It’s amazing how quickly a year flies by.
It’s a total cliché, but it feels like only a few days ago that I sat by my Christmas tree and wrote last year’s final reflection post.
Back then, I was excited for all of the plans the Rails Foundation had in the works for 2024. Rails 7.1 was just released and already Rails 8 was on the horizon. There was so much to do! Documentation! Tutorial! Videos! Toronto! Merch store! Case studies! I couldn’t wait to hit the ground running and start assembling the teams to make all this happen.
…Then the motherboard in my new laptop died and I was forced to take the next week off until Apple provided a new one. I’m sure there was a ‘blessing in disguise’ lesson in there somewhere, but at the time I was too annoyed to see it.
I digress.
Now, one year later, seated again in the glow of my Christmas tree with a cautious eye on my second new laptop (don’t fail me now), I can look back and say with confidence that we did what we set out to do in 2024. Within two years the Rails Foundation has all 4 pillars of our mission up and running, and all pistons firing: Documentation, Education, Marketing, and Events.
And once again, I am looking ahead with excitement to next year. We have a lot in store, and I can’t wait to get started.
Before we sprint forward, I’d like to share all that we accomplished this year in support of our mission.
But first: the Rails Foundation grew this year.
The Rails Foundation expanded this year when 1Password joined as a brand new Core member. This is huge news for the Rails community that such a well-known SaaS company (and beloved tool) is so enthusiastic about Rails that they are contributing at our highest tier of membership. And not a Rails shop by origin, I might add, but rather a Rails shop by acquisition. That speaks volumes about Rails.
VP of Product at 1Password Jason Meller joined the Rails Foundation board as a director. On the Remote Ruby podcast recently, he shared more about how this all came to be when his company Kollide was acquired by 1Password, and how joining the foundation took little convincing internally: “It felt like the right time for 1Password to step in and start getting formally involved in the community. It was a no-brainer. Instantly everybody saw the value.” (It’s a great episode, listen to it here.)
1Password joins the eight founding members of the Rails Foundation Core, all of which have a seat on the board: Cookpad, Doximity, Fleetio, GitHub, Intercom, Procore, Shopify, and 37signals.
Other changes to the board included Neha Batra stepping in as GitHub’s director, and Ryan Sherlock taking over the director role for Intercom. (Big thanks to Kyle Daigle and Darragh Curran, who previously acted as directors before passing the baton.)
The Rails Foundation also welcomed three new Contributing members this year: makandra, TableCheck, and Gusto, joining Cedarcode, Planet Argon, AppSignal, BigBinary, and Renuo.
This year has been an incredible show of support for the Rails community. All of the companies you see above not only fund the work we are doing, they also advise, suggest ideas, contribute time, and share resources - all because they believe in our mission to support the Rails community and want to see it thrive for decades to come.
Our work is 100% made possible because of the ongoing support by these members. Here’s a look back on what that support meant for you in the Rails community in 2024.
We updated the Rails Guides. (Documentation)
Work on the Rails documentation began in February, and carried on throughout the year. In total, 21 guides were updated, including the addition of most of the recent Rails 8 defaults.
These guides are now up-to-date and more consistent in tone, content, context, and readability, thanks to the efforts of Ridhwana Khan, Bhumi Shah, Harriet Oughton, Petrik de Heus, Carlos Antonio Da Silva, and the many, many folks in the community who helped by reviewing the PRs. There is more work to do here, but we are off to a good start.
We improved the design & UX of the Rails Guides. (Documentation)
The previous design of the Rails Guides served its purpose well for nearly 15 years, but it’s just as important for the UX and design of a website to evolve along with the framework it promotes. So this year, we fixed that and gave the Guides a facelift so that visitors will see a more clean, sleek, and modern design, more in keeping with what Rails is today.
