Dave Copeland :ruby:

Author of BrutRB, our last, best hope for Rubykind. Former CTO @ Mood Health. Former Stitch Fix, LivingSocial. Posts about Ruby, Tech, Maybe Cats

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Last Notes

2026-10-22 20:44:43 UTC

Banks really provide nothing for their customers beyond an account that can just delete all the money. This is why I would never use Plaid - it's either total access to my entire account or nothing. I can't even set up a low-access user to just read my data for e.g. accounting - it has to have full access or nothing (2 major credit cards, 3 major banks, 1 nubank, all the same - nubank is by far the worst with security)

2026-10-22 13:58:42 UTC

Can't forget to early vote in Washington, DC!
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/484/913/815/659/643/original/1d78d47974ff5c4b.jpeg

2026-10-22 01:45:02 UTC

Before Siri AI, the only things it could do properly were set timers and allow texting over carplay with your voice. Now with Siri AI, both of those are broken, too.

2026-10-21 14:50:44 UTC

Until a CEO or CISO can potentially go to jail for allowing a security vulnerability to go unpatched, things aren't going to change.

2026-10-21 12:22:35 UTC

“You Cannot Trust the AI Code Generator”
Allowing an AI to write code that you then ship without considerate review causes some anxiety. How do you know the code works? How do you know it isn't doing something strange you didn't ask for?
It feels like you can't totally trust it. However, a product manager or engineering leader doesn't review the code developers are shipping. They are trusted. What's different?
https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2026/10/21/you-cannot-trust-the-ai-code-generator.html
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/478/873/752/670/015/original/ffe1ec5fa2a68958.jpg

2026-10-19 14:02:17 UTC

“Why Even Write Code in a Professional Context?”
This is the thought process that lead to me deciding to write about AI. I hate the conclusions I've drawn here.
https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2026/10/19/why-even-write-code-in-a-professional-context.html

2026-10-16 00:54:12 UTC

My favorite thing about living in Washington, DC is that you cannot walk down the street, open your windows, or exist in any public place without a never-ending stench of second-hand pot smoke. It is everywhere.
Stepped off the metro at Eastern Market and the escalator was drenched in it. Outside, I could not escape the smell until I got in a car. When I got home, my street—in a pretty residential are—reeked of it. It's "heavier" than cigarette smoke and just doesn't go away.

2026-10-15 16:44:06 UTC

I'm Gonna Write About AI So I Can Process What is Going On
https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2026/10/15/i-m-gonna-write-about-ai-so-i-can-process-what-is-going-on.html#more
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/445/927/855/480/402/original/44dc3c150117b75c.png
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/445/928/110/558/443/original/7ac51b3faed8f56d.png

2026-10-15 14:16:35 UTC

Siri AI in CarPlay is so horrendous.
Before Siri AI:
Me: «taps text from wife»
Siri: Amy said "x", would you like to reply?
Me: No
Siri: "OK"
Now:
Me: «taps text from wife»
Siri: «1 second delay » Amy said "x"…Amy said "x" would you like to reply to Amy Copeland?
Me: No
Siri: "OK, I won't send a reply to Amy Copeland"
[ sometimes I say "no" and it starts to compose a reply, sometimes it just spins forever and does nothing]
LLMs are just so fucking verbose and incredibly slow.

2026-10-13 01:46:28 UTC

Code comments
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/431/073/766/745/212/original/424580badfa93782.jpeg

2026-10-08 19:04:50 UTC

I've had to us M$ Teams for some meetings recently, and here my two favorite features that aren't present in Meet or Zoom:
• When I get a text message, the video/audio stutters, I am told my network is unstable, and then it fixes itself
• It constantly adjusts my mic preamp to 100% making my voice very loud and distorted. Turning it down does not work, it just instantly turns it back up.
Clearly, my solutions are:
• 1G fiber to my house
• tube mic preamp with a knob and an A/D converter

2026-10-08 14:49:27 UTC

This story is wild. Any IoT device I have that uses wifi gets it's own SSID and network with a data cap.
I also only connect things to the internet that require it. TV and dishwasher do not.

