-the-box-thinking) instead of ascending higher to better solutions (outside-the-box-thinking), like using an HTML DSL such as Glimmer's or Phlex's, objectively superior and more elegant for so many reasons. At RailsConf 2014, one of the keynote speakers, Yahuda Katz, alluded to how Rails provides a framework that elevates people with basic building blocks ready to go so they could start constructing a building with the first 10 or 40 floors done already (not the exact words, but that was the general idea). That's exactly what Glimmer DSL for Web aims to provide for the Frontend of Rails web apps! It offers all the building blocks needed to build any Frontend Web UI with the simplest code syntax possible in any programming language. So, when people ignore it, they just go back to starting at the first floor. Extremely unintelligent.

I told that guy that he wasn't really inspired by me if he didn't use Glimmer DSL for Web. I asked him why he was seeking a non-MVC solution. He didn't respond. I messaged him again on LinkedIn a number of weeks later reminding him he didn't respond. He never got back to me. So weird! This came across as the guy intentionally trolling me with this whole exercise, just to intentionally create an example of not using my library where the library is most perfect to use. I would literally delete and simplify a lot of his code if his web UI Frontend was built in Glimmer DSL for Web. He didn't seem sincere in his message given his lack of follow through. Needless to say, after I did some research on the guy, I found out he's an uneducated person with no university degrees in any computing related fields (like Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering or even computing heavy fields like Math, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, or Biology), meaning basic Software Engineering concepts that are expected as foundational knowledge in professional Software Engineers are not available in his repertoire, which would explain why he was trying to do something as senseless as avoiding MVC.

Avoid being like this guy and help open-source projects that have already solved interesting problems with very good innovative solutions that won awards! Especially a Ruby project that won an award by the creator of the programming language it uses. Such projects have already been proven. They just need your support to go further for the benefit of the Software Engineering community as a whole. Use them and provide feedback. Any time you spend not using such projects is wasted on inferior solutions. Build 3rd party libraries on top of them. Contribute features and bug fixes to them. Contribute documentation. Don't just branch off on your own and re-invent the wheel if it isn't necessary or useful. That's very unintelligent and counterproductive for the Ruby community.

Glimmer DSL for Web 0.10.1 Auto-Conversion of Date/Time Element Values + New Sample

Glimmer DSL for Web 0.10.1 Release Video: https://youtu.be/Tk8mjOzhd5I

GitHub: https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-web

RubyGem: https://rubygems.org/gems/glimmer-dsl-web

Happy Glimmering!

One of The Dumbest Questions Asked on Ruby/Rails Subreddits

One of the dumbest questions I see asked on the Ruby/Rails subreddits is "Are Ruby & Rails still worth learning today?" (plus other variations, such as "Are Ruby and Rails still relevant today?" and "Are Ruby and Rails dead?"). Are you stupid!?!! Obviously, if you ask such a question inside an online community of devs who make a living with these technologies, they are going to answer "yes" (to the first version of the question)! But, more importantly, any Software Engineer worth his or her salt would be able to answer such a question for themselves by doing their own research, spending an hour or a few minutes at least trying out the new technology they are asking about, and building a list of pros/cons/trade-offs to compare the technology to others. Lastly, if you rely on the words of others instead of your own ability to reason in Software Engineering, then you are letting others think for you instead of thinking for yourself, meaning you are surrendering your competitive advantage and weeding yourself out of the competitive pool, so it would be a bad idea to hire you regardless of what skills you have in Software Development. This is how idiots end up using a terrible garbage library like React.js in an otherwise pristine elegant Ruby on Rails web app codebase. Honestly, if you're too lazy as to answer that question for yourself while idiotically posing the question to a group of devs where the majority would answer "yes" to learning Ruby/Rails, then you won't be considered or get hired at any of the good jobs I've worked at. Initiative and analysis skills matter a lot in Software Engineering job candidates and nothing says there is zero initiative and no analysis skills than lazily asking a question that a Software Engineer should be able to answer for themselves. 

XO Ruby joins RubyConf/RailsWorld as Another Exclusive Discriminatory Unexcellent Conference

So, I got contacted by the organizer of the XO Ruby conference (aka Travelling Ruby), Pascal Laliberté, on meetup.com because I organize the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup and am a Montreal-based Expert Ruby Software Engineer. He said XO Ruby is coming to Montreal and asked me for help with it. We end up meeting in a video conference call. 

