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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Ruby for Good
ksajadi wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
I just want to say thank you for all your good work. We are very proud
to have been a small part of your efforts at Cloud 66. Keep up the good
work.
pcthrowaway wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
I'm curious, what companies are sponsoring this Hackathon (if any)?
It'd be good to know if there are any tech companies that legitimately
stand for good in the world in 2026.
seanmarcia wrote 23 hours 35 min ago:
Hey all, I'm Sean, the founder of Ruby for Good!
Excited to see this posted. We'd previously shared it in a few Slacks
and were planning a larger announcement after the long weekend, but
since someone beat us to it, we've opened up the early-bird
registrations we were saving for Tuesday.
The Ruby for Good in-person event is absolutely not a hackathon. It's a
friendly gathering of OS maintainers where we work on existing projects
(some have been running for over 10 years!) and kick off new ones. We
don't code into the night and burn folks out, either. We have a hard
stop every day when we break for dinner. The evenings are reserved for
karaoke, conversations and s'more-making around the campfire, board
games, and all the other fun nerdery that happens when you get a group
of awesome folks together. Really, the best way to think of the event
is as "nerd camp for good." Everyone leaves having made a bunch of new
close friends.
That's partly because helping non-profits is only part of the RfG
mission. The other parts are growing the tech community and helping
folks level up, regardless of skill level.
For people interested in attending this year: we'll be working on
existing projects as well as kicking off several new ones. With ACA
subsidies going away and the number of nonprofits reaching out to us,
our focus area this year is healthcare. We'll be launching a project
with an Ohio/Illinois nonprofit that works with pediatric cancer
patients and their families, another in Virginia that works with cancer
caregivers, and a Maryland nonprofit focused on mental health.
If you can't make it, almost all our projects are on GitHub and run
year-round, so feel free to grab an issue!
matthewpick wrote 1 day ago:
Hackathons can be a blast. That said, it usually takes extra effort to
productionize-a-thing after the initial hackathon effort.
Hope to see a follow-up post on what was built!
shevy-java wrote 1 day ago:
> an annual event happening this year in the Washington DC area where
programmers from all over the globe get together over a long weekend to
build and contribute to projects that help our communities
Or, just write code for a project - and add useful documentation to it.
This is probably more relevant than overpriced hackathons.
coolThingsFirst wrote 1 day ago:
Why does Ruby still have this artisinal aura to it, never seen C/C++
For Good gathering.
swat535 wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
Well, Ruby was designed by Matz who is a native Japanese, so it
encompasses lot of the Japanese ideals of perfection and beauty.
It's no accident that it's named after one of the rarest gems in
nature. This philosophy of craft and beauty is thus instilled within
the community and gets carried forward.
michaelteter wrote 1 day ago:
I can't answer for others, but IMO, Ruby is the most elegant and
expressive general purpose programming language that has reached a
significant level of maturity and large audience.
If you write Ruby for a few years, and then you "go back" to other
languages, you will groan. That's not to say that some other
languages do not have things that we wish Ruby had, but often those
other things would not really fit well with Ruby.
Nothing is perfect from every angle. But writing Ruby can be a joy
for some of us.
TeriyakiBomb wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
There's a huge amount of wonderful people in the community too.
youngNed wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
There are. But also.. so much drama. Like soooo much drama
I'm going to edit this: much of this is rails, we know why that
is, so apologies to rubyists
gobdovan wrote 1 day ago:
I think it's the community. As an outsider watching a friend who is
deeply involved with the Ruby ecosystem, I am in awe of the support
they get even for small, artisanal-seeming projects from other devs
in the community. I've seen them become a better a developer simply
by showing up to conferences, talking to other maintainers and
participating in the community.
shevy-java wrote 1 day ago:
I would not know, but I also do not think that an event xyz in one
place at time, reflects all of a community either. So I could not
tell you what the people there do; probably they want to socialize. I
think creating and maintaining high quality project would be much
more important but maybe that's just me. All the main drivers in
ruby, have been written ages ago really - rails, _why the lucky
stiff, even the old "Learn to program" tutorial from Chris Pine and
so forth. That is not to say that no innovation has happened since
then, of course, but it seems the peak days are really far, far
behind now ...
Ruby is still a great programming language, but it really needs to
intensify the effort to get out of the pit-of-decline.
isityettime wrote 1 day ago:
> Ruby is still a great programming language, but it really needs
to intensify the effort to get out of the pit-of-decline.
The languages that have supplanted it haven't succeeded by being
excellent. If excellence won't do it, what should "Ruby" do?
coolThingsFirst wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
I wonder if Google was the X factor why Python edged out Ruby.