2026-10-08 14:45:18 UTC

I must be missing something but I don’t find it hard to buy things on my own and I would also never want software I don't control being able to do that either.

2026-10-08 14:43:29 UTC

Is it me or do the 27 Apple OSes require passcodes and passwords way more often than before?

2026-10-07 17:45:26 UTC

TV Show ideas:
* Mixed-species crew from a vast federation of peaceful planets explores the galaxy encountering cool sci-fi shit and moral dilemmas that make us question our assumptions
* Superhero show where guy with magic ring polices the solar system and kicks the crap out of bad guys
* Coherent space opera about warrior monks with laser swords and magic powers putting things right, one system at a time
* Check in on what Vic Mackey and Ronnie Gardocki are up to

2026-10-07 00:40:34 UTC

I really liked Lanterns but…isn't Green Lantern supposed to be some badass person with a powerful weapon to make cool stuff and beat up bad guys? Instead we get a ring that's almost never powered and four lanterns: "guy who's crime against the guardians is never explained", "guy with untapped potential who never shows us what he can do", "doofus moron" and "guy who's only apparent villainous behavior is being named 'Sinister' in Oan".

2026-10-06 22:19:33 UTC

This reminds me of working for weak leaders who, in response to a project that was over-scoped and not going to ship on time, asked if the team "could just work harder". lolsure.

2026-09-29 01:44:25 UTC

NGL, this feels accurate or at least itemizes the components of why I'm feeling listless about programming these days.
https://thorstenball.com/blog/2026/09/19/what-i-believe-about-the-future-of-software-development/

2026-09-27 22:37:25 UTC

I don’t know why it seemed more plausible for David Rails to go full white supremacy than full AI Psychosis. I guess por que no los dos.

2026-09-27 13:37:38 UTC

NY Times exonerative tense remains undefeated.

2026-09-27 01:53:22 UTC

This is peak UX. I will not be taking questions.

2026-09-26 00:39:42 UTC

Anyone who doesn't assume this would 100% happen and keep happening is naive. (not implying Dare is)

2026-09-25 21:22:21 UTC

I almost always use search on iOS to locate apps (i.e. pull down and start typing). Was worried the new Siri AI powering that would make things slow, but it seems not - still quite usable.
I also asked Siri AI to pull out some information from a text message group text and it did…with a bit more prompting and coaxing than I would've hoped. But I get it not just e.g. dumping my eons of text messages into the context window.

2026-09-23 22:34:05 UTC

My experience is that it has the exact same reliability as old Siri: almost none, but when it does do something, it can do more things.
But, it still seems just so freaking' stupid:
Me: "Turn on the porch reading lamp"
Siri: "There is no device with that name"
Me: "Turn on the porch reading light"
Siri: turns the correct light on
I mean COME ON

2026-09-23 22:31:30 UTC

I guess Rails is dead now? For real this time? We vibe code from here on out?
Meanwhile, Ruby also seems deader than disco on account of Ruby Central divesting itself of almost everything it had previously been doing.
I picked the wrong time to stop sniffin' glue.

2026-09-22 14:58:26 UTC

clicking in the Siri app opens, shows, and raises the Bartender app. Wat.

2026-09-07 23:44:59 UTC

Agile Software Development is based on a single principal: there is nothing more important that a programmer being done with something.

2026-09-05 15:15:00 UTC

I really wish macOS and iOS would allow granting permissions for something always and to never ask again. They do show a button labeled "Always", but this button really means "Allow for a while". Some USB devices it asks me every single time. I have no idea why. This just incentivizes me to set permissions to be more lax.
The # of times I've had to allow WidgetSmith, CarrotWeather, etc to use my location "Always" is ridiculous.