To help out, I indicated that I asked my company to consider sponsoring the conference. Furthermore, I volunteered to give a talk as a Montreal-local Ruby Expert (given I have won 2 awards by Matz and have spoken 4 times at RubyConf and 2 times at RailsConf, plus 2 times this year at Ruby conferences in Europe, including this talk that I shared with him); I offered to ask my company's former CTO (who is still with us in a different position) to give a "Founder" topic talk (one of the topics of the conference) about how to be a Tech Founder for a Ruby on Rails project (our previous Montreal-based Fintech company is a huge success story as we got bought by a larger Silicon Valley Fintech 1.5 years ago that is a leader in the Credit Union AI/Agent Conversational Software space); and I offered to recommend other potential Ruby speakers from Montreal. 

After everything I volunteered to help with, Pascal strangely seemed to push back against me giving a Ruby talk at the Montreal-based XO Ruby even though there are empty slots left and I am literally one of the biggest representers of Ruby in the Montreal Tech community today (not many Ruby Software Engineers from Montreal present at RubyConf like I have in 2022/2023/2024, and no one from Montreal as far as I know has won awards by Matz, the creator of Ruby). I've also put in many many hours and days into keeping the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup going, including giving extra presentations myself whenever needed, and that's in addition to the many many hours and days I've put into Ruby Open-Source Projects. Honestly, if an interviewee at a job interview I am conducting had reacted with that sort of apathy after hearing my accomplishments, they'd be cut immediately from the interview process due to being apathetic instead of passionate, and due to not appreciating excellence, as only unexcellent people don't appreciate excellence. Truly excellent people always appreciate excellence and excellent accomplishments, while maintaining an attitude of curiosity about them.

I asked him how many talk slots are left in the conference. He said there are about 9 slots and about 4-5 are left, including empty slots for the "Open-Source Projects" topic. Then, he started trying to explain that he wanted a very technical Ruby talk (it's a weird note given Glimmer DSL for Web is one of the most technically interesting and innovative Ruby projects ever with its ultralight, expressive, and minimalistic DSLs). So, I told him I've given talks at many Ruby/Rails conferences and meetups on a variety of topics, including Domain Driven Design, Design Patterns, Object Oriented Design, Desktop Development, Frontend Development, and DSL Engine Meta-Programming, plus I have literally won an award from Matz, the creator of Ruby, last year for my Open-Source Project, Glimmer DSL for Web (in addition to winning another award a few years ago for Glimmer DSL for LibUI), so I can easily give a strong Ruby technical presentation. The weirdest and creepiest thing is Pascal's face was so apathetic when I was recounting all my Ruby accomplishments as if they don't matter. That's not the reaction of a strong ethical Software Engineer who cares about the fact that past Ruby accomplishments have benefited many customers and continue to benefit customers directly or indirectly today. 

Then, Pascal said he could not guarantee a slot for me despite having empty slots, believe it or not, without providing any valid reasons! I told him given that I am 100% qualified to give a talk at the conference, this is discrimination! After all, if I wasn't qualified, or even had some competition, I could understand not being guaranteed a slot. But, I am the only one in the Montreal community who has won awards from Matz, my new innovative open-source project has no competition, and no Software Engineers in Montreal have represented Ruby as much as I have in recent years through continued effort in fostering the local Ruby community with running the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup. Meaning, this is 100% discrimination. 

To give a point of comparison, I was literally hired instantly at my current company a number of years ago (when we were still a small startup before acquisition) because my boss appreciated all my Ruby accomplishments and knew that I had a large enough body of work in the Ruby community (many RubyConf/RailsConf talks and Ruby open-source projects) that demonstrated my Ruby skills beyond the shadow of a doubt and warranted instant acceptance of me. My boss back then who was the CTO at the time is a Super-Duper Ultra Strong Software Engineer/Architect/CTO by the way, so he knew what he was doing. 

Any normal competent ethical strong Software Engineer would have been absolutely excited to have me talk at their Ruby conference (like the organizers of wroclove.rb and RubyConf Austria), especially that I have won an award from Matz himself, the creator of Ruby. They would have been 100% curious to learn what the award-winning project is all about and would have wanted me to share that knowledge with others in the Ruby community for the benefit of customers (not for selfish reasons). 

