Well, I don’t write a lot, but this time I have something that deserves to be published. This year, I had the good fortune and the assistance of Marsbased to attend Rails World 2025. I tried two years ago to get a ticket, but, just like this year, they were sold in the blink of an eye. This time, I was able to get one, so I spent my days in countdown mode for the first week of September.

4th September, 2025

Wake up at 7 am; it's time to get ready. We need to get some breakfast and walk to the venue, the Beurs van Berlage, to pick up our badge. We landed in Amsterdam the day before, but not in time to check in early and receive the badge. We arrived early, which makes sense; no one was there. So, on that day, we were the first to receive the badges. I was a bit sleepy, but as we didn’t have to wait to get the badge, it was worth it.

At 9 pm, the doors opened. First of all, let’s get a cappuccino. Amazing coffee! Great! With some snacks, we got ready. But first, let's place Portugal on the map. There was a giant world at the entrance where people could pin their country. From what I could know, there were people from 62 countries this year. The biggest so far, and this was confirmed by the time the event was over. The world was full of these small pins everywhere. So cool! Well, let's get started and head up to the main stage and find a seat.

First, Amanda Perino, the Rails Foundation executive director, who, after some words, brought to us all the sponsors for this year's event. And there it was, we saw Marsbased in the middle of the board. Super proud to see it there!

Well, as Amanda said, the next speaker does not require much of an introduction; DHH takes the stage.

I had never seen him live, so it was super cool. It's electrifying the way he speaks and presents his ideas. I guess they all come from the heart and hard work. Lots of updates for this year. For example, if I recall well, the new rich text editor Lexxy for Action Text was being released around those days or something like that.

Well, in addition to the push to bring more joy, freedom, and ownership to the development and shipping processes, there was also the introduction of the new Omarchy Linux OS. One new and highly opinionated Linux version. From what I could see, it looks like one amazing OS capable of attracting many people to the Linux ecosystem. All of us who have installed Linux systems in the past have spent way too much time trying to make them work as we wanted. And with this, we also lost some of the joy of using it. For me, this was also the key point that led me to my very first MacBook many years ago. It worked out of the box. I’m not sure if I will get into this new OS, but my idea is first to check out the tools that it brings by default and give them a try on my Mac. Perhaps switching to Linux might be a bit too much for me, but utilizing the selected tools sounds interesting.
Anyway, we stayed for the next talk and then went to grab something for lunch.

I took some time to go around the venue and check the stands. Basecamp, GitHub, GitLab, AppSignal, Shopify, Heroku, Sentry, these are all super big brands. All there available for some chat with anyone, and about anything that could cross our mind. Of course, there was also a lot of swag to pick up. There was one company called Framework that was presenting some new computers where customization is the number one priority. Super cool to discover. Well, stickers, cookies, t-shirts, keychains, and even some socks. You name it. They were all there. I think it’s the first time I've gotten a super full bag of stuff to bring home. On one hand, these are all cute things to bring to my daughter. It will be fun to see all of these with her. On the other hand, there were so many things that, for me, were mandatory; they looked super cool. The best one? Two keycaps for my mechanical keyboard. One with the Ruby logo and another one with the Rails logo 🤩

There was also another super cool thing for the first time. Everyone there received their Ruby Passport. From now on, anyone can get stamps at all Ruby and Rails conferences. What a great idea from the Rails Foundation team.

Well, the fun makes the time fly. Time for some more talks. The one I will bring up now was a failure for me. The speaker was great, and the theme, LLMs with Rails, looked super interesting. However, at the end of it, we found out that none of the presented options were available to work with Ruby or Rails. Disappointed, but well, it’s life. At least we could hear a little more about the topic and learn a little bit more about it. One more cappuccino, and let’s go for another one.

The next one was about Database issues. It was presented to us by Miles McGuire, and it was about how we could try to prevent those issues. One super cool presentation by a person who had felt the pains, fixed the problems, and was now talking to us about them and teaching those who wanted to listen. He also left us one link so we could check all the info later on. Give it a look when you can. I will. I've always preferred these kinds of tech/engineer/hands-on-the-job presentations. Next, and to close, there were two more talks that I wanted to listen to.

