Brad Gessler

Sup?

mruby 🤝 Ruby In my ongoing exploration of non-deterministic agents running along side deterministic code, I figured I'd see if I could use RubyLLM to run arbitrary ruby code inside of an mruby sandbox within the same process. It works! beautifulruby.com/code/enclave

Incorrectly sized Open Graph images commonly crop heads & logos in weird places. In this video I debug YC's redesigned site with og.plus/tools to show how to identify & fix incorrectly sized images. Of course sites that use og.plus don't have this problem because images are optimized per network.

I got tired of seeing people complain “RSpec and factories takes 14 min to run, minitest and takes 5s” so I’m starting to chip away at it. First order of business: created FixtureBot after figuring out I use FactoryBot not because of factories, but because I like the syntax. Might try sus next.

Second edition of creating Plan objects in Superfeature to display plan tables in a SaaS I’m working on, og.plus. The objects can upgrade to other plans, control downgrade flow, set prices in stripe, require payment, and more. Next one I’ll cover Feature & Limit classes.

First YouTube video for OpenGraph+ about a macOS app I'm building to design and debug Open Graph images. Still waiting on Apple to approve the thing in Test Flight.

While working on OpenGraphPlus.com I got tired of how annoying it is working with full prices and discounts, particularly in views, so I created a gem with a Price object that makes it super easy to create discounts and have them display properly on your site. Next Black Friday will be easy! 😅

My first end-to-end demo of og.plus! You can finally get a sense for how it will integrate into websites to generate an Open Graph image per page, and you can control it all with CSS, meta tags, and HTML cache headers. As always, Rails is my first integration: opengraphplus.com/docs/rails 💅

I've been heads down for the past month cranking on og.plus, and for the first time ever I found LLMs were actually useful for creating production-grade apps, but not how you think ... and a far cry from "vibe coding". I share thoughts in the video & discuss the workflow I used to ship quality.

I've started using ChatGPT's Atlas browser to critique first-draft landing pages to find obvious errors and issues on og.plus. Overall I've found its useful to map out "completeness", but it will try to make you run in circles, is kinda slow, and requires copy & paste to work with other agents.

Phree Phlex videos are back! This one shows how to cram lots of Phlex components into one file with nested classes and endless method. I also kept the Black Friday deal going for a couple more days.

I ditched the 10 minute time-box for the videos so I wouldn’t have to be as rushed.

Last Ruby deals push, this time for Cyber Monday! I picked up a few more deals and listed them at the bottom of Friday’s list. There’s some great deals on software & lots of discounted courses if you have some training budget left in the tank this year. beautifulruby.com/articles/rub...

Gearing up for one last push on Cyber Monday! I picked up a few more deals that I put on the page. If there's any more please LMK today so I can include in my final Ruby deal push.

I collected all Ruby Black Friday deals I could find & posted them in one spot. Highlights include: $130 off @beautifulruby.com Phlex on Rails course $81 off @gorails.com annual subscription +20% @joemasilotti.com Hotwire native content Lots of @pragprog.com deals Enjoy! 🦃🔥💰

I've got a few more in the queue from the SF Ruby Conf. I'm definitely going to be shooting more of these in different locations with other Rubyists and people who are building cool stuff.

Where are Ruby devs looking for Black Friday deals this season? I’ve got an $80 off BFD for the @beautifulruby.com Phlex on Rails course and want to get it in front of more Ruby developers. beautifulruby.com/phlex

Kicking off a BFD (Black Friday Deal) for @beautifulruby.com! Between now and Sunday, December 7, 2025 you can save over 20% off the course with an $80 coupon. To claim the deal, use the normal Stripe checkout flow at beautifulruby.com/phlex#invest

Today's phree @beautifulruby.com Phlex on Rails video reviews the most fundamental concept of @phlex.fun, creating HTML tags & attributes. One of the most powerful things about Phlex is how certain attributes, like class, style, and data, handle hashes & arrays, making Phlex great for components.