I responded to Pascal further by telling him that his conference practices discrimination and is an unexcellent garbage conference that is way below my standards for how a Ruby conference should be (it should be non-discriminatory and appreciative of excellence that wins awards from the creator of Ruby).  So, I don't want to participate in it anymore nor help it. The fact that the conference doesn't immediately accept a talk by someone who won awards from the creator of the programming language that is the reason for the conference existing means it is a trash conference. It can't possibly be sharing top-level Ruby excellent knowledge, yet lower-level mediocre knowledge. I told him I was ending the video conference call because discrimination is not acceptable anywhere in Canada. It's funny how this creepy unethical guy was trying to act as if he's "more important" than me when in fact he probably doesn't have half my accomplishments. This reminds me of this blog post about entitled people in the Ruby community, which applies to him as well.

The crazy thing is he tried to interject and say things about "my behavior" towards the end of the video call when in fact his behavior was already bad through discrimination and lack of appreciation for excellence, so if his behavior is already bad, he is in no position to judge anyone else's "behavior"! My behavior is exemplary in the Montreal Ruby community over many years.

One other thing worthy of note that relates to discrimination is that at one point, Pascal tried to focus the conversation on the pronunciation of my last name, which felt uncomfortable and felt as if he was trying to pigeon hole me into whatever "country of origin" my heritage belongs to instead of just treating me as a 100% equal Canadian (as I am a 100% Canadian after all). I have just completed my employer's yearly training for workplace prevention of abuse, harassment, and discrimination. And, such behavior came up in the training as "discrimination based on the country of origin". When he asked about how my last name is pronounced, I told him my last name is just pronounced like it's written in English, with the end being silent, similarly to the pronunciation of the word "melee" (meaning a skirmish). To be honest, over the years, I have received that sort of discrimination from a number of people in Canada. It's disappointing that some people in my country, Canada, discriminate against others based on their country of origin, sometimes in very subtle ways with plausible deniability (this was blogged about as covert discrimination). I had less experience of that discrimination when I lived in the USA in the past during the first 10 years of my career. It's ironic that the international stereotype of Canadians is that they are nice people, but in actuality, some of them (not all) apply "niceness" with a double standard (which is not nice), treating people in their in-group nicely and treating others in their out-group not nicely at all. That's something I have experienced by some of the people who work for Shopify in the past (this blog post by Paul Battley and this blog post by André Arko confirm my experience of Shopify being mean). Fortunately, I work with very nice people at my company's Montreal branch and I have a very nice French Canadian girlfriend too.

Another thing worthy of note is that this XO Ruby conference is associated with Jim Remsik who runs Falgrant. In a past RubyConf that I presented at, at which I met Jim Remsik, I literally saw swag/stickers by Flagrant that included the F word, which were very unprofessional and disrespectful. Professional Software Engineers who don't make it a habit to drop F bombs at work would not use that sort of language in business marketing material as that immediately reduces a company like Flagrant into a trash company that spreads unethical trash with every interaction they have with others. I removed Jim Remsik from my LinkedIn in the past after I noticed that just as I removed Pascal Laliberté from my LinkedIn today after our video call.

I have mentioned this before; from the perspective of discriminators who have an unconscious or conscious in-group/out-group bias, it doesn't matter if someone from the out-group has launched rockets to the moon successfully with excellent effort, as they would still get treated as if they are unequal unimportant people and as if their accomplishments don't matter (in spite of having practically benefited many customers directly or indirectly with their accomplishments). 

In conclusion, to avoid enabling discrimination and unexcellence in the Ruby community, avoid attending, sponsoring, and presenting at XO Ruby. Also, know that it is a mediocre garbage conference that is way below the high quality standards of Ruby Experts like me for excellence and ethics. 

P.S. Of course, as with my other blog posts, to prove that I'm on the right side of things, I acknowledge that nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Meaning, I am always open to the idea of forgiving people if they redeem themselves. So, if Pascal was to apologize about his discrimination/lack-of-appreciation-for-excellence and allow the most active Expert Ruby Software Engineer in Montreal to present at a Montreal Ruby conference, I'd be happy to retract this blog post. Otherwise, if I am wrong about something and it was kindly, patiently, and respectfully explained to me with genuine loving intentions, I'd be happy to reverse my position too. 

