Vignettes on language evolution: discovering an old syntax feature history

What Ruby’s top-level methods actually are, who they belong to and how they are namespaced. A few days ago, a curious question was asked on /r/ruby, which can be boiled down to this: How are the methods of the Kernel module available in the top-level scope? The question was dedicated to rand method, but (as the author correctly suggests) it also...

Some thoughts on how programming’s unlikely relations to poetry, and some implications of those relations I don’t have much time recently to work on articles about programming (especially considering my typical article length); but I have some previously written content to share. This article was drafted as a Twitter thread on my 39th birthday:...

A “stories-first” approach to refactor a small yet complicated piece of business code Recently, I didn’t have time or resource for serious writing. I had plans for several long articles for the summer that gone, but unfortunately not many have came of that. But last night I have stumbled upon famous (so it seems, though I have never seen it...

Silent changes in payment methods on big creator funding platforms raise some unpleasant questions. UPD Aug 13, 2024: The kind-of-official reply from BuyMeACoffee, and my response to it. UPD Aug 14, 2024: A support email to one of the users gives BuyMeACoffee’s reasons, and also they blocked me on X (Twitter). What happened Recently, many...

Understanding the core class design and usage via its evolution Years ago, my studies into the Ruby Evolution started with the persuasion that mastering the programming language to express one’s intentions clearly and efficiently may grow significantly by understanding how it evolved and what intentions were put behind its various elements....