What finally fixed our deployment and Sidekiq mess
A week of production chaos taught me that Sidekiq failures aren't always about Sidekiq. Sometimes it's your database connection pool that's starving everything else.
Read more →
Bob Roberts
Senior Software Engineer building with Rails & React
Hi, I’m Bob Roberts
I’m a Senior Software Engineer in Madison, Wisconsin. For 15+ years I’ve built web applications with Ruby on Rails for startups and established brands, remote and in-house. I like small, accountable teams, clear outcomes, and shipping iteratively.
What you’ll find here
- Practical Rails patterns you can copy and extend
- Notes on product decisions, trade-offs, and the business side of features
- Mentoring, leadership, and teamwork lessons from the field
Latest Posts
The Rails Generation Gap: Why It Matters
From mailing lists to bootcamps, the way people enter Rails has changed. That shift affects how we hire, mentor, and build.
Read more →Dusting Off the Blog (Again)
After a long hiatus, I'm bringing this blog back to life. What changed, why I stopped, and what I'm planning to write about this time around.
Read more →Recent Posts
What finally fixed our deployment and Sidekiq mess
A week of production chaos taught me that Sidekiq failures aren't always about Sidekiq. Sometimes it's your database connection pool that's starving everything else.
Read more →
The Rails Generation Gap: Why It Matters
From mailing lists to bootcamps, the way people enter Rails has changed. That shift affects how we hire, mentor, and build.
Read more →
Dusting Off the Blog (Again)
After a long hiatus, I'm bringing this blog back to life. What changed, why I stopped, and what I'm planning to write about this time around.
Read more →
Making Apps Feel Instant: My Experience with Realtime Rails and Apollo
Lessons learned from building realtime features with Apollo and Rails. When optimistic UI works great, when it doesn't, and why I switched to AnyCable.
Read more →
The Authentication Dilemma: Sessions vs JWTs in Rails
Why I usually stick with boring cookie sessions, when I reach for JWTs, and the authentication mistakes that taught me lessons the hard way.
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Why I Generate All My TypeScript Types (And You Should Too)
How GraphQL Code Generator saved me from runtime surprises and made my Rails + React apps much more reliable. Plus the gotchas I wish I'd known earlier.
Read more →