Top all-time · #1885
Engineering Blog
Company blog · engineering.appfolio.comprogramming
Engineering Blog is the company blog at engineering.appfolio.com, writing about programming. Since 2012, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “CSS Architecture”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link AppFolio's engineering posts on Ruby performance, including the Ruby 3x3 speed goal, MJIT tests on Rails code, and CSS architecture. Comments cite them as background or evidence.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Technical Blog
Most-linked posts?
- CSS Architecture6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-11-16
- The goal of Ruby 3x3 is to make Ruby 3 be 3 times faster than Ruby 26 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-11-20
- /appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-03
- Ruby Mixins & ActiveSupport::Concern2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-17
- Ruby 3 and JIT: Where, When and How Fast?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-01-11
What Hacker News says?
Ruby 3x3 is a plan to make Ruby 3 times faster than Ruby 2.x. Here's some further reading: http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2015/11... https://blog.heroku.com/where_will_ruby_go_now_talking_with_... https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/3tje5a/ruby_3x3_ruby_...
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3
on “Rails 5.0: Action Cable, API mode, and more”Submitted CSS Architecture as a story · 184 points
HN discussionNice to see the 3x3 work continuing to go well with that 5-10% speed up. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Ruby declared a target for Ruby 3.0 to be 3x faster than 2.0. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2015/11...
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3
on “Ruby 2.5.0 Released”Submitted JIT and Ruby's MJIT as a story · 115 points
HN discussionAppFolio - Santa Barbara, CA - REMOTE We're looking for a C-hacker with experience in just-in-time compilers, virtual machines, runtime optimizations, etc to work with the Ruby core team on performance. We primarily use Ruby / Ruby on Rails on the back end side. Ruby is a great language, but a slow one. We'd like to help make it faster. So we've teamed up with the Ruby creator Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto on the Ruby 3…
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2016)”Submitted The goal of Ruby 3x3 is to make Ruby 3 be 3 times faster than Ruby 2 as a story · 23 points
HN discussionMJIT is completely different to PyPy. Their problems are simply not relevant to MJIT. MJIT is already just as fast as standard CRuby when executing complex Rails code, minus the small overhead for JIT compilation: http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2018/3/... PyPy is a much more ambitious design, completely replacing CPython, and using an unusual JIT scheme of tracing the interpreter itself and try…
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2018/3/6/ruby-26-preview-1-timing-jit
on “Ruby 2.6.0-preview2 released with JIT”Submitted Ruby 3x3 Progress as a story · 22 points
HN discussionI'm just going to leave here some of my CSS Good Practices bookmarks: * https://github.com/necolas/idiomatic-css * http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/08/from-table-hel... * http://engineering.appfolio.com/2012/11/16/css-architecture/ * http://www.stubbornella.org/content/2011/04/28/our-best-prac...
Comment linking /2012/11/16/css-architecture/
on “Shame.css”Submitted A Composition Regarding Inheritance as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThe double hyphen is actually part of a pretty common naming convention (BEM-style) for distinguishing between separate components, component modifiers, and component sub-objects. Examples: https://gist.github.com/1309546 http://nicolasgallagher.com/about-html-semantics-front-end-a... http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/mindbemding-getting-your-head... http://engineering.appfolio.com/2012/11/16/css-architecture
Comment linking /2012/11/16/css-architecture
on “Show HN: hint.css – a tooltip library in CSS”Submitted Predictable, Reusable, Maintainable and Scalable CSS as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> Ruby really needs to put performance on the roadmap as a serious project. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2015/11... > At RubyConf 2015 in San Antonio, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto announced Ruby 3x3. The goal of Ruby 3x3 is to make Ruby 3 be 3 times faster than Ruby 2.
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3
on “Ruby has been fast enough for 13 years”Submitted Ruby 3 and JIT: Where, When and How Fast? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionNo I'm not arguing for style attributes, that's a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen (with very little waiting needed!). They are a layer of indirection indeed, but which of these do you think conveys more information/semantics to the developer (these aren't bootstrap specific classes, just illustrative): <div class="sidebar"> <!-- content --> </div> <!-- or --> <div class="sidebar grid-one-whole grid-one-half-…
Comment linking /2012/11/16/css-architecture/
on “Bootstrap 3”Submitted Benchmarking Ruby's Heap: malloc, tcmalloc, jemalloc as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> I don't see it ever getting too much faster ruby 3 will be 3 times faster http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2015/11... > Rails is... kind of wacky, still, in what manner? it is one of the most well well crafted and thoughtful pieces of software i've ever used. It has never been "wacky" for me, behaved unexpectedly, or require convoluted effort.
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3
on “Ruby on Rails is out: major coding bootcamp ditches it, due to waning interest”Submitted My Experience With Mob Programming as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe Rails-centrism is only a western phenomenon, in Japan the focus for using Ruby is a very different one. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/...
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan
on “A first naïve look at Truffle Ruby”Submitted CSS Architecture as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAt least as of Ruby 2.6 I tried that and it really didn't work: http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2018/4/... It may work a bit better now, but it's still very much not tuned for that. The result would probably still be slower than not JITting, for the same reasons mentioned for 2.6 in that link.
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2018/4/3/ruby-26-and-ahead-of-time-compilation
on “JIT and Ruby's MJIT”Submitted View Models, Form Objects, Presenters, and Helpers Oh My as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHonestly I do not know. There was an article not long time ago mentioning that Ruby is not popular in Japan because of Rails but because it is used in a lot of places like embedded stuff etc. http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5/...
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan
on “Flash Is Dead: What Technologies Might Be Next?”Submitted Ruby, RubyGems and Bundler as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhile we probably shouldn't worry about long CSS selectors due to performance issues, we should avoid them for other reasons. For instance, because it's considered a best practice to avoid "Modifying Components Based On Who Their Parents Are". Please see this article: http://engineering.appfolio.com/2012/11/16/css-architecture/
Comment linking /2012/11/16/css-architecture/
on “The CSS selector length myth”Submitted Ruby Mixins & ActiveSupport::Concern as a story · 3 points
HN discussionApparently there's a lot of embedded Ruby in Japan https://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio-engineering/2017/5...
Comment linking /appfolio-engineering/2017/5/24/how-is-ruby-different-in-japan
on “Abbrev: A Hidden Ruby Gem”Submitted Don't make your users wait for Garbage Collection as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bundler is Built into Ruby 2.6.0preview3 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted CRuby Memory Slots: See Them, Tweak Them, Make Them Fast as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
