RSpec is a popular test framework in ruby.

Rails framework autoloads constants so that in environments like development or test, the app does not need to load everything into memory before serving requests. However, autoloading is known to be thread unsafe in rails (at least for versions less than 6), and if you happen to be using threaded servers like puma or webrick, it’s very easy to step on unexpected issues caused by multiple threads.

Upgrading rails to a new major version can be tricky because there might be many breaking changes from the framework itself or from many gems used in project that will become either deprecated or unsupported. However, it can also go smooth if done in a right procedural way. This post shares the procedure based on my recent hands-on experience in upgrading rails from 4.2.11 to 5.0.7.2 for our API server. Please be kindly noted that depending on project configuration or dependencies, the upgrading steps might be slightly different for various projects.

Rack is the gem that provides the interface between web frameworks (ruby on rails, sinatra) and web servers (webrick, puma, unicorn) in ruby world.

Rake is a Make-like task runner in Ruby. First define a list of tasks in ruby syntax in a Rakefile and then invoke the task with rake command.

Bundler is for dependency management in ruby projects.

A ruby gem is a software package that contains a reusable ruby application or library.

rbenv is for managing multiple Ruby versions and here are some of its commonly used commands summarized for quick reference.

nodenv is a great tool to manage multiple NodeJS versions and here are some of its commonly used commands summarized for quick reference.

In frontend development sometimes you need to export the data (usually in JSON format) as downloadable csv format, and for those working on ReactJS related web applications, there is a package named react-csv that can save you from breaking the DRY… However, you may also encounter issues when applying this package in some specific scenarios, such as the one I’m writing down soon which involves in data being loaded asyncronously but needed for initial UI rendering.