2026-09-03 12:56:56 UTC

I'm extracting some common HTML/CS/JS patterns I've used in a few internal apps into a documented & reusable code library. It's amazing how much you can do without JS these days.
A brief example is "confirm form submission using a styled dialog". This can be done without any JS - put the <dialog> inside the form. The form's "submit" button uses invoker to open the dialog. Dialog has a "nevermind" button that uses invoker to close the dialog. Dialog has the actual form submit button.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/207/217/494/996/536/original/9aef3344301076ab.png
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/117/207/217/776/103/441/original/10c1f7522b9bf508.png

2026-09-03 12:25:34 UTC

I don’t know what more wild here: the number of classes or the fact that body has an id. document.body is right there.

2026-08-25 19:11:26 UTC

Top traits of an effective engineer:
1 - Communication
2 - Project Management
3 - Time Management / Ability to Prioritize
....
999 - some programming language thing
....
999999 - editor config and dotfiles

2026-08-25 15:29:13 UTC

This is why I'm not as hard on Rails core as others might be - I can imagine that some or even all of them are reliant on being on Rails core for their livelihood, and if they were to quit—loudly or quietly—it could negatively impact them in a way that they cannot tolerate. No one can live without compromise, and as privileged as a software engineer is, they still can experience grave consequences from their actions.

2026-08-25 13:32:50 UTC

A quote post from @nprofile…w333 sparked me to re-evaluate this post, and I agree. It's a reductive take that isn't useful or clarifying.
The core thesis is that we can't live our lives free of compromise. But the DEGREE to which each of us must compromise differs. Someone with more power than someone else has the ability to use that power to make different choices. If they don't, they DO deserve criticism.

2026-08-22 13:14:07 UTC

I click this button on pretty much everything

2026-08-22 12:22:34 UTC

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@nprofile…yswk Yeah, I guess I am kinda jaded :)

2026-08-21 20:59:42 UTC

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@nprofile…g0sh lol, ok maybe I will try it :)

2026-08-21 20:42:48 UTC

I think unless someone tells me the most recent SNW episode is amazing, I'm gonna skip it. I had it mildly spoiled that it's all a dream and I HATE IT IS ALL A DREAM WHYYYYYYYYYY

2026-08-21 14:03:32 UTC

I know people really like writing posts/blogs that amount to "golly gee whiz I typed words into LLM and LLM did thing", but does anyone like READING them? I'm so fucking tired of these stories, and not because of some moral/ethical issue with LLMs/AI - it's just such a fucking boring tedious take.
They feel like the equivalent of "I'm emailing someone ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH OH MY GOD!!!!"

2026-08-20 14:22:45 UTC

Consider just how much chaos has be wreaked on us by software systems all so that a product manager can get promoted? How much better would the world be if we just gave those product managers a nice raise to stop fucking with the software we use?

2026-08-19 13:27:09 UTC

This episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is brought to you by the Yamaha DX-7, available wherever you buy you buy your iconic 80's synthesizers.

2026-08-19 01:33:34 UTC

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@nprofile…g0sh I think? I’m not well versed in the classics. The thing is, they could've dropped the "Geordie falls for holo woman" part and had a better episode.

2026-08-18 21:00:24 UTC

TNG's "Booby Trap" - LaForge solves a problem with a sycophantic computer-generated woman instead of any of this crew who in theory should know what they are doing. He falls for her as she increasingly comes onto him.
This is a post about LLMs.

2026-08-14 14:28:35 UTC

Paging @nprofile…3tku

2026-08-14 14:25:15 UTC

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@nprofile…vlm2 PBS sold enough data on you to an ad network. They must have eg some basic account info so they know what you watched.

2026-08-12 16:12:36 UTC

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@nprofile…vlm2 @nprofile…mmk3 @nprofile…rslj We went for a week in the winter and it was amazing. Technical saw the northern lights but it was not great (not why we went but a nice bonus). Def recommend having a guide/travel company set things up and drive you. Driving there, at least in winter, is not for the faint of heart.