What are some good Ruby podcasts that would want their audience to hear me talk about Phlex, Superform, Supermail, etc?

If you're wondering how I packaged up Ruby code into binaries people can run on Linux and macOS, Tebako is it. In this RTSFC I walk through the internals of Tebako, which is a lot of scripts that compile ruby, download gems into a package, and set entry points for your code.

Today's free Phlex on Rails video is all about rendering, which is very polymorphic in Phlex. Partials, strings, values, components, component classes, and collections all Just Work™ when passed into the `render` method.

Today's free Phlex on Rails video kicks off Unit 2, starting with the basics of a Phlex component!💪 If you're a Rails developer that's never heard of Phlex, you'll want to follow along this week as I premiere Unit 2.

Today's free Phlex on Rails video is the last in the introduction unit, "Why Components?" If you've got some training budget remaining this year, here's a $50 off checkout link beautifulruby.com/courses/phle...

Today’s free @beautifulruby.com Phlex on Rails video covers how the trio of Rails, Phlex, & Hotwire makes a productive framework for quickly building and shipping web apps. 💪🚞🔌 It’s geared more for people who are less familiar with the Rails stack. beautifulruby.com/phlex/overvi...

There's 50 days until Christmas and I have 45 Phlex videos. How about a Phlex on Rails video advent calendar? I'll do my best to post some videos from the Phlex course starting with "Why Phlex?" since the intro video is free. This one compares to ViewComponent if you're curious. Follow along!

I wrote about how pre-sold $13,000 worth of Phlex on Rails video course, some surprises I had along the way, open questions I have around the entire concept, and where I'd like to take @beautifulruby.com now that the first video course has been fully launched. 🚀

Has anybody used this? I'd personally be reluctant to use it in a project, which sounds crazy given how I'm a big fan of Phlex. For me the difference is @phlex.fun is barely an abstraction and stays "close the the HTML". Opal had a lot going on, but I couldn't tell that's because of JS or Opal.

I wrote about the designing the perfect type signature syntax in Ruby.

Official launch article for the Phlex on Rails video course. Huge thanks to @joel.drapper.me for creating @phlex.fun. It was fun making the course for it. I hope this inspires more people to use Phlex so we can all benefit from building UIs with components without React JS bloat. 💪🚀

Also testing out a new video format.

I think @joel.drapper.me gets enjoyment out of the names he chooses for his gems 😂

This is about half way down the 🕳️🐇 for async Ruby. These repos are incredibly understandable if you know the HTTP specs and are prepared to clone a bunch of repos and open them in the same editor workspace. It's really good stuff.

In retrospect, it was kind of ridiculous that I shoot my first paid video course outside, but it was so much fun. 🤣 I highly recommend coding outside if you can swing it. You'll feel way better at the end of the day and the glare isn't really that bad. Go outside and touch grass! 🌱

I’ve been looking forward to showing off this source code because it’s so well written. Last week Shopify announced they deployed Falcon to production, which gave me an excuse to dive into it and RTFSC. 🤿

Finished the last videos and I have a registration system in place. The old paywall was a 🔓 in the URL, like this `https://beautifulruby.com/🔓/phlex` 🤣 Now the browser has to be activated via email, and I'm using SQLite on the server to store course & registration data.

Check it out, SF Ruby Conf got Wes Anderson to shoot their intro video. 😏

Also: leave because of the confusing SF weather, but come first.

Every time I have to do this, I think about @indirect.io's `rv` presentations at the @sfruby.bsky.social meetups.

Remember when I launched Supermail last week as an easier way to work with emails in Rails? Turns out the simplified abstraction made it easy for me to generate mailto: links. I also forgot to mention it works alongside ActionMailer for those with existing Rails apps. Video & code 👇

Sharing my toolkit for how I debug my computer in the morning before I get to work on @beautifulruby.com. youtu.be/tv3BTKgz2uY