Replying to
@tante@tldr.nettime.org it reminds me of the divide between nobles and peasants. Except less self-aware
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Bradley Schaefer
@soulcutter@ruby.social
mastodon 4.7.3He/him. Ruby developer, sometimes engineering manager, and recovering cynic.
Outside of tech: dad, reader of fantasy/sci-fi, player of videogames, haver of tattoos, and fan of baseball and stand-up comedy.
480 Followers
515 Following
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Joined November 05, 2022
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Something I'm really struggling with right now as a part of a large engineering org is that almost every single individual's development workflow has diverged _significantly_. The divide isn't so simple as "using AI" and "human coding", and it's not just a sliding scale. It's which tools are used, how they're used, what the expectations are for the humans, and for the teams, every step of the way.
Almost every week people show off some new tool or approach and it's dizzying.
Today is a bad day to use MM-DD-YY format.
27-07-26
It looks incredibly like yesterday's date to anyone who sanely expects year to come first ala ISO-8601
2026-07-27
MM-DD-YY is _terrible_ .
I beg you, never use that format.
I’ve never been able to articulate with specificity about my concern with using your database as your job queue, and I came across an article with concrete examples of how postgres can break down under queueing workloads:
https://richyen.com/postgres/2026/05/04/postgres_job_queue.html
There is nothing about ruby in this article, but I suspect (without verifying) it’s 100% applicable to rails database job queues.
I spent most of my day redesigning a backend authentication library which was a total yak shave stemming from changing a constant integer.
I might accidentally be a security engineer now. 😅
I met Brian Poindexter today at our local Summerfest. He’s running for Congress to unseat the odious Max Miller, and more importantly to fight for working class families. He’s a real one - genuine guy, not a career politician. When we took this picture he told us to make sure to post it and spread the word
Replying to
@andrewnez@mastodon.social I was going to link you to this, but haha! It's you.
https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/06/github-actions-package-manager.html
Replying to
@davidcelis@xoxo.zone the end summary is such a business-speak lie
Plan prices aren’t changing. You’ll have full control over what you spend, tools to track your usage, and the option to purchase more AI Credits if and when you need them.
It’s totally changing. You’ll either pay the same, or most-likely more money. What your plan gets you is fundamentally different, and “less”
I do not love that Google Gemini calls its AI skills or whatever “gems”. Not to be confused with Ruby’s gems.
Now I have to mentally disambiguate in business conversations depending on context. I only care about the Ruby ones, and have little interest in peoples’ markdown files.
Hot take: the VAST majority of the time you should be deleting database records and avoiding creating a `deleted_at` flag and carrying deleted things in your database.
Once you have active/inactive records, all your queries get more complicated, and you need to think a LOT more about how the lifecycle of these records works in connection with its relations and other biz logic.
It gets hairy quickly.
Yellow onions are superior to red onions.
Replying to
@ThePlant no, this is the social media equivalent of email chain letter. Write something worth responding to or retooting
I successfully used jj to rebase a commit (revset?), arrange some commits, and squash. Pushing changes to github was/is still a slight headscratcher to me - it’s at the intersection of jj and git - but still, I got it done and it wasn’t too painful.
I like the jj log . There’s still git-like stuff I’m trying to either translate or unlearn for jj, but I’m less lost than yesterday. 🦾
Replying to
@Schneems I posted a snarky response to the other RC sponsorship post today, but deleted it after reading this.
I’m not forgetting, but with the executive director gone I can start to feel that right decisions will be made. I have nothing against her as a person, but I do think her leadership was poor in her tenure, leading to the fracture. There’s nothing today’s RC can do about that now.
So, rather than being snarky, I will be silent/not a detractor, and privately root for this turnaround.
Replying to
@getalifemike@urbanists.social relevant: https://www.404media.co/doge-cuts-unleashed-a-deadly-wave-of-violence-across-africa-study-finds/
I have so much to say about this, but I try not to be negative in this space.
Replying to
@TOrynski@mastodon.scot sure, but I’ve heard the toys for the age range 100+ are mind blowing.
Replying to
@relistan@mstdn.social I've been thinking about event-based systems lately! I want to apply that pattern a lot more in my work.
I think in many systems there's a projection or compacted record that is used primarily, and I'd suggest there is an event that would delete that projected data but leave the events intact. Is that sort of the shape of what you're thinking?
There's a lot of "it depends", and I did hedge by saying "the vast majority of the time".
Replying to
@arichtman@eigenmagic.net Yeah, I think the bookmark would follow the working set's commit in that case (but I'm not positive).
I feel like there's a divide between folks who make that decision "up front" and people who decide after they're done "this is good". jj is more-inclined towards the "up front" workflow
A stray brain cell fired, reminding me of the BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon, which got me wondering what “Seth Able” was doing. Did some sleuthing, and I guess the developers name was “Seth Robinson” (not “Able” - did I misremember? A pseudonym? Anyway).
He’s in Japan and has a small game company, posting regularly on his website https://rtsoft.com/
I picked up jj to learn today, and have gotten lost pretty quick. Learning is hard - it’s hard to conjure a beginner’s mind when you’ve got a fairly well-built mental model in something similar
It’s not true that half of people are below average intelligence.
Half of people are below median intelligence, though.
Replying to
@jasongorman you click on one David Hasselhoff news article, and suddenly you get Hasselhoff ads and articles pushed at you for the next 6 months. Sometimes it’s not even a clic, it’s lingering with a link on your screen for too long.
I mean even if I like the Hoff, I’d don’t need him pushed into my life like that.
Replying to
@weirdestate I love this one. I do think it’d be easier to back down the stairs than descend forward-facing, but otherwise very cool character
Replying to
@jwilker I got a couple others too - lots of great looking stuff for (too) cheap. Lesbians in Space cracked me up (but not for me) - something for everyone heh.
Thanks for sharing
Well crap, my eagerly awaited 3DS Fire Emblem game arrived… and was an empty jewel case.
Son of a
Replying to
@francois I’ll keep trying! I do have the feeling “there’s something good here”, but have to rewire some stuff in my brain
Am I the only one who feels this way about Kalita Wave coffee filters?
Replying to
I wouldn't reject somebody else's PR that uses the butthole, but if I write Hash.new who the hell has a problem with that? Assholes, and rubocop.
It’s that time of year again when I have to decide whether or not to renew gardengnomefeet.com
Replying to
@cooperx86@mastodon.social hm. Thanks for this summary. It sounds like something I will never be interested in, heh
I enjoyed The Odyssey. It’s a good theater movie. For a long movie I thought it flew by. Oh, and the sound design was excellent all the way through.
Replying to
@pointlessone@status.pointless.one I love this, haha. Do you think it would JIT down to the same, though?
I still prefer writing expressively, rather enforcing the best micro optimization when it’s less-readable.
Replying to
Nobody wants to bookmark an empty commit, right? Even if it kept the default behavior, it could WARN me "you probably want to do this", similar to how other commands can have warnings about what you probably want.
Replying to
This is just my gut feeling, feel free to shoot it down with actual data
Replying to
@jgarber @sstephenson thanking dhh is weird (sigh), and I just let that ai stuff wash over me. What stood out for me was the executive director departing. I’ll take it.