2026-08-12 16:05:37 UTC

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@nprofile…u9xf First time? Ours dropped them all the time when they were kittens. They still do on occasion. I had a friend who collected them to turn into a christmas ornament. Not sure how I feel about that TBH, but to each their own :)

2026-08-10 12:50:39 UTC

A hardcover box set* is coming in October. I haven't read these books in years and gave my paperbacks away. So I'm picking this up when it's out - already ordered via my local bookstore**.
* This is not the current version that compiles all the books into one physical time, but should be one physical book per book.
** Call yours if you can, don’t use bookshop

2026-08-10 11:53:39 UTC

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@nprofile…7fqd don't worry React is here to ruin TUIs as well.

2026-08-09 16:07:50 UTC

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@nprofile…tk0k jfc what a world

2026-08-09 15:04:32 UTC

This HN story is also wild - developer had AI build an app that basically copied an existing open source app, including a longstanding bug!
Reminds me of how cartographers would always include a few errors in their maps to find out when their work was being copied. I'm guessing this technique might persist in open source software

2026-08-09 15:03:01 UTC

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@nprofile…7gzr ha, same. I didn't want to click on a youtube video about it for fear of screwing up the algo. What a horrible world we live in :(
(I found out about it in the orange site comments of this post about an AI generated astronomy app that just copied an open source one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49231154)

2026-08-09 14:57:23 UTC

The other wild thing is akin to BMW spamming their car owners with Spider Man movie ads. Everyone knows about that movie. Every musician knows about D'Addario. They really don't need to advertise all that heavily.

2026-08-09 14:56:11 UTC

I just caught up on the D'Addario (the Coke or Pepsi of guitar string manufacturers) AI thing and it's just fucking wild. They used an AI-generated song to promote their new strings. Have they ever seen the Instagram Discover page? There's 1,000,000 guitar players shredding bullshit scales all day every day - they could've just paid one of them probably $100 to really play the strings. I hope someone gets fired, but we are in a post-consequences world these days…

2026-08-07 21:48:54 UTC

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@nprofile…yqt6 I generally don’t like horror and gore so that episode was not good for me. That one part was ick 🤢
Ep 1 was more classic trek so I liked it but the ending shot was a bit over the top

2026-08-07 13:40:02 UTC

Ep 2 is my least favorite of any sci-fi, which is everyone is hallucinating and nothing you are watching is actually real. I fucking HATE dream sequence shit and the like.
Ep 3 is a type that I like on occasion - main cast take on different personas - but they must be used sparingly. SNW leans too heavily on this style - S01E05, S01E08, S02E05, S02E09, S03E02, S03E04, S03E08 - those are all generally bad episodes (though I liked the musical :)

2026-08-07 12:08:41 UTC

I really do like Strange New Worlds - best of the "new" batch of Star Trek shows, but boy howdy would it be nice if they could do at least a few episodes where the crew encounters some sci-fi shit and has to work together to solve it while balancing some sort of moral dilemma. Eps 2 and 3 of this season have been some of the worst trek I've ever seen.

2026-08-05 17:39:37 UTC

I'm using Google Docs for the first time in a few years and can confirm - it's thirsty for you to use AI features. I just can't understand why. AI Psychosis is real and it must be driving promos in Google's PM team.
For a cloud-based writing app that works on all platforms - I have no idea. In theory Pages does this on Apple platforms but in my experience, syncing is woefully broken and downloading even tiny docs becomes impossible at random times.

2026-08-05 15:57:40 UTC

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@nprofile…p334 My favorite I was reminded of is: macOS/iOS notifications essentially don't work. I set a persistent style for fantastical and fastmail so I wouldn't miss a calendar notification. The notifications are in notification center, but my phone never buzzed and the notification never appeared on screen. Been like this for at least 3 years.
And iMessage notifications from my wife? If my mac has power: no notifications at all. They show up in notifi. center but no actual notification.

