A short reflection on a year of writing at Sleeping Potato, what themes emerged, and what became clearer after reorganizing the work.
sleepingpotato.com/one-year-in/
#software
Product engineering is mostly about tradeoffs, incentives, and pragmatism.
I wrote about how idealism helps and where it breaks down inside real businesses.
sleepingpotato.com/product-engi...
#software
The idea that using AI tools makes you a “lesser” developer does not survive a basic look at how software development has evolved. So, I wrote a short piece reflecting on continuums, tradeoffs, and why this moment feels so charged as the year wraps up.
sleepingpotato.com/on-continuum...
#software
I wrote about how teams keep engineering patterns consistent as systems grow. The ones I've seen succeed combine solid guardrails with a culture that reinforces golden paths, onboarding, and clear documentation.
sleepingpotato.com/keeping-patt...
#software #engineering
I’ve heard great things! Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll have to give it some time.
After writing about stepping back from Ruby, I wanted to dig deeper into the long-term impact of leadership and governance on the ecosystem itself.
New post: sleepingpotato.com/when-leaders...
#ruby #rails #opensource #programming
I’ve loved Ruby for two decades, but have decided to take a step back. The language is still beautiful, but the leadership around it isn’t.
I wrote a bit about how I've gotten here and where I'll be focusing instead:
sleepingpotato.com/taking-a-ste...
#ruby #rails
I’m spending less and less time here and more over at hachyderm.io/@tsmango if you’re also on Mastodon.
The team formerly behind RubyGems has come together to launch a new gem server for the Ruby community!
gem.coop
I am *super* excited about this!
> So, paired with those feelings plus the latest continued revelations of the creator’s personal beliefs and political stances, I can’t find as much joy writing Ruby on Rails apps as before.
...
> I can’t wait for my next adventure with @hanamirb.org [...]
Read it: afomera.dev/posts/2025-1...
We had a saying on my old team: make it easy to use, hard to f*** up. That mindset pushed us toward Platform Engineering – a path many teams face.
I wrote about the trade-offs and why Platform Engineering is a multiplier:
sleepingpotato.com/platform-eng...
#software #leadership
Ignoring us is insulting at this point @rubycentral.org. Why are you not communicating with the community? When is the next Q&A?
Thought I gift linked to it. Here you go. READ it. Your welcome.
GIFT.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...
I’m so tired.
It's easy to do this when his political opinions don't affect you or your friends. It's hard to just ignore when they do cause an impact.
I'm glad I didn't get into Rails. If I did, I'd be finding a new framework.
in case you're not sure who dhh is, he's a danish counterstrike player and race car owner who writes essays like "i am smarter than you" and "foreigners bad"
rich enough not to worry about consequences but at the very same time, still desperate for status, a man two friends short of a podcast
Ages ago, when I was still a student, I taught myself Ruby on Rails for my senior thesis and fell in love. Fifteen years later, and I’ve used Rails at every job I’ve ever held in the tech industry. Fifteen years, and I still love Rails! But there’s something rotten at its core, and we share a name.
Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up. [vox.com]
It’s not “just one guy’s opinion,” though. His position gives his words an outsized effect on who feels welcome in Rails/Ruby.
His accomplishments and “energy” is visible, but the flip side is all the people who never join or contribute because they’re discouraged. That invisible loss is real too.
New post in my Design Principles series: Earn Your Scale
Most apps don’t need Kafka or CockroachDB yet. Push run-of-the-mill stacks further than you think, then make the trade-offs when you’ve truly outgrown them.
sleepingpotato.com/design-princ...
#development #buildinpublic
We need a Ruby Central which is not beholden to DHH and Shopify money but representative of the larger community. Why aren't the board of directors publicly elected, like Python?
https://ruby.social/@adarsh/115215323757719078
You’re making me want to try Claude Code!
Is the coordinator + subagent flow meant for Claude Code specifically? I don’t think Cursor supports this approach, right? Their background agents are all about isolated environments iirc.
what’s the name for a version-and-dependency-and-more manager like `uv`? I don’t know, but I’m building one for Ruby anyway
andre.arko.net/2025/08/25/r...
true pain is having found a single good web browser (arc) and then having it ripped away.
“American fascism looks like the president using armed military units from governors loyal to his regime to seize cities run by opposition political figures and it looks like the president using federal law enforcement to target regime opponents.”
We had a client drop through - if anyone is after design (Design Systems, UI, UX, etc), Webflow or front-end, please let us know. We're knowledgable about implementing design on different frameworks and backends (Node, Rust, Ruby, etc.)
There's two of us with several decades of experience. ✌️
Excited to start a new chapter as a Principal Engineer after years in leadership roles!
sleepingpotato.com/a-personal-u...
www.reddit.com/r/vuejs/s/nB...
Me: I know, I’ll post about an approach that’s working really well for me to thoroughly support a11y. Maybe others will be encouraged to do the same!
Sad People on The Internet assuming I “had AI” write the post:
First blog post in a year, eh? It's about Ruby:
jmd.fm/service-obje...
