On Rails invites Rails developers to share real-world technical challenges and solutions, architectural decisions, and lessons learned while building with Rails. Through technical deep-dives and retrospectives with experienced engineers in the Rails community, we explore the strategies behind building and scaling Rails applications.
Hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon.
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In this episode of ‘On Rails’, host Robby Russell (@planetargon) chats with Rosa Gutiérrez, Principal Programmer at 37signals, about the technical decisions behind Solid Queue - a database-backed job queue replacing Resque in their Rails apps.
Rosa dives into why her team built Solid Queue, how it improves reliability, visibility, and maintainability, and the challenges of migrating live apps like Hey during active development. Learn how they tackled recurring jobs, long-running tasks, and testing strategies, plus insights on system design, scaling, and the joy of deleting old code.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
Jean Boussier, Senior Staff Engineer at Shopify and member of the Rails Core team, joins Robby to dig into the performance realities behind modern Rails apps.
They explore what it means to be IO-bound or CPU-bound, how Ruby’s Global VM Lock affects concurrency, and why "fast" is too vague to be useful. Jean explains why instrumentation is often the missing piece and shares thoughtful approaches to using background jobs with intention.
They also talk about gem dependencies. The gems in your `Gemfile` are not magic. If your app depends on them, you should understand them. You can read the code. You can patch it. You can make it your own.
This episode is a reminder that Rails is not a black box. It is a system you can study, shape, and improve. The more you learn how it works, the more confidently you can build with it.
🔗 References & Resources Mentioned
- 📖 Crafting Interpreters – A book Jean recommends for understanding how interpreters and Ruby internals work
Ryan Stawarz & Austin Story: Inside Doximity’s 15-Year Rails Monolith
Season 1 · Episode 4
Tuesday, August 12, 2025 • Duration 01:11:54
In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Ryan Stawarz and Austin Story from Doximity, where Ruby on Rails has powered the core of their platform for over 15 years. The trio digs into how a single Rails monolith has evolved to support 100+ engineers and a mobile-first experience for millions of healthcare professionals. From front-end framework migrations to API architecture, they explore the real-world decisions required to keep a large Rails app resilient and fast-moving.
Ryan and Austin walk us through the team’s adoption of GraphQL, what led them to introduce GraphQL Federation, and how they balance speed with reliability when scaling APIs across domains. They talk about the tradeoffs of maintaining both GraphQL and REST, and how Doximity avoids N+1 query pitfalls using BatchLoader. The conversation also touches on the evolution of their front-end—from Backbone to Vue.js—and why Rails’ flexibility still gives them an edge.
Throughout the episode, they share pragmatic insights into debugging at scale, managing one-off data migrations, and determining when a service should live inside or outside the monolith. They also reflect on their use of tools like Packwerk, AnyCable, and Departure, and how a culture of trust, documentation, and lightweight planning helps Doximity move fast without breaking things.
🧰 Tools & Libraries Mentioned
- – The web framework powering Doximity’s monolith and many of their services.
Nadia Odunayo & Scaling Rails for Millions of Users as a Solo Dev
Season 1 · Episode 3
Monday, July 28, 2025 • Duration 54:10
In this episode of On Rails, Nadia Odunayo, founder and solo developer of The StoryGraph, joins us to share what it really takes to build and maintain a Rails application used by over four million readers across web and mobile.
We discuss lessons from launching a PWA, shifting to Turbo Native for cross-platform support, and navigating challenges like in-app purchases and data syncing between systems. Nadia also talks about the bold decision to move from Heroku to YugabyteDB to support growing workloads, and why she decided against hiring a team to manage it.
We also explore what it means to remain a solo developer by choice, the value of the Rails community, and why Ruby on Rails continues to be the framework that powers her entire business.
