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AppSignal
Company blog · blog.appsignal.comprogrammingweb
AppSignal is the company blog at blog.appsignal.com, writing about programming and web. Since 2013, 84 different Hacker News readers have linked it 505 times, most often “Enhancing Your Elixir Codebase with Gleam”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Product updates and things we've learned while building AppSignal
Most-linked posts?
- Enhancing Your Elixir Codebase with Gleam4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-23
- Livebook for Elixir: Just What the Docs Ordered3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-24
- Russian doll caching in Rails (2018)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-02
- Ride down into JavaScript dependency hell3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-09
- Building a Multi-Tenant Ruby on Rails App with Subdomains3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-02
- An Introduction to Deno: Is It Better Than Node.js?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-09
- /2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-code-reloading-in-elixir.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-23
- Using Supervisors to Organize Your Elixir Application3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-24
- Introduction to Ruby on Rails Patterns and Anti-Patterns3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-05
- How to Track Down Memory Leaks in Ruby3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-07-27
What Hacker News says?
I'm gonna assume you're talking about versions of application code. Obviously it's not a trivial problem and you have to keep it in mind while architecting your application, but Hot Code reloading is a well supported thing [1] https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-cod...
Comment linking /2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-code-reloading-in-elixir.html
on “Monolith First (2015)”Submitted What's New in Ruby on Rails 8 as a story · 545 points
HN discussionAs I said, claiming that ruby doesn't have first-class functions isn't "meaningfully true". Ruby does not have functions, only methods. But that's mostly irrelevant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function#Languag... > The identifier of a regular "function" in Ruby (which is really a method) cannot be used as a value or passed. It must first be retrieved into a Method or Proc object to be used as first-…
Comment linking /2018/09/04/ruby-magic-closures-in-ruby-blocks-procs-and-lambdas.html
on “Ruby 3.3”Submitted A Deep Dive into Solid Queue for Ruby on Rails as a story · 160 points
HN discussionNot touching on the reasons why the type system and hot code reloading are complex in the BEAM, but the hot code reloading dev workflows in other languages and the BEAM one are two completely different beasts. Erlang/OTP was designed for systems where the amount of acceptable downtime is 0, you don't want phone calls failing because you have to fix a bug, the solution is a system where you can replace parts of it ru…
Comment linking /2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-code-reloading-in-elixir.html
on “Build a real-time Twitter clone with LiveView and Phoenix 1.5”Submitted Under the Hood of Macros in Elixir as a story · 150 points
HN discussionDoes is also play nice with Python, Go, or Rust? Never heard of import maps until now, not immediately clear what they obviate. https://blog.appsignal.com/2022/03/02/import-maps-under-the-...
Comment linking /2022/03/02/import-maps-under-the-hood-in-rails-7.html
on “Tabler: Free and open source dashboard HTML/CSS framework”Submitted State Machines in Ruby: An Introduction as a story · 141 points
HN discussionInteresting but not surprising; I'm being regularly pleasantly surprised by the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem :) . Can you precise what you're talking about when you say "Erlang/Elixir have built-in caches" ? What's the name of the concept and where in the typical stack does it fit? Is this https://blog.appsignal.com/2019/11/12/caching-with-elixir-an... or something else? Care to share a few link to docs/articles? Thanks.
Comment linking /2019/11/12/caching-with-elixir-and-ets.html
on “How to Fix Slow Code in Ruby”Submitted Three Ways to Debug Code in Elixir as a story · 136 points
HN discussionInheritance is not the only way to share behavior across different implementations — it'a just the only way available in the traditional 1990s crop of static OOP languages like C++, Java and C#. There are many other ways to share an implementation of a common feature: 1. Another comment already mentioned default method implementations in an interface (or a trait, since the example was in Rust). This technique is eve…
Comment linking /2023/07/19/how-to-delegate-methods-in-ruby.html
on “Inheritance was invented as a performance hack (2021)”Submitted Ride down into JavaScript dependency hell as a story · 133 points
HN discussionMy problem with Sorbet is how ugly it looks. It's probably not possible to do with Ruby (now) but Crystal does it better[1] while (mostly) retaining the syntax of Ruby. I suppose it's trying for Elixir's @spec, which I like less than Crystal's sigs but still prefer over this. Still, if it helps it helps. [1] https://crystal-lang.org/reference/1.3/tutorials/basics/60_m... Edit: Perhaps I spoke too soon https://blog.a…
Comment linking /2021/01/27/rbs-the-new-ruby-3-typing-language-in-action.html
on “Sorbet: Stripe's Type Checker for Ruby”Submitted An Introduction to Solid Queue for Ruby on Rails as a story · 124 points
HN discussionThe Rust closure syntax come from Ruby: https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/09/04/ruby-magic-closures-in... .
