Writing / Ruby & Rails
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Overriding Rails' default validation error message format
A follow-up to my recent Rails i18n post that describes a way to override the validation error message format without leaving the default error messages as incomplete sentences.
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10 Things You Might Not Know About Rails i18n
The i18n framework in Rails is full of useful abstractions that can help make your Rails code more maintainable, even when you're not actually translating it.
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10 Things You Might Not Know About Rails i18n
A talk exploring i18n in Rails, and how it can be useful even when we're not translating our applications into other languages. I gave this talk at Brighton Ruby in 2026.
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The Ruby community has a DHH problem
The Ruby community can no longer afford to stand silent in the face of DHH and his toxic ideas.
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How to use introspection to discover what is exhausting your ActiveRecord connection pool
A short post on a technique you can use to see what is using your Rails app's ActiveRecord connections.
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Why the advice to have a connection pool the same size as your Puma threads is (probably) wrong for you
Are you seeing ActiveRecord::ConnectionTimeoutErrors in your Rails app? You probably need a bigger connection pool (and here's why).
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Access your command history in IRB and Rails console sessions
This simple configuration option is a powerful way to access and search through your Ruby and Rails console command history.
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Configure default ordering on models with UUID primary keys in ActiveRecord
There's a change coming in Rails 6 that makes it possible to configure the default ordering on ActiveRecord finders, which may be helpful for those using UUIDs for their primary keys.
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Upgrading a large Rails 3 app to Rails 4
Recommendations and guidance on upgrading a large Rails 3 application to Rails 4.
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Performance testing Rails against real data
How do you write performance tests that benchmark your application against real data?
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Default Attributes on Active Record Associations in Rails
A neat little trick that lets you define default values for records created through an association.
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3D Secure in Rails with Active Merchant and Sage Pay (formally ProTX)
Performing 3D Secure authentication in your rails application using the Active Merchant gem and the Sage Pay gateway.
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Disabled option tags in rails forms
A new plugin that enhances the form helpers in Rails so that you can disable option tags.
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Rails gets some engines love
Details on some interesting commits to edge Rails (2.3); now featuring engines!
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Passenger/mod_rails 2.0 RC1
Details on the release of Passenger (AKA mod_rails) 2.0 release candidate 1.
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mod_rails and apache on OS X Leopard
Tips on getting Apache and Passenger (AKA mod_rails) working in your development environment on OS X Leopard.
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Rails plugins and the move to gems
Edge rails and working with plugins from git.