Kevin Newton on Ruby Parser, SyntaxTree, Prettier Ruby and a sneak peek!
This is probably not the episode you want to listen to at 2X. Kevin Newton, Staff Production Engineer at Shopify, is back for the third time and there’s a LOT to absorb here. Kevin talks about Ruby Parser, SyntaxTree, Prettier Ruby, and even gives us a peek into the Ruby Ecosystem at Shopify. If you suffer from imposter syndrome, worried if Ruby is dying, or just need to feel smarter for having listened to something, this is the episode for you! No matter where you are in the stack, Kevin reminds ALL of us, we are all REAL programmers. Yes, you! Go ahead and download this episode now!
[00:01:52] Jason and Andrew catch up on what they’ve been working on. Apparently, they’ve both been working on making Dynamic Open Graph Images. Andrew used Vercel and Jason took a different route.
[00:05:11] Kevin details the recent news about rewriting Ruby Parser.
[00:07:50] If you’re new to Ruby or not familiar with Parser, Kevin explains what a Parser is how it’s used in Ruby.
[00:09:54] We find out how SyntaxTree works with what Kevin’s doing now on Ruby Parser.
[00:13:00] If you haven’t heard of mruby, PicoRuby, Natalie, Rutie, Artichoke, and Sorbet, Kevin explains them.
[00:13:42] With each of the implementations, Jason wonders if they have to bring CRuby with it or if they’re having to write their own Parsers each time, and Kevin explains there’s different projects that have taken different approaches and what JRuby did.
[00:15:38] Kevin tells us the three goals he’s got going forward with a new Ruby Parser he’s working on.
[00:19:28] Jason wonders if the JRuby team or other people that have been implementing their own flavors of Ruby, hinted that they would use this new Parser.
[00:22:42] Kevin explains what SyntaxTree does right now and the most valuable thing it provides.
[00:25:51] With the new Parser, we find out if Kevin has to make any changes to SyntaxTree to support reading the results.
[00:29:33] We learn if Meta programming make this type of work difficult and Kevin explains how his tooling will make it much easier to deal with syntax errors.
[00:34:00] Jason opens up and tells us he’s never felt like a real programmer, and Kevin brings it all out in the open telling Jason that he is a real programmer and explains how everyone is just in a different domain.
[00:36:40] Kevin announces he’s working with Prettier Ruby, Prettier 3 is almost ready, and he explains why there’s not a lot of reasons to use Prettier Ruby anymore.
[00:42:51] Kevin announces that Stripe, GitHub, and Shopify are putting a lot of money into Ruby, and he explains how huge his team is at Shopify working on so many parts of the Ruby ecosystem and working on what the future of Rails could look like. Also, someone on his team created a reimagined version of unicorn, called pitchfork.
[00:48:58] Kevin explains thinking about programming as a skill and not a job.
[00:49:39] Find out where you can follow Kevin on the web.
Panelists:
Jason Charnes
Andrew Mason
Guest:
Kevin Newton
Sponsor:
Links:
Creators and Guests
