1-day current streak·14-day longest streak
Robby (on Rails) Russell Maintainer, builder, and podcast host. (he/him) Good software deserves a Second Act. In my day job, my team at Planet Argon helps organizations modernize and maintain…
Robby (on Rails) Russell
Maintainer, builder, and podcast host. (he/him)
Good software deserves a Second Act.
In my day job, my team at Planet Argon helps organizations modernize and maintain existing Ruby on Rails applications… without rewrite theater.
Choose your adventure:
- Here for open source? Start with Oh My Zsh and the projects below.
- Here for the “work stuff”? Start here: planetargon.com/about/robby-russell
Open source and community
- 🌈 Creator of Oh My Zsh… a community-driven framework that brings delight to the command line.
- :octocat: GitHub profile write-up: ReadME Project: Robby Russell
Podcasts
- 🎙 Host of Maintainable… conversations about legacy code, technical debt, and the human side of maintenance.
- 🎙 Host of On Rails… the official podcast of the Rails Foundation.
Music
- 🎸 Guitarist in The Mighty Missoula… instrumental post-rock band (Bandcamp).
Planet Argon and the Second Act work
When we’re usually pulled in
- The Rails app still powers the business… but upgrades have stalled for years.
- “We should rewrite” keeps winning… because nobody trusts the current system.
- Audit, compliance, or customer pressure is rising… and old versions are now a risk.
- Team turnover erased context… and the codebase feels expensive to touch.
- Performance and delivery speed are slipping… and every change costs more than it should.
How we help
- Code audits + upgrade roadmaps: de-risk the path forward with an actionable plan.
- Modernization support: incremental upgrades, refactors, and capability work.
- Coaching: help teams build the muscle to maintain the system long-term.
What working with us looks like
I’m often the first conversation. Then we bring in the right engineer or pair from Planet Argon to do the work… and we stay accountable through delivery.
Start here:
- Work: planetargon.com/about/robby-russell
- Code Audit: planetargon.com/services/code-audit
---
Find me online
- X: https://x.com/robbyrussell
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/robbyonrails.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robbyrussell
- Planet Argon Blog: blog.planetargon.com/blog/robby-russell
- My Blog: robbyonrails.com
More links
- Mastodon: https://ruby.social/@robbyrussell
- Threads: https://www.threads.net/@robbyrussell
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robbyrussell
- Dev.to: https://dev.to/robbyrussell
- Medium: https://medium.com/@robbyrussell
---
Writing
A few pieces that reflect how I think about long-lived software:
- 7 Stages of Software Tech Stack Adoption
- Ruby on Rails Code Audits: 8 Steps to Review Your App
- When Should You Upgrade Your Rails Application?
- Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Code
- d'Oh My Zsh: How I unexpectedly built a monster of an open-source project
- Do You Have What It Takes To Be a Great Client?
Podcast appearances
A bunch of podcasts I’ve been a guest on
- The freeCodeCamp Podcast: Ep. 34 - d'Oh My Zsh, []()
- Bureau of Digital Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building Your Internship Program
- Engineering People Podcast: Robby Russell
- Hanselminutes: 108 - Exploring Distributed Source Control with Git
- The Rails with Jason Podcast: Episode 063 - Turning Around Legacy Projects with Robby Russell, CEO of