2026-08-05 15:33:05 UTC

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@nprofile…raga I haven't experience load order issues with gems, but I do like having the "core framework" (e.g. Rails) be listed first. I'm guessing since this thing is new it'll get revisions for these use-cases.
For example, I like to write a comment about why a version specifier is set (my default outside of 'core framework' is to not set a version specifier), so would not want that info removed by a tool like this.

2026-08-05 15:31:45 UTC

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@nprofile…p334 This has been across many devices over many years. Sometimes this stuff does work! But "80% of the time it works every time" is not what I call "works". I eventually just stop relying on it, e.g. I just email myself or my wife files since that always works. The only thing I use Siri for is setting timers (90% success rate), so the "new Siri" is gonna be hard for me to even remember to try!

2026-08-05 15:09:00 UTC

It never occurred to me to use the gemspec to automatically comment a Gemfile, but it occured to paagman.dev:
https://paagman.dev/introducing-rebundler
Takes a Gemfile, looks at the gemspecs, outputs a Gemfile with comments about what each gem does. Awesome.

2026-08-05 14:56:59 UTC

I think it's been maybe 5 or so years since I assumed any new Apple software feature would work correctly. Given that handoff never works, air drop rarely works, and iMessages get lost all the time, it should be the default assumption that any apple software involving a network is a) not going to work reliably, b) might not work at all, and c) will never be fixed or updated or maintained in any way

2026-08-04 19:03:20 UTC

I call these Dye Taps and there's just more and more and more of these every release. The the worse are in CarPlay: "Did I hit the button and it's just being slow or did I miss the button and triggered a Dye Tap to hide all the controls?"

2026-08-04 19:00:54 UTC

This is why I stopped using Safari on mac - getting Kagi to work required an extension that rarely ever worked and kept working. I just needed to put a god name query string on a URL and Safari doesn't allow it.
See also: 1password extension; same deal.
This is why Safari's true name is "Doesn't Work". Chrome may be "Spies on You" but it does have the virtue of working.
Apple's myopia about the world outside them is maddening.

2026-08-04 17:10:32 UTC

When my wife and I were shopping for scuba regulators, I did a lot of research on them. Their design and function has not changed in decades (if not longer). While they require maintenance each year, the model I bought 5 years ago is basically the same as models available now. It's such a relief. I literally never have to think about this again, as long as I pay for the yearly maintenance. It's not cheap, but it's keeping me alive so it's worth it, esp to not have to re-buy every other year.

2026-08-03 17:39:47 UTC

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@nprofile…zs9u Yeah, my understanding of the purpose of the co-pay is to allow the provider to collect some money at time of service, to offset the % of services where the insurance company or patient never pays. collecting it is technically optional for the provider - it counts against future payouts so if not collected, they get it when the insurance company pays out. If they do. And if they don't claw it back later 🫠

2026-08-03 17:10:35 UTC

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@nprofile…zs9u PBMs also skew prices - my local pharmacy cannot afford the price of certain medications, because my PBM gives favor to big pharmacies who can buy at a discount. So I either pay out of pocket to support local pharmacy or go to a big pharmacy (which is smothered in engagement capitalist crap).

2026-08-03 17:09:04 UTC

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@nprofile…zs9u Yeah, I have worked in healthcare and navigated it deeply with parents. Incentives are fundamentally broken but quality can be variable (often high!). I would not consider any health plan I've ever heard of being both "inexpensive" and "high quality", esp including meds, copays, and co-insurance. Anything from an employer is usually masking the true price (I think when you leave and pay COBRA, that is roughly the true price of the plan you had with the company?)

2026-08-03 13:56:33 UTC

I'd love some of this inexpensive health insurance / health care. I have good insurance - rarely denied and rarely any trouble in the last 25 years. It's my second largest expense after my mortgage and creeping up. I’m healthy and rarely need specialists or uncommon meds.
The only truly good insurance is for those lucky to be on Tricare4life which covers everything medicare doesn't. If my dad didn't have that, he'd have been broke or dead long ago. Only because he was military does he have it.

