“Gilded Rose” refactoring kata in Ruby — as if it is 2024

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:...

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....

One Ruby thing I never noticed before. While working on Ruby Evolution-themed articles (and looking for a shape for the future book), I am starting to look deeper and deeper into the history of the language—and into other languages, too, trying to understand when some solutions became common in the industry, or, vice versa, when something has...