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I’ve been doing DevOps and infrastructure for over 17 years and have worked extensively with Rails. My main focus has been deployment, performance monitoring, multi-environment support, and ensuring things run optimally, even at scale.

One side of my brain (“The Optimizer”) thrives on imperfections, relentlessly improving things. I love that part, and I’m pretty successful at it (you be the judge). But it comes with a downside.

This conflict was especially noticeable when I tried Next.js: “How should I run background jobs?”, “What if I don’t use Vercel?”, “Is my module structure optimal?” Endless overthinking, courtesy of The Optimizer.

Recently, I started using Rails to quickly test out a simple product idea. Surprisingly, I’ve avoided getting caught in optimization loops.

Whatever @DHH did, he knew exactly what he was doing with the Rails philosophy: convention-over-configuration and “batteries included.” It seems purpose-built to quiet my perfectionist brain: I just use what’s provided unless there’s a compelling reason to change.