Gnarly Learnings from August 2022
Tags: reactnative, testing, rails, programming
Published: 2022-08-24 14:17:46

We love reading, watching, and listening in order to constantly update our skills and learn new perspectives. Here are some of the exciting pieces we learned from this month.

## [Digging Into Turbo with Ruby on Rails 7](https://web-crunch.com/posts/digging-into-turbo-with-ruby-on-rails-7)
This article provides a nice intro to Turbo. The author goes over the high points of frames and streams, and gets you up and running quickly with a simple To Do app.

## [grex-js](https://pemistahl.github.io/grex-js/)
It’s 3pm. You’re out of coffee. You need to write a complicated regular expression for your Javascript project.😱😱😱 Fear not friend, grex-js is here for you! This sweet app will generate a regular expression just for you based on the test case(s) you provide. 

## [VISIWIG: click + page graphics](https://www.visiwig.com/)
If you have a website but you’re not at the stage where you’d like to hire your own graphic designer, there are a lot of tools and libraries that can help spice up your content with unique graphics and backgrounds. Visiwig provides tools for generating basic background patterns, as well as a set of high-quality icons. And they're free. The same creator also created https://www.svgbackgrounds.com, which provides even more free SVG patterns.

## [HypeScript](https://github.com/ronami/HypeScript)
You’ve heard good things about Typescript. But Hypescript lets you write Typescript…inside of Typescript. It’s a lightweight implementation of typescript available from within Typescript’s own Type Checking System. It’s Inception. Typeception. DDUUUUUUNNNNNN.


## [Zustand](https://github.com/pmndrs/zustand)
In a Javascript project, we're always looking for elegant ways to manage state. Zustand looks like one that we'll be checking out next time we need to start a project. It’s small and looks like it will fit in nicely with how we like to develop applications.

## [Minitest vs. RSpec in Rails](https://www.honeybadger.io/blog/minitest-rspec-rails/)
At The Gnar, the vast majority of the rails applications we build are tested with RSpec. However, it’s a good practice to periodically evaluate what other tools are available, and besides, it’s fun to play with new tools. This article includes a rundown of different testing strategies, an introduction to TDD/BDD, and provides a comprehensive comparison between Minitest and RSpec from configuration through execution. RSpec still has our 🧡. 

## [How to Track Down Memory Leaks in Ruby](https://blog.appsignal.com/2022/07/27/how-to-track-down-memory-leaks-in-ruby.html)
Memory leaks - hopefully you never run into this problem, but ~~if~~ when you do this article might come in handy! This is the first in a series of posts about managing memory leaks in Ruby. This post covers how memory is allocated in Ruby (including improvements in Ruby 3.1) as well as garbage collection. It includes an example that demonstrates how to create your very own memory leak, and how to use the `GC` (`GarbageCollection`) module to uncover memory leaks in Ruby code. TL;DR - use an Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool in prod.

## [Patterns.dev](https://www.patterns.dev/)
There’s a new (free!) book about design, rendering, and performance patterns for Javascript and React on the block. The best part - you don’t even need to click the download button! The content is available in the browser, documentation-style and boasts a delightful UI. 

## Contributors
- [Alex Jarvis](https://github.com/alxjrvs)
- [Ethan Fertsch](https://github.com/efertsch)
- [Jon Yurek](https://github.com/jyurek)
- [Royce Threadgill](https://github.com/jrthreadgill)
- [Taylor Kearns](https://github.com/taylorkearns)

_Learn more about how The Gnar [builds software](https://www.thegnar.com/software-development)._