Platforms & Distribution
The StoryGraph – Nadia’s solo-built reading and book tracking platform
– Used to support mobile apps with shared Rails backend
Miguel Conde & Peter Compernolle: Inside Gusto’s Rails Biolith
Season 1 · Episode 8
Monday, November 3, 2025 • Duration 01:32:34
In this episode of OnRails, Robby is joined by Miguel Conde and Peter Compernolle from Gusto, where they work on a "biolith"—two distinct Rails monoliths serving 600+ engineers. Peter leads the HIPAA-compliant benefits domain, while Miguel is extracting the time product from the main monolith. They explore how Gusto identifies boundaries, manages temporal data, handles eventual consistency, and navigates the trade-offs of GraphQL federation.
Alexander Stathis: Scaling a Modular Rails Monolith at AngelList
Season 1 · Episode 7
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 01:28:51
In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Alexander Stathis, a Principal Software Engineer at AngelList, where Rails powers complex investment, accounting, and banking business logic across a modular monolith structure. They explore how AngelList maintains conceptual boundaries in their codebase, uses gradual typing to influence their Ruby style away from Rails “magic,” and why they’ve adopted multiple async job solutions for different types of work rather than seeking a one-size-fits-all approach. Alex shares insights on consolidating microservices back into their monolith, creating the Boba gem to extend type generation capabilities, using production data subsetting tools for local development, and successfully onboarding engineers without Rails experience in under a month while staying current on Ruby 3.4 and Rails 7.2.
Tools & Libraries Mentioned
Active Job – Framework-agnostic job API built into Rails.
Florent Beaurain: Optimizing Rails Tests at Doctolib Scale
Season 1 · Episode 6
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 • Duration 01:18:09
In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Florent Beaurain, a longtime Rails engineer at Doctolib, home to one of the largest Rails monoliths in Europe with over 3 million lines of code and 400+ engineers. They explore how Doctolib’s team tackled massive test suite performance issues, including cutting one engine’s test time from seven minutes to under one minute. Florent shares insights from managing 84,000 tests, scaling across 10 PostgreSQL databases, and maintaining Rails upgrades across a fast-moving organization using systematic approaches like dual-boot deployments and careful backporting strategies.
Tools & Libraries Mentioned
AWS Aurora (PostgreSQL) – Production database platform, scaled to 10+ writers and 15+ readers.
Capybara – End-to-end testing of UI flows in the monolith.
FactoryBot – Identified as a major performance bottleneck in large test suites.
factory_fixtures – Shopify gem extending fixtures with inline factory-style overrides.
GitHub Copilot – Workflow automation and onboarding support.
Heroku CI – Previously used for parallelized CI builds before moving to custom infrastructure.
Hilary Stohs-Krause: Scaling Rails with Small Wins
Season 1 · Episode 5
Monday, September 1, 2025 • Duration 01:27:38
In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Hilary Stohs-Krause, a Senior Software Engineer at Red Canary. They explore how engineering teams approach everyday performance work, from small Active Record optimizations to larger architectural decisions. Hilary shares insights from Red Canary's journey switching from React to Rails' native Hotwire stack, how her team tackled flaky test failures that were slowing down continuous deployments, and some strong opinions about custom linters.
🧰 Tools, Libraries, and Books Mentioned
RuboCop – Enforces Ruby style and conventions, with support for custom cops.
haml-lint – Linter for HAML templates to enforce consistent view code.
ESLint – JavaScript linter used for maintaining consistent code quality, especially in React.
HadoLint – Linter for Dockerfiles to catch common issues and enforce best practices.
SitePrism – Page-object model DSL for Capybara to reduce flaky system tests.
Sidekiq – Background job processor used in production Rails environments.
Turbo – Part of the Hotwire stack for reactive updates without full-page reloads.
Stimulus – Lightweight JavaScript framework for enhancing HTML with small interactions.
Hotwire – A set of tools (Turbo + Stimulus) for building modern web apps without heavy JavaScript.
– A book about better decision-making under uncertainty, by Annie Duke.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
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