baweaver Engineering systems that endure. 2026-07-02T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/ Brandon Weaver Ozymandias on Rails. Cartography of a Ruin 2026-07-02T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/07/02/ozymandias-on-rails-cartography-of-a-ruin/ You inherited a monolith with no map. This is how you start drawing one. Ozymandias on Rails. The Pedestal Inscription 2026-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/28/ozymandias-on-rails-the-pedestal-inscription/ Every successful Rails monolith becomes a ruin if it survives long enough. This post is about why, and what a recovery looks like from the inside. Rails: The Sharp Parts. A Polymorphic Type Is Not a Foreign Key 2026-06-25T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/25/rails-sharp-parts-a-polymorphic-type-is-not-a-foreign-key/ Polymorphic associations store a relationship as a class name in a string with no foreign key. That has unintended consequences which may not be obvious, and this article covers five of them. Beyond Enumerable: Counting Distinct with HyperLogLog 2026-06-15T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/15/beyond-enumerable-counting-distinct-with-hyperloglog/ Counting distinct values exactly means remembering all of them. HyperLogLog does it in 16 kilobytes. This post builds from coin flips to bitmaps to the algorithm Redis uses behind PFCOUNT. Rails: The Sharp Parts. Queries, Read Models, and Batching 2026-06-14T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/14/rails-sharp-parts-queries-read-models-and-batching/ Queries own the reads the way commands own the writes, and a T::Struct is the only thing that crosses between them. Every read here ran against ActiveRecord 8.1 before it went in. Rails: The Sharp Parts. Callbacks Are Not Invariants 2026-06-13T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/13/rails-sharp-parts-callbacks-are-not-invariants/ Callbacks promise that something always happens when a record changes. They can't keep that promise, and Rails documents the ways out. Every failure mode here ran against ActiveRecord 8.1 before it went in, and the replacement is a command with one door. Rails: The Sharp Parts. An Index Is Not a Plan 2026-06-12T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/12/rails-sharp-parts-an-index-is-not-a-plan/ add_index looks like a one-line fix for slow queries. It isn't. This article walks through the failure modes, proves each one with EXPLAIN on half a million rows, and shows how to build an index the optimizer will actually use. Beyond Enumerable: Streaming and External Sort 2026-06-09T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/09/beyond-enumerable-streaming-and-external-sort/ Enumerable assumes the whole collection fits in memory. This post is about what happens when it doesn't, built up one step at a time from lazy streams to external merge sort. Beyond Enumerable: Graphs and Traversal 2026-06-08T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/08/beyond-enumerable-graphs-and-traversal/ Enumerable named the ways we walk a line, but some data is not a line. This article builds graphs up from a plain Hash, covering dependency ordering, tsort, friend lists, and a few pathfinding algorithms. Beyond Enumerable: Heaps and Priority Queues 2026-06-06T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/06/beyond-enumerable-heaps-and-priority-queues/ Enumerable named our traversals, but some collections live past it. This post goes after ordered retrieval: heaps, priority queues, their real uses, and why they belong in Ruby itself. Rails: The Sharp Parts. lock Is Not a Mutex 2026-06-05T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/06/05/rails-sharp-parts-lock-is-not-a-mutex/ lock looks like a one-line fix for concurrency bugs. It isn't. This article walks through eight failure modes, proves each one with forking tests, and shows what actually holds an invariant. Beyond Enumerable: For Want of Better Windows 2026-05-31T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/05/31/beyond-enumerable-for-want-of-better-windows/ Enumerable taught us a better path for iteration, what if we applied those lessons to other forms of iteration? This article covers windows and pointers. AI Didn't Create These Problems. It Just Stopped Routing Around Them. 2026-05-27T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/05/27/ai-didnt-create-these-problems/ Every guardrail we need for AI is a good practice we should have already been doing. AI exposes the systemic gaps that experienced developers have been quietly routing around for years. Grab the Chainsaw 2026-05-27T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2026/05/27/grab-the-chainsaw/ A tornado flattened my town in 2011. What I learned that night still shapes how I show up to work today. Noah Gibbs: Mentor, Friend, Ally 2024-12-27T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/12/27/noah-gibbs-mentor-friend-ally-4171/ Content Warning: Death of a Ruby community member I woke up this morning to receive the news, among... Let's Read - Eloquent Ruby - Ch 21 – Method Missing 2024-10-04T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/10/04/lets-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-21-1h3g/ Perhaps my personal favorite recommendation for learning to program Ruby like a Rubyist, Eloquent... Let's Read - Eloquent Ruby - Ch 22 – Method Missing Delegation 2024-10-04T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/10/04/lets-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-22-4poe/ Perhaps my personal favorite recommendation for learning to program Ruby like a Rubyist, Eloquent... Let's Read - Eloquent Ruby - Ch 20 – Block Hooks 2024-10-03T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/10/03/lets-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-20-21aj/ Perhaps my personal favorite recommendation for learning to program Ruby like a Rubyist, Eloquent... Let's Read - Eloquent Ruby - Ch 19 – Block Actions 2024-09-27T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/09/27/lets-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-19-fjf/ Perhaps my personal favorite recommendation for learning to program Ruby like a Rubyist, Eloquent... Let's Read - Eloquent Ruby - Ch 18 – Block Wrapping 2024-09-26T00:00:00+00:00 https://baweaver.com/writing/2024/09/26/lets-read-eloquent-ruby-ch-18-3op5/ Perhaps my personal favorite recommendation for learning to program Ruby like a Rubyist, Eloquent...