John Athayde refreshed the existing design, added RTL rendering, and added convenient little UX features such as a floating, scrollable Chapters nav bar, and a guide version selector (a crowd favorite). Alisa Wandzilak added a highlight to the rolling scrollbar, and Derk-Jan Karrenbeld did a lot of work to improve the accessibility of the guides. All of this work was carried out with feedback and direction from the three Rails teams, and a lot of help from the community. Thank you all!
We introduced Rails case studies. (Marketing - Documentation)
What better way to demonstrate that Rails is the ideal choice for building fast, flexible, and scalable applications than with case studies showcasing how companies like Doximity have successfully done so?
The Rails community is rich with stories of successful companies of all sizes, building with Rails and delivering big results - it’s time to start sharing these stories with the world.
This case study was a collaboration made possible by Robby Russell from Planet Argon, Bruno Miranda from Doximity, and the Doximity leadership team.
We shipped a brand new flagship Getting Started tutorial. (Education)
With Rails 8, the framework is better than ever, making it the perfect time to introduce a new flagship Getting Started tutorial that showcases everything Rails can do.
The revamped Getting Started Guide now walks you through building an e-commerce app and is the most up-to-date, comprehensive Rails 8 tutorial to be found, introducing Rails fundamentals and the latest Rails 8 defaults.
We also made it more beginner-friendly, designed to make Rails accessible to everyone and to welcome beginners to Rails for years to come. And: it’s expandable, so get ready for more tutorials in the future.
Special thanks to Chris Oliver for his work on this tutorial, with help from Rafael França, Xavier Noria, Jeremy Daer, Matthew Draper, Collin Jilbert, Kent Crutchfield, Harriet Oughton, Julian Duss, Santiago Rodriguez, Gianlo Occhipinti, Kim Perino, and all the reviewers on GitHub.
We introduced the Docs landing page. (Documentation)
To create space for tutorials and case studies, and to make the Rails website more welcoming and beginner-friendly to navigate, we introduced Docs, the starting point for everything you need to install Rails, learn it, get better at it, and get involved. From one convenient page, you can now access the Installation Guide, Tutorials, Guides, API Docs, Case Studies, the Forum, and the Contributing Guide.
John Athayde designed and shipped this new page with input and direction from all three Rails teams.
We collaborated with Typecraft on the Rails 8 Unpacked video series. (Education - Marketing)
DHH recorded a new Rails 8 demo for the website which is a fantastic upgrade on the previous demo - now showing how easy it is to take an app from rails new all the way through to deployment - all within 30 minutes.
But we wanted to dive deeper. We wanted videos that answered the questions you probably had: what was introduced as default or new in Rails 8, what does that change, and why does it matter?
But who could tell the story in a compelling, engaging way?
The answer came to us at Rails World when I found myself seated next to Chris Power of the popular YouTube channel Typecraft after the Opening Keynote. “Hey,” he said, “This Rails 8 stuff is so cool. Who do I speak to about creating content for Rails?”.
Bingo.
Rails 8 Unpacked with Typecraft is a 9-part video series exploring Rails 8’s default features through the lens of a demo task management app. It’s told with the right blend humor, panache, and expertise befitting the Ruby community, and we hope you like it.
Thanks to Chris Power and Robert Beene from Typecraft for pulling this series together in record time after Rails 8 was launched, with help from reviewers Rosa Gutiérrez, Donal McBreen, Breno Gazzola, Miles Woodroffe, Bruno Miranda, and the Rails Core team.
We kicked off the Rails in Focus video series. (Education - Marketing)
Rails in Focus is a video series of quick tips and best practices for Rails devs of all levels to help you get the most out of Rails.
These videos are made by the community, for the community. Emmanuel Hayford is our first host for the series, but there will be more hosts as the mic is passed to other Rails devs. What feature of Rails do you love working with? What little-known tip has helped you? If you have something to share and want to host, please get in touch. And subscribe to the Rails YouTube to be notified of when more videos drop.
