Living in the Weimar Era of Ruby

The writer reacts to a high-profile keynote that dismissed Rails and Ruby, calling it a jaded, existential shrug, and argues that abandonment by prominent figures frees space for innovation rather than signaling doom. The piece frames the current moment as a Weimar-like interbellum: chaotic, unsettling, but fertile for artistic and technical reinvention. Rather than accepting Rust "vibe-rewrites" as the only path, the argument insists on improving Ruby itself - making it faster, better at concurrency, richer in types, and more composable - echoing José Valim’s call to push the language and stack forward. The author emphasizes Ruby’s aesthetic strengths and the potential unlocked by new tooling and LLM-assisted workflows, rejecting the idea that the language is inherently too small or slow for modern demands.

Concrete evidence underpins the optimism: longstanding pain points are being resolved rapidly. PDF generation moved from brittle Chromium hacks and manual Prawn layout to two strong options in months - sghtmltopdf, a Rust-based layout engine built on Servo/Typst crates, and stationery, a Ruby/Phlex-oriented generator - both fast and practical. Native GUI, image libraries, and data formats are resurfacing with renewed bindings and releases (Qt, Scarpe/Shoes, RMagick, GD), and work on Parquet and other integrations continues. The net finding: despite defections, the ecosystem is experiencing a pragmatic renaissance where previously intractable problems are being solved, inviting builders to improve the garden instead of razing it.