Ruby Memes 2026-07-30: One Bad Monkey Spoils The Bunch

One Bad Monkey Spoils The Bunch! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

This Ruby meme is a variation on the common expression "One Bad Apple Spoils The Bunch" that is noting how introducing inferior devs into a Software Engineering team ends up reducing the entire team's skill and intelligence to the least common denominator skill and intelligence of the weakest links, thus corrupting the whole team the same way a bad apple gradually ruins a bunch of healthy apples when placed with them. 

It's so true when it comes to Ruby on Rails development teams that suddenly make the bad decision of hiring a React.js dev for Frontend work one day even though React.js contradicts the Ruby Way and Rails Way and JavaScript is inferior to Ruby!!! The Ruby on Rails Software Engineers that were once smart suddenly become React.js code monkeys and start forgetting all the best practices and principles of Ruby on Rails due to getting used to React.js breaking them with its inferior over-engineered ways. So indeed, one bad monkey ends up spoiling the bunch!

That's why I strive very hard to avoid hiring even one bad dev on my team as I notice immediate degradation in everyone's work quality as soon as one bad dev enters a team, so we keep a tight ship on my team instead.

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles 2026-07-28

"The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles" becomes "The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles" as it expands to cover embarrassing interactions by bad Ruby/Rails devs all across social media and the real world, exposing rudeness, meanness, discrimination, and unexcellence/unintelligence in the Ruby/Rails worldwide community. The goal of course is to call that out to discourage in favor of true Rubyist MINASWAN attitudes and behaviors instead (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice).

While going through the yearly Bystander Intervention training for my job, I stumbled upon "Persistent unwanted personal questions" as a form of verbal abuse. 

I have to confess I recently experienced that at a Ruby tech event. A bad Ruby dev (the kind you'd find on the Ruby/Rails subreddits) kept rudely asking me what my salary was after I told him I won awards by Matz (the creator of Ruby) for my open-source projects. Any normal Rubyist would have asked me about my open-source projects instead, just out of normal Software Engineering curiosity to learn better ways of serving customers with Ruby. Instead, he kept prying very hard about my salary and was unwilling to accept the fact that it's rude to ask people he doesn't know for their salary. 

After I gave him multiple examples of how previous companies I worked at had policies against people asking about salaries because knowing the answer could cause envy and create bad relationships, citing a real story of that happening at one of my previous jobs when someone's salary leaked, he pivotted towards asking me if "I felt uncomfortable answering". He kept insisting on me answering that new question instead going forward. The person was already coming across by that point as a very awful rude unprofessional person due to literally attempting to make me feel uncomfortable with incessent questioning.

He sounded like he desperately wanted to "win the conversation/situation" in any way possible (of me having won awards he hasn't won, instead of being humble/happy for me) by trying to make me "look bad" as someone who is "weak" due to being "uncomfortable". That revealed to me what his original intention and ulterior motive was behind asking for my salary: He just wanted to make me "look bad" as I'm sure he was going to tell me my salary was too low no matter what answer I would have provided, as a trap, to insult me and render me "unimportant" even if I've won awards by Matz. As if the awards were about me "being important" or "making more money" as opposed to ensuring I serve customers with the best quality work possible (which is what awards really encourage from the perspective of truly ethical excellent people who don't prioritize greed or pride over customer service). 

What a ridiculous interaction that was! I finally answered him by saying "it's not about me being uncomfortable. It's just a bad practice/etiquette to ask for someone's salary, especially if you don't know them well, and I won't endorse/enable that practice by answering the question even if I were comfortable with answering it."

The dude confessed to me eventually that he doesn't work in Ruby anymore because he lost a political battle at work, so he is now using Python even though Ruby is more effective than Python at building his work application. What a loser! That's exactly the kind of pushover rude loser my team would never hire and would screen for during the interviewing phase of hiring. We don't want devs who lose political battles for what technology decisions are best for serving customers. I have won many many such political battles at my company over the years, and it was because I'm no pushover. A bad dev being unethical/rude goes hand in hand with other bad attributes like being a pushover, which is why we never hire such devs in the first place.

RubyConf Austria 2026 Talk Video: Frontend Ruby on Rails with Glimmer DSL for Web — Andy Maleh

My RubyConf Austria 2026 talk has been published on YouTube! What if your frontend was just... Ruby?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTukq5AcSK0

You can find the talk slides over here:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-austria-2026-frontend-ruby-on.html

A Supporter Sympathizes with My Discrimination by RubyConf 2026

I am thankful to the Software Engineer who shared a very supportive comment regarding my experience of discrimination by RubyConf 2026. 