We sponsored Rails Girls São Paulo. (Events)
After being asked to speak on a panel at Tropical on Rails, the Rails Foundation teamed up with Doximity to sponsor the coinciding Rails Girls São Paulo, which was starting up again after a hiatus with a new format to help women with some level of Rails experience gain skills to advance further in their career.
On a break from working on their demo apps, the 30 attendees had a chance to ask Rails Core Eileen Uchitelle, Shopify Engineering Manager Gabi Stefanini, Rails dev Mayra Navarro, and myself questions and tips on how to succeed in tech and advance in their careers.
Foundation members Bruno Miranda (Doximity) and Robby Russell (Planet Argon) and I were grateful for an opportunity to spend time with such a fantastic group of women from the Brazilian Rails community. Thank you to Debora Fernandes, Camila Campos, and Cirdes Henrique for organizing and inviting us, and Doximity’s Douglas Andrade, Camila Tormena, Julio Monteiro and David Bruisius for mentoring the teams.
We launched the Rails Merch Store. (Marketing - Community)
Many of you asked over the past two years, so we finally launched the official Rails Merch Store, starting with timeless classic items - t-shirt, hoodie, cap, mug, and a baby onesie. We’ll be adding more items over time, and we hope to add shipping to more regions as soon as possible.
We can’t wait to see you out in the wild wearing your Rails pride! (Don’t forget to tag Rails in your shots on social media.)
This looks like a small merch store, but it took some heavy lifting to get it live, and it would not have happened without Anne Gonschorek, Melissa Miller, Jackie Gregoire, and Lukas Perez, Brandon Sooknanan, Niklas Arsenault from Shopify’s launch team (because the merch store is built on Shopify).
We gathered 1,000 devs in Toronto for Rails World. (Events - Marketing - Education - Community)
Rails devs from 57 countries gathered in Toronto for the second edition of Rails World. We had two days of technical talks, workshops, networking, and evening parties, and folks were live in the audience when the Rails 8 beta was released to the world during the Opening Keynote.
This was a memorable edition in a beautiful venue that was made possible by support from many sponsors, but especially by our three primary supporters: Platinum sponsors AppSignal and GitHub, and our City Host Shopify, who was excited to host us in their hometown.
There’s a lot that comes together during an event; this is just some of what went down this year:
There were also wasps, but we don’t talk about them.
Huge shout out to all of the speakers who presented this year, and everyone who made the Hallway Track as special and engaging as ever.
The Toronto edition will be hard to top, but we’re certainly going to try next year in Amsterdam.
And last but not least, we localized videos in 3 languages. (Marketing - Education - Community)
Thanks to Happy Scribe, a transcription service built on Rails, we were able to offer Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish subtitles on all 24 Rails World 2024 videos, and all 9 Rails Unpacked videos. We hope this removes a barrier and makes Rails videos accessible to a wider audience of developers and Rails enthusiasts around the world.
That’s a wrap on 2024.
Like I said at the start, we achieved everything we set out to do in 2024, and that feels good. But all this work is just the blast of the starting gun.
Next year, all of it continues: more tutorials, more videos, more supporting whatever updates the Rails Core team has in store for you, and of course, another Rails World to start planning.
By the way, we have added a Foundation category to the blog feed. Drop in any time throughout the year to see what we are working on. (Thank you Beatriz Mitre for adding that functionality.) Our suggestion box is also always open if you have ideas on how we can support you.
To close, one more thing.
Thank you all for your enthusiasm and energy. Not only does it make working for this community fun and exciting, but over the past year, I’ve heard from countless developers from other communities and languages who recognize that something special is happening in Rails. That’s a testament to the Rails community’s genuine passion and excitement for the future. It’s enough positivity and pride to make others sit up and notice, and that’s powerful stuff.
So let’s keep the momentum going in 2025. Let’s continue making waves and showing the tech world what Rails is all about.
Wishing everyone in the Rails community a fantastic close to 2024. See you all next year!