The Future of Rails: Bridging the Generation Gap
Rails has lived through multiple generations. The gap between them is real, but it doesn't have to be a divide. How we bridge these generations will shape Rails' next chapter....
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Bob Roberts
Senior Software Engineer building with Rails & React
Hi, I’m Bob Roberts
I’m a Senior Software Engineer in Madison, Wisconsin. For 15+ years I’ve built web applications with Ruby on Rails for startups and established brands, remote and in-house. I like small, accountable teams, clear outcomes, and shipping iteratively.
What you’ll find here
- Practical Rails patterns you can copy and extend
- Notes on product decisions, trade-offs, and the business side of features
- Mentoring, leadership, and teamwork lessons from the field
Latest Posts
Mentorship in Rails: From One-on-One to At-Scale
How Rails mentorship evolved from intimate one-on-one relationships to scaled approaches. What we kept, what we lost, and what we're still figuring out.
Read more →From Mailing Lists to Slack: How Rails Culture Shifted
The way Rails developers find help has changed completely. What we gained and lost in the shift from mailing lists to instant answers.
Read more →Recent Posts
The Future of Rails: Bridging the Generation Gap
Rails has lived through multiple generations. The gap between them is real, but it doesn't have to be a divide. How we bridge these generations will shape Rails' next chapter....
Read more →
Mentorship in Rails: From One-on-One to At-Scale
How Rails mentorship evolved from intimate one-on-one relationships to scaled approaches. What we kept, what we lost, and what we're still figuring out.
Read more →
From Mailing Lists to Slack: How Rails Culture Shifted
The way Rails developers find help has changed completely. What we gained and lost in the shift from mailing lists to instant answers.
Read more →
Rails Before Bootcamps — A Tight‑Knit Craft Community
How the early Rails community learned in public — and what we can bring forward now.
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What finally fixed our deployment and Sidekiq mess
A week of production chaos taught me that Sidekiq failures aren't always about Sidekiq. Sometimes it's your database connection pool that's starving everything else.
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The Rails Generation Gap: Why It Matters
From mailing lists to bootcamps, the way people enter Rails has changed. That shift affects how we hire, mentor, and build.
Read more →