2026-07-30 16:30:35 UTC

My goals with https://brutrb.com were to make something as conceptually simple as Rails. Work is still in progress. I find Hanami extremely complicated, but it's probably the most mature Rails alternative if you don't want to roll your own with Sinatra.

2026-07-27 09:03:18 UTC

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@nprofile…hvfc I don’t mind them being a d-pad and specialty buttons but they all suck at that - an NES controller would be better

2026-07-26 18:08:07 UTC

Grades from left to right:
A-, B-, F-, F, C, C
If Apple hired people with hands, imagine how awesome their remotes could be.

2026-07-25 02:16:52 UTC

Relatable

2026-07-15 12:33:34 UTC

Cool, the two biggest existential threats to any startup are now merging.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/stripe-advent-offer-buy-paypal-more-than-53-billion-sources-say-2026-07-15/

2026-07-13 12:06:24 UTC

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@nprofile…3src they way I fixed Apple Music sync issues was to give up and switch the Plex (which sucks in its own way but will at least play back an MP3 that I provide it)

2026-07-13 10:42:53 UTC

Looks like Firefox on iOS now obscures the app while app switching, which means that it feels incredible slow. I can't figure out how to turn this off (or why it's even on)

2026-07-12 15:28:44 UTC

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@nprofile…exvm While we know LLMs generate horrible code, so do a lot of developers lol

2026-07-12 14:55:44 UTC

Everything you need to know about how productive LLM-based coding agents make you is that the creators of the two biggest have shipped cross platform Electron turds instead of platform native apps.

2026-07-11 13:13:39 UTC

Not all the proposed terms are practically usable, but some good advice on speaking accurately about these systems. The graf on hallucinations is easy to paste at your friends who don’t know how these things work.

2026-07-10 14:00:22 UTC

Ah yes, the three genders.
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/116/896/040/115/212/453/original/b1baa0ddead3c75c.png

2026-07-09 20:08:53 UTC

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@nprofile…pf23 I find examples of for comprehensions - including with Scala - to be so contrived and unlike any code I've ever written that I cannot understand why anyone outside of programming language theorists ever even want it.

2026-07-09 18:15:23 UTC

I don't get why spam filters don’t have "if Macafee is in the email it is spam"

2026-07-03 13:47:56 UTC

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@nprofile…ln7g That is all covered in the blog post, including other ways of ensuring it works that aren't tests.

2026-07-01 22:08:19 UTC

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@nprofile…pcl0 The gas station near me stocks Rap Snacks and there's been a lot of churn. Haven't seen his before, but I'd def go for all-in kettle cooked! My current fave is Lil Boosie's Louisiana Heat :)

2026-07-01 20:49:23 UTC

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@nprofile…7fqd I have thought about registering bettererspecs.org for a while, but I think my thread here covers it :)

2026-07-01 20:01:27 UTC

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@nprofile…0fqa no, I love RSpec! expect(x).to eq(y) is great IMO, the nested contexts are useful, and custom matchers are also great. metadata, hooks, etc. all super useful, mature, and well tested. There's just a LOT of DSLMaxxing in there that was probably built because it could be, not because anyone needed it.

2026-07-01 19:37:03 UTC

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@nprofile…nsyu @nprofile…pf23 Yeah, the "owners" seem to be nonexistent (Leylan Labs is parked on namecheap) and the repo doesn't seem to have had substantial updates in years. But it's as helluva domain name :)

2026-07-01 19:35:31 UTC

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* useful formatter - I have no idea what this is saying. I guess use Fuubar?
And that's it! Almost entirely bad advice, and I guarantee you that a codebase that doesn't follow these guidelines will garner less complaints from the RSpec Hesitant on your team.
Bonus rspec thing to avoid: predicate matchers! Your code doesn't have the method be_well_formed in it, so why is your test calling it? .well_informed?).to eq(true) is fine.

