Robby Russell

We can fix everything! ...or at least amuse ourselves.

The best employees make you feel confident that someone competent could step in tomorrow if they suddenly disappeared. They share knowledge, document what matters, and actively reduce how much the organization depends on them. And ironically… that’s what makes them indispensable.

Quick reminder… mocking another tech stack while they navigate a security incident probably isn’t going to age well for you. Observe. Learn. Amplify the fix.

If you're a railway customer, you need to jump on this immediately. "We strongly recommend that you immediately roll all environment variables, including any API keys, stored in Railway" blog.railway.com/p/security-d...

A podcast guest canceled at the last minute today. I was already sitting here with a microphone plugged in… and perhaps a little too deep into the Halloween candy. 🎃🍬 So, fueled by a minor sugar rush, here is ~10 mins of me asking: Who actually has permission to fix things? youtu.be/9eF4S6f7lSU

Imagine explaining to someone in 1826 that 200 years from now, you’ll own a container full of cables for devices you haven’t touched in years… which you’ll keep just in case you need one again. You’ll keep this container until you die, at which point someone else will finally throw them away.

One of our devs reflects on attending his first Rails World. blog.planetargon.com/blog/entries...

Happy Upgrade Day

They said, “reach for the stars.” Apparently, Oh My Zsh took that literally. Since 2009, nearly 200,000 people have starred the project on GitHub. And somehow, 17 years later, that little line is still climbing.

oh ffs

Inspired by some of the TV hacking.. I was curious how hard it would be to spin up a few apps to use with an IPTV service so my wife and I could manage a shared watch list on our phones... and reorganize what shows up in a Fire Stick app. Curious to see how this evolves

ui_guardrails ( github.com/meticulous/g... ) is getting a feed ramp. When I released the gem at Rails World, it was mostly around blocking bad AI decisions from getting through CI. But that didn't help the AI not just make random crap up or ignore the design system and components. Release soon!

Somewhere right now someone is typing: git psuh. The thefuck plugin is already in Oh My Zsh. Esc Esc fixes your last command: missing sudo, missing -p, typos, forgotten --set-upstream... What's the typo you make most?

If hardware is hard… are software engineers just softies?

The year is 1993… I’m in 8th grade and we’re told to memorize and recite a poem in front of the class. I chose “Pigs” by the famed poets Cypress Hill.

When was the last time you listened to "Pretty Hate Machine" from start to finish? Enjoy your Friday, folks.

Clients rarely call us because their software suddenly became complicated… they call because the person who understood the complications is leaving.

Welp... Got laid off from Podia today. Kinda a lot to process for a Thursday. I'll have something more coherent to say eventually. For now, send Ruby/Rails leads. Or dog pictures.... Both are good.

This isn’t a good time to lean on our past accomplishments… but if we’re being honest with ourselves, it never has been.

You do not need permission to do your job well.

No thanks

If your day bounces between docker, kubectl, terraform, aws, and an ssh session you forgot was open... there's probably already a plugin for it. Nearly 50 ship with Oh My Zsh for DevOps and sysadmin work. A few favorites: kgp → kubectl get pods, tfp → terraform plan, dcupd → docker-compose up -d

If you spend your day in npm, yarn, deno, Angular, React Native, VS Code... there's probably already a plugin for it. Nearly 30 of them ship with Oh My Zsh for front-end work. A few favorites: yd → yarn dev, drw → deno run --watch, rnios → react-native run-ios. ohmyz.sh

I wish that @brigleb.com would share more of their AI tricks with the public... because he's honestly been way ahead of most people I know in the industry.

Ship delightful things

You didn’t ask for it. You probably don’t need it. But Robby wanted it anyway. Introducing Shellsavers… screensavers for your shell. Now in Oh My Zsh. 🖥️

There’s something special about talking to a potential client and realizing nearly everyone on the call has been there for 25+ years.

How did I not see Rosemary's Baby (1968) until now? So good.

A few months ago, I went to the Oregon Coast thinking I'd write one kind of keynote. I came back with a different one. A little backstory on makers, menders, WUTS, second-guessing the whole thing… and eventually giving the talk at Rails World. robbyonrails.com/articles/202...

WUTS? #railsworld

ProTip: double-check that your uptime monitors aren't pinging http:// that results in a 301 redirect to https:// for every. single. uptime. check.

Nearly 70% of the project inquiries @planetargon.com received last quarter came from companies needing to replace a solo developer for one reason or another.

Did you score a #RailsWorld vinyl in Austin? Could you send me a photo of it in the wild (and give me permission to share)

Hey folks... perhaps your company wants to sponsor a few episodes of @maintainable.fm? Pass this link to your marketing team. maintainable.fm/sponsorships/

The quality of most podcast guest pitches is abysmal. 🙈

Hey, Rails peeps. Hot Cell is a suite of gems that helps you secure Active Storage against image library zero-days. I just released v1.0! mike.daless.io/posts/2026/1... Links to Rails World video and slides as well as the project repo and docs are in the post.

Both things can be true. Three times.