First, a presenter shared his history of how his project was built from scratch. One young man, with lots of energy, pictured with his team/friends living in a house, coding. In the end, Funny fact, after some years, it was with the help of one guy who had just started his college degree, if I recall well, who picked up the existing code base and started to work on it, one step at a time, to bring it up to what it is today. Together, they have now formed one stable company, all thanks to their hard work and Rails' backing. Amazing story. Then, the last one.

Joe Masilotti, the person behind Hotwire Native, presented what I guess we all know. The future will have even more mobile apps, and we must adapt to this trend. Building mobile apps to keep up with this movement is excellent, but it’s even better if we can continue the Ruby and Rails path and be happy. I guess I really need to get his book. I was already thinking about it, now I’m super curious to read it. Cool subject and super well presented.

And, this was it. First day complete. Lots of new ideas to think about, chat about, explore, and one full bag of gifts to enjoy when I get back home. It was time for some beers and to enjoy the center of Amsterdam.

5th of September, 2025

This time, we slept a little more, as the badges were already in our pockets, so that we could relax. Breakfast at the hotel. Small walk into the venue. One more cappuccino and entering the realm of Rails World for the second day. Let's go!

The first talk was not really one presentation. It was some Ruby and Rails maintainers answering questions that Robby Russel (check his podcast, On Rails Podcast) thought to bring into the conversation around different subjects. Cool stuff with some funny moments. The conversation went super smoothly, and we got to know one of the key aspects of the core team. Every detail is meticulously thought out to prevent problems in every project that uses Ruby and Rails. They have a massive responsibility. One change, one line of code merged, and they can bring so many problems to all the projects out there. I'm super grateful to know that the core teams for Rails and Ruby are highly focused on this. That everything they do will always be in the best interest of the language/framework, as well as the solutions that will bring minimal problems for all of us.

Following this, I went for one cappuccino and attended the next talk. The next one was about diagnosing slowness in Rails applications, and it was nice. Well, to be honest. Most of the subjects should be known to everyone. But either way, super good to listen to them again. Always good to remember those small aspects of Rails that can cause problems. Like the misuse of variables that create objects in one maniac way and, of course, eat all the memory available and more if possible. Well, time to relax and have lunch.

This time, after filling my belly, I took the opportunity to try to shake the hands of two humans I have been following for years and say thank you in person. I guess it’s the highlight of the highlights for me in this Rails World. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Oliver and DHH.

So cool! I could even take a picture with both of them. Thank you both; it was great to speak with you. It’s something that I will never forget.

With that super crazy smile on my face, I got back into the talks. This time was about bringing this new world of AI into Rails apps. And yes, excellent work has been done here by Paweł Strzałkowski and his team. It’s called Model Context Protocol, and in simple terms, it's a way for us to integrate the LLM prompts that everyone is now writing into Rails apps. It looks super cool, and I guess everyone should give it a try. I think I will when I get the time for it. Fantastic work and presentation. And next, of course, Chris Oliver. One more for my eyes and ears, this time live. It was about some inner aspects of how we can, for example, build just one small concern about skipping the authentication for some actions. This gives us the possibility to write at the top of any controller something like “admin_access_only” and improve readability. Chris also teaches us how to play with PHP inside a single Rails app. Fun stuff.

After, it was presented to all of us a new tool called Herb. This is a tool that helps the development of Views in Rails. With it, we can see on the page the different partials, delimited by colors, and even more. You can see the name of the respective filename and path. Super helpful. I had seen this in the past in one video from Chris Oliver at GoRails, but this is on another level. Go check it out, it looks fantastic, I know I will. And then, the last talk for us. One that brought some ideas about stepping up one legacy app into Hotwire. I was expecting his app to be working with jQuery and some super old legacy frontend framework. But no, it was already with React. An app with React is not that legacy from my perspective. But it’s a change that makes sense to me. Hotwire with Turbo Frames simplifies a lot of the work involved in editing the elements that exist on a page. It was still cool to listen to this presentation.

Well, time to go, we have a plane to catch.
I left with the feeling that I should have stayed for the last talk with Aaron Patterson. He spoke during the maintainers' conversation that he would speak about his latest work. I will have to wait for the videos on YouTube. There was also the closing party. This one should be fun to attend, but I will have to wait for another opportunity.

And this was it. Two amazing days where we could see a lot, get new ideas, and learn some new things. We now have to wait for the Rails World team to upload all the videos and re-watch some of the presentations.

Rails World 2025 left me with a bag full of swag and a heart full of optimism for the future of Ruby and Rails. Until the next time!