2026-07-01 19:32:47 UTC

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* faster tests - Do zeus/spin/spork even work? My experience with stuff like this is you waste all your saved time because something sat in memory when it shouldn't and you are testing old code.
* Stubbing HTTP requests - i.e. use Webmock. I'm not a fan of webmock/VCR - I use service wrappers https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2022/10/31/wrap-third-party-apis-in-service-wrappers-to-simplify-your-code.html I know some rails devs are allergic to putting code outside active record, but read the post, it's way easier to test code that hits APIs if you design it this way.
6/

2026-07-01 19:30:45 UTC

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* shared examples (to DRY your test suite up) - HARD PASS, do not do this ever. Repetition in tests is fine, especially given how convoluted shared examples are. never use them.
* test what you see - unclear what is meant here. Don't test controllers? Agreed, sorta? no points.
* don't use should - we covered that already, no point for this either
* automatic tests with guard - again woefully naive, what apps test suite runs in seconds that you would want this?
5/

2026-07-01 19:27:58 UTC

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* mock or not to mock - this isn't given good advice, but yeah, don't mock always, but also, don't never mock! mocks are great!
* create only the data you need - this is woefully naive advice. Yeah, don't create data you don't need, but if you are doing rails, it's REALLY hard to make realistic data for a test that is valid and be saved to the DB.
* use factories not fixtures - yes. that's 2!
* easy to read matchers - I don't get this one - do people really use lambda instead of expect?
4/

2026-07-01 19:25:49 UTC

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* expect vs should - yes, use expect. OK, that's 1 point for.
* use subject - NO. RSpec tests are _examples_ and you'd never name a variable "subject" in your code, so you shouldn't in your test. See also: "don't use it { is_expected.to }"
* Use let and let! - @nprofile…65fy told me once at his job these methods were forbidden. That sounds amazing to me - let and let! are another chapter in the rubyist obsession with "spread logic over a zillion places…a lot"
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2026-07-01 19:23:43 UTC

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* keep your description short - why? make it as long as it needs to be. That's why it's a string and not a method name
* single expectation test -NO NO NO NO NO - do not run a test 5 times to test 5 things. Run it once and test 5 things. aggregate_failures if you want to see all expectations evaluated per test
* test all possible cases - reasonable advice, but the example shows my favorite rails anti-pattern: spread controller logic across hooks
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2026-07-01 19:21:54 UTC

I think if you did the opposite of every single thing in https://www.betterspecs.org, your RSpec tests would be better. Maybe not all of these are questionable but on the whole blindly doing the opposite would be far better:
* describe methods - actually is fine if you are testing a method, but you can and should test more complex things
* use contexts (which is really showing "use it { is_expected_to }" which is the worst. the WORST. DO not use this ever
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2026-07-01 19:18:15 UTC

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@nprofile…pf23 Oof that site - I come across every few years and there's just a lot of "How to make RSpec Your Team Will Hate" advice in it.

2026-06-30 22:38:25 UTC

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@nprofile…3cnl found someone thanks!

2026-06-30 15:12:12 UTC

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@nprofile…7gzr Whoa, it works on Firefox! I have used it on Safari but didn't realize it was supported on other browsers

2026-06-30 15:01:16 UTC

TIL When you copy a block of code from stack overflow, they insert crap into the paste buffer. I don't know why browsers allow mucking with copy and paste at all.

2026-06-28 15:00:16 UTC

You can also train humans to improve or, as a last resort, fire them and replace them with someone else. i.e. you can hold them accountable.
You cannot make someone do something they do not want to do, but you CAN make them want to do it. The same can't be said of an LLM.

2026-06-27 14:47:48 UTC

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@nprofile…rfgw I thought the apple pay UI shows the data being shared and even provides a way to hide your email?