RubyConf 2026 Is Not a Safe Environment for Everyone

RubyConf 2026 is not a safe environment for everyone. They have an in-group and an out-group. If you're in the in-group, they will treat you well and accept talk proposals by you even if you don't have top-level skills in Software Engineering. If you're in the out-group, it doesn't matter if you launch rockets to the moon successfully on your own or win the approval of Matz himself, you will be excluded and discriminated against: 

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-has-joined-railsconfrailsworld.html

If that weren't true, then RubyConf's folks would not be afraid to address the issue of feeling discriminated against for the benefit of keeping their reputation clean. Alas, like all discriminators out there, they cower and hide instead of addressing the issue because the discrimination is 100% real. A discriminator usually discriminates because they don't see everyone as equal or because they're frauds and don't have the energy to treat everyone equally, so if discrimination is brought up to them, they won't take it seriously. 

Respectful treatment means to treat someone well and fairly for what they have accomplished and what they offer. I realize I could buy a ticket to the conference, but rejecting a talk by me that won the approval of Matz, the creator of the Ruby programming language that is the reason for the conference existing means I have earned the right to talk about the subject that I won an award from Matz for. Otherwise, I am being robbed and discriminated against. This is no different from how the MLB (Major League Baseball) used to mistreat Afro Americans and relegate them to playing in the Negro league instead of the Major League. Telling someone who can perform at the major league level they are unaccepted as a player there, but could attend if they want is most definitely discrimination 100%. 

By the way, under other circumstances, if I had no project to talk about, I would be 100% OK with attending RubyConf instead of presenting as I would normally want to support other speakers and learn from them. But, in 2026, the issue is if they rejected a talk by someone who won an award from Matz at a near impossible international competition to win, it means they probably rejected a lot of top-quality talks and accepted many subpar mediocre quality talks. I don't want to go to a conference in which I become mediocre by attending mediocre talks. Excellence and unexcellence are infectious. The next thing I know after hanging out with unexcellent speakers at RubyConf 2026 is I'll become unexcellent and subpar like them. This is no different from entire mediocre communities like the React.js comunity and others where the blind are leading the blind into a pit, but everyone is celebrating the popularity of mediocre ideas and technologies (meaning they only perceive themselves as being smart, but objectively, they're all performing suboptimally for customers and don't provide the best smartest work). No thanks!!!

RubyConf 2026 is a cesspool of discirmination and exclusion:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/07/reminder-that-rubyconf-2026-is-cesspool.html

One might think that RubyConf's folks are too busy to look into the discrimination claim. But in fact, I contacted them about the perceived discrimination about a month ago. They had all the time of the world to look into the discrimination and lack of appreciation of excellence (an equally serious matter). Also, if they claim to be "excellent", "inclusive" and "diverse", then looking into discrimination and lack of appreciation of excllence would be the top priority of RubyConf, alas they're a mediocre discriminatory conference in 2026 that doesn't put excellence and lack of discrimination at the top of their priorities, just like any dictator at a third world country would act. They're no different. It's a fraud of a conference in 2026.

The fact that it doesn't bother them to have these blog posts published as to want to contact me and settle the issue of discrimination against me proves they are discriminators 100% because discriminators aren't bothered by having discrimination reported to them, but real non-discriminators put ethics and good equal treatment of everyone first above everything else.

I have talked extensively about covert discrimination in the Ruby community in the past, including microdiscrimination / personal discrimination (meaning discrimination against a single person, which makes the discrimination escape protections available for minority groups). Ignoring someone without attempting to resolve things amicably definitely falls under covert discrimination:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-spot-covert-discrimination-in.html

Ruby Open-Source Innovation Process Expectation vs Reality

Expectation regarding the Ruby open-source innovation process:

1- I stumble upon a problem at my job in our Ruby application.

2- I build a solution for it in an open-source project (e.g. the ability to write the Frontend with a Ruby Frontend Framework instead of using an inferior JavaScript library like React).

3- I win an award for my open-source project by Matz, the creator of Ruby.

4- I get accepted to present my open-source project at Ruby conferences.