Comment linking /2018/09/04/ruby-magic-closures-in-ruby-blocks-procs-and-lambdas.html
on “Rust for JavaScript Developers – Functions and Control Flow”Submitted Delayed Job vs. Sidekiq as a story · 112 points
HN discussionI believe so. I think this is what he was referring to: https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-cod...
Comment linking /2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-code-reloading-in-elixir.html
on “Bakeware – Compile Elixir applications into single executable binaries”Submitted Using Broadway in an Elixir application as a story · 108 points
HN discussionNice post covering many of the main ways to improve efficiency. Here’s a related post I wrote for AppSignal: What's Coming in Ruby on Rails 7.2: Database Features in Active Record https://blog.appsignal.com/2024/07/24/whats-coming-in-ruby-o... For folks interested in additional depth on optimizing Postgres for use with Active Record/Rails, please check out my book: High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails https://andya…
Comment linking /2024/07/24/whats-coming-in-ruby-on-rails-7-2-database-features-in-active-record.html
on “Optimize Database Performance in Ruby on Rails and ActiveRecord”Submitted An Introduction to Ractors in Ruby as a story · 88 points
HN discussionYou can use Gleam from Elixir. I wanted to use lpil's jot library and it was pretty seamless. https://blog.appsignal.com/2024/07/23/enhancing-your-elixir-...
Comment linking /2024/07/23/enhancing-your-elixir-codebase-with-gleam.html
on “Shine with Gleam”Submitted Algebraic Data Types in Elixir as a story · 87 points
HN discussionI've read that and tried it. I hate it. This recent article has some alternatives https://blog.appsignal.com/2023/05/10/organize-business-logi... Their main argument against the first piece is: > One problem with fat models is that unless you are really disciplined in your code hygiene, they can tend towards an assortment of code smells And I wholeheartedly agree. With the addition that "code hygiene" if not enforce…
Comment linking /2023/05/10/organize-business-logic-in-your-ruby-on-rails-application.html
on “Rails Cheat Sheet”Submitted Optimize Database Performance in Ruby on Rails and ActiveRecord as a story · 83 points
HN discussionThey are using the cluster module right? https://blog.appsignal.com/2021/02/03/improving-node-applica...
Comment linking /2021/02/03/improving-node-application-performance-with-clustering.html
on “JDK 20 and JDK 21: What We Know So Far”Submitted An Introduction to Deno: Is It Better Than Node.js? as a story · 82 points
HN discussionOff the top of my head: - Understand the event loop to avoid blocking - Understand the JIT compiler to write compiler optimization-friendly code - With Typescript: speed up build and dev times using the SWC compiler, understand which types take more compilation time - Minimize heap allocations to avoid memory leaks: https://blog.appsignal.com/2022/09/28/minimize-heap-allocati... - Write native modules when you need…
Comment linking /2022/09/28/minimize-heap-allocations-in-nodejs.html
on “Ask HN: If you could teach a course, what would it be?”Submitted An overview of V8 as a story · 81 points
HN discussionThat sounds like the Citadel pattern…not microservices in the truest sense of the word. https://blog.appsignal.com/2020/04/08/the-citadel-architectu...
Comment linking /2020/04/08/the-citadel-architecture-at-appsignal.html
on “Stop Doing Microservices”Submitted Understanding Associations in Elixir's Ecto as a story · 78 points
HN discussion
