365 Days Later: Moving from Java to RoR and how it changed everything
summary
Flexcar moves from an 80 micro-services Java backend to a monolithic Ruby on Rails app and ships production after a night-of-conference data migration, completed in four months; initial post-launch firefighting gives way to stability while membership growth doubled. React remains for consumer UI and React Native for mobile, internal tooling shifts toward Inertia + React, Sentry catches N+1s, tests start in MiniTest with plans for RSpec, and AI tools like Cursor plus ChatGPT speed onboarding and debugging.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00FlexCar’s 500-day journey
- 1:07Java chaos to Ruby on Rails
- 3:53Why Rails was chosen
- 4:55Rebuilding FlexCar in 4 months
- 7:01RailsConf launch under pressure
- 8:24Post-launch production fires
- 13:01Key migration lessons
- 15:49Rails transformed delivery
- 18:36Breaking engineering silos
- 20:42Engineering speed gains
- 23:54Rethinking the codebase
- 26:48Switching tools to React
- 28:53Company impact of change
- 32:03AI tools for Rails transition
- 36:58Junior dev growth in Rails
- 39:03Rails struggles and pitfalls
- 42:32FlexCar’s Rails future
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