5- Ruby Software Engineers adopt the new highly innovative open-source project, benefiting themselves and their customers greatly. 

Reality regarding the Ruby open-source innovation process:

It doesn't matter how innovative an open-source project that you build is in your free time as a free beneficial contribution for the Ruby community. Even if your open-source project won an award from the creator of Ruby himself at an international tech competition that very few devs won, the project will get rejected from RubyConf due to discrimination and lack of appreciation for excellence from everyone equally. If you're in their discriminatory out-group instead of their in-group and/or you cover a topic that might upset RubyConf folks who aren't 100% for Ruby (e.g. unseating React/JavaScript with Ruby), you are excluded (even if your talk's project has zero competition), to the detriment of the Ruby community at large. 

Learn more:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-has-joined-railsconfrailsworld.html

Reminder that RubyConf 2026 is a Cesspool of Discrimination and Exclusion

Just a reminder that RubyConf has become a Cesspool of Discrimination and Exclusion. In 2026, it doesn't matter how well accomplished a Ruby Software Engineer is in the Ruby community as even if they win awards by the creator of Ruby himself, if they propose a topic that is taboo with the organizers of RubyConf, they are excluded and discriminated against, without even providing a valid reason for the exclusion. It's one thing if there was an intelligent rational reason. It's another when the organizers just run away in cowardice from addressing the discrimination, which is an act of discrimination/exclusion as ignoring someone is a form of exclusion too. 

The bottom line of RubyConf is that if you are one of the "favored ones" that RubyConf give preferential treatment to, then even if you haven't won any awards from the creator of Ruby or lack complete mastery in Software Engineering, due to discrimination, you are given more importance over someone with more skills and experience. 

That means RubyConf mostly has subpar and suboptimal talks. Intelligent well-accomplished master Software Engineers can't trust that they would receive top-level talks at RubyConf anymore in 2026. 

Basically, RubyConf discriminates against people by seeing them in multiple groups (unlike normal non-discriminatory conferences that always recognize and reward excellence):

• Excluded ones: those people can build a rocket that reaches the moon and win awards from the creator of Ruby, but their efforts are not appreciated by RubyConf or respected as to give them a speaking platform if they propose a topic that is deemed too novel, outside the box, or taboo by RubyConf (like Frontend Ruby Development)
• "Favored ones": those people are liked not always for top-merit or rational reasons, but often for emotional reasons too, a form of discrimination by not seeing everyone as equal, yet deeming some people as above others even without having the best or top-level accomplishments.

Meaning, the "favored ones" will be allowed to "have fun" at the conference and think it is "diverse and inclusive" when in fact it's all a lie. They do it with a double standard offering that to some people only, but not offering well-deserved respect to everyone who earned it, and without even being loving enough as to explain why a talk about an open source project that won an award by Matz himself at a very difficult international competition is getting rejected at the conference as to help the person follow a "better path" in their career if they're truly wrong.

Part of the reason why this is a big problem is because the project they excluded offers an amazingly simple Ruby solution to a very complicated and divisive problem in the Ruby on Rails community. Then again, perhaps it is knocking JavaScript around too much for the liking of fake Rubyists who work at RubyConf and that's the true reason why they "didn't find the project interesting" when in fact Matz the creator of Ruby who's smarter and more accomplished/important than all of them didn't just find it interesting, but was willing to give it an award at a difficult international competition along with other smart judges. 

By attending RubyConf, you're supporting this kind of discrimination and exclusion, plus lack of appreciation of excellence, which means RubyConf is unexcellent and is mostly sharing dumb "yet popular" talks with the public. If anyone has any shred of ethics, self respect, or excellence, they would boycott RubyConf and contact them about this grand discrimination offense committed by them. 

Funny, I told my girlfriend about this a while ago, and she recently asked me if any of the RubyConf folks reached out to me to apologize or explain themselves, expecting that normal people would do that. I told her no, they're just unethical discriminatory cowards (their guys aren't real men) who don't care to explain this or apologize about it. Though, I personally am always open to forgiving someone if they are willing to apologize or explain what I might have done wrong to deserve this. Any other reaction shows apathy and more discrimination (ignoring someone is exclusion, so another form of discrimination). 

In a way, I am very happy I won an award from Matz in 2025 because it exposed the Ruby community for all the discrimination it has against certain people/topics in the community, which even reached RubyConf eventually.