TeriyakiBomb wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
We've gotten to a point now where ultimately there needs to be a
very short elevator pitch for any language to gain any traction
at all. Anything longer than a sentence, it generally won't go
far relatively speaking. It's like a calcification/maturity thing
in big sectors of software engineering. You need a VERY good
reason to upset an incumbent. "Because we know it/because
everyone uses it" is a powerful motivator.
runevault wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
Elevator pitch for the language itself or a library/library
ecosystem that lets you do things better than in other
languages. Ruby originally blew up because Rails was a way
people enjoyed writing backend code, despite the speed issues.
But the problem is other languages got good enough at writing
back ends Ruby was no longer special there and didn't have
anything else to back it up the way Python has such strong
control of the ML library ecosystem.
isityettime wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
> "Because we know it/because everyone uses it" is a powerful
motivator.
It's fundamentally a "we want workers to be interchangeable
cogs" motivator; it's a deprofessionalizing move that's against
the interests of all programmers per se. Managers can repeat
it, but there's no good reason for developers to do anything
but resist it where we can.
The other side of this for developers is that the places where
"everyone knows X" precludes all non-X options are actually
signaling loudly that they don't much value developer autonomy.
That's a useful signal worth attending to when applying for
jobs.
michaelteter wrote 1 day ago:
At this point, we should just appreciate Ruby and move on. In
the AI age, other languages are better choices. Ruby is my
favorite language, but I build with Go now. Or rather, I guide
my minions to build with Go. They write Go better than they
would write Ruby (or Python... please die, Python).
insensible wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Ruby is a great utility language target for LLM-generated
tools.
deedubaya wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm glad to see conferences like this exist. It creates dedicated
space for these focuses and the people who care passionately about
them.
dyeje wrote 1 day ago:
I volunteered a few years ago and had a great experience.
rdevilla wrote 1 day ago:
The only programming language I know of that is obsessed with
trumpeting its own moral virtue. "Matz is nice so we are nice," "Ruby
for good," dragging DHH, etc.
Meanwhile the Ruby Central and whytheluckystiff debacles show it to be
anything but.
the_gastropod wrote 1 day ago:
Dude, what? Is it the MINASWAN acronym that's the problem or? If
that's "trumpeting moral virtue", I can think of lots of programming
languages that trumpet their moral virtue:
Let's check out the Rust Code of Conduct ( [1] ):
"Please be kind and courteous. Thereâs no need to be mean or rude."
"We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming
environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender
identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal
appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality,
or other similar characteristic."
Seems pretty morally virtuous, no?
How 'bout Gleam... Right on their home page ( [2] ):
"As a community, we want to be friendly too. People from around the
world, of all backgrounds, genders, and experience levels are welcome
and respected equally. See our community code of conduct for more.
Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t."
Seems morally virtuous, too!
Also also: what does the "whytheluckystiff debacle" have to do with
any of this?! Also also also: _why was pretty much the first
prominent "dragger" of dhh. Man was an innovator.
(HTM) [1]: https://rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct/
(HTM) [2]: https://gleam.run
okeuro49 wrote 1 day ago:
The CoC reminds me a lot of this quote by Sowell:
"...if the answer to the problem is that people should just be
virtuous, then there is no problem, because we have known that for
thousands of years."
jnovek wrote 1 day ago:
_whyâs disappearance from the scene was 17 years ago at this point.
I donât think the Ruby community youâre talking about exists
anymore.
rhgraysonii wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
I wonder what he is up to. I have 2 _why inspired tattoos after he
did so much to influence my entire philosophy and style of
programming. What a unique character, who happened to pop up at a
very formative time for me. Thanks for all the nice stuff and
ideas, _why.
the_gastropod wrote 18 hours 0 min ago:
That question pops into my mind from time to time, too. Hope he's
well, and I hope he knows the lasting positive impact he had on
so many people.
I weirdly got my first programming job / made a good friend
because of him (he tweeted about wishing he could adopt @person.
I looked up @person, saw they lived in my city, worked at a
company that was hiring. I DM'd @person, and eventually got the
job!" Thanks ~2008 _why!
block_dagger wrote 1 day ago:
I love Ruby and have built my career on it, but is it the right
language to be starting new projects with given agentic coding? My take
is "no." Rust or TS are probably better choices right now.
tjpnz wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
Agentic coding is not a given anywhere.
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
Agents handle Ruby just fine. I used to have to give them some stern
rules about avoiding instance_variable_get etc. instead of adding
accessors, but those problems have pretty much vanished in the last 6
months.
I like using Ruby with agents because the code remains short and
readable.
compumike wrote 1 day ago:
You can cheaply and readably give a lot of clues to both agents and
humans with some assertions at the start of a method:
raise ArgumentError.new("...") unless ...
which can include type assertions but also a lot more. The agents
seem to do well with this.
I've also had good results using agents to write Crystal [1] which is
Ruby-like but does have the static types and produces blazing fast
static binaries. Might be a sweet spot for coding agents if you're
building some backend services. But I'd still pick Ruby on Rails for
a new full stack project.
(HTM) [1]: https://crystal-lang.org/
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm downvoting because this is basically bait without any
contribution as to why you feel that way, but personally I vibe coded
a very successful result by iterating a rails app and then crawling
the entire site into static files (~144,000 product pages and
category pages) and then stashing them all in a bucket on cloudflare
free tier.
I never wrote ruby before so I could only sanity check the results
and approach of what it was doing, but thanks to the automated data
migrations it was very easy for me to change my mind about how I
wanted data to be structured, rollback if it didnât work etc. it is
a language designed for rapid iteration.
graboid wrote 1 day ago:
I feel for a smallish project I'd rather prefer to have more
readable, dense code like Ruby's over the ceremony of static types.
QuantumNomad_ wrote 1 day ago:
There is almost no ceremony involved in dealing with types in Rust.
And what little there is, is worth it ten-fold for all of the
runtime bug headaches that you avoid compared to dynamically typed
languages.
wasmperson wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
Specifically addressing the "almost no ceremony" claim and not
the "totally worth it" claim:
JS:
let person_1 = { };
let person_2 = { parent: person_1 };
person_1.child = person_2;
Rust:
use std::cell::Cell;
struct Person<'a> {
parent: Option<&'a Person<'a>>,
child: Cell>>
}
let person_1 = Person {
parent: None,
child: Cell::new(None)
};
let person_2 = Person {
parent: Some(&person_1),
child: Cell::new(None)
};
person_1.child.set(Some(&person_2));
And that's before we start talking about function signatures and
traits.
m12k wrote 1 day ago:
The typescript team themselves rewrote the compiler in Go to get
better use of coding agents.
franz899 wrote 1 day ago:
They did it for speed, and Go was the language with the closest
syntax to migrate to.
hoten wrote 1 day ago:
They started that migration years ago. I don't remember them citing
agentic coding as a reason. Do you have a source?
lexoj wrote 1 day ago:
Not sure about the compiler but prominent users of llm agents
(Mitchel Hashimoto, Armin Ronacher etc) has mentioned that Go
gives better results for agentic coding.
blacksmith_tb wrote 1 day ago:
That seems like it would depend quite a bit on the project? I would
think many nonprofits would want a webapp of some flavor, and Ruby
(or Python) are still not bad choices there - my experience with
Claude is that it handles Ruby well.
lfx wrote 1 day ago:
I understand why rust, but why TS? just for a front end?
mdavidn wrote 1 day ago:
Compiler errors help the chatbot find and fix problems. The
equivalent in Ruby, RBS, isn't as widely adopted. Type annotations
being in separate files is also inconvenient.
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/ruby/rbs
BirAdam wrote 1 day ago:
Why go halfway with Rust when you could just pick Ada SPARK? Seems
like an arbitrary choice based off of rationalizing a trend.
pelagicAustral wrote 1 day ago:
I feel like your comment is a bit tongue in cheek and i am going to
take it at face value, but I honestly been feeling increasingly
more like doing verbatim what you're suggesting and i dont have a
very solid justification for it.
BirAdam wrote 1 day ago:
I meant it honestly. What excuse do people have to choose
anything other than mission critical technologies if the AI
system can do most of the heavy lifting? Why should we settle for
anything less than five 9s of uptime?
firesteelrain wrote 1 day ago:
Because you pick Ada Spark if are in a certification heavy
environment like Aerospace.
aaronbrethorst wrote 1 day ago:
The actual Ruby for Good website has more information:
(HTM) [1]: https://rubyforgood.org/
ramon156 wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
Sadly Ai generated. Bummer.
geoffpado wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
No signs of being AI-generated, and considering several parts of
the [codebase of the website]( [1] ) haven't been touched since
before ChatGPT was released, I think you might be barking up the
wrong tree.
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/rubyforgood/rubyforgood.org
F3nd0 wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
The apparent founder has replied by saying they âjust updated
today with AIâ, but the comment seems to have been deleted
since. Not sure whether it was supposed to be serious or ironic.
Maybe the latter, since the last commit is two months old. Or
maybe the repository hasnât been updated yet.
seanmarcia wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Yes, I did comment, sorry for the confusion. And the person who
made the comment isn't crazy. We have another branch,
claude_design, that was deployed briefly for some folks to look
at and review and when he looked at the site it was the brief
window that it was deployed. On the off chance that you have a
better design sense than claude, love feedback/help on the new
design -- and a PR ;)
someguyiguess wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
Actually looking at it on mobile I see a few issues. Scroll
on mobile interferes with the slider. Also some of the font
sizes are too large and overflow. Is the source repository
public? Or was the request for a PR hyperbole?
Edit: I see it was posted a few comments up.
someguyiguess wrote 19 hours 5 min ago:
Honestly Claude is not great at front end design. So itâs
more than an âoff chanceâ. That being said I think the
site looks fine.
ValentineC wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
Opus 4.6 and 4.7 can probably come up with something better
than most open source contributors, given a few iterations.
We should figure out how to get more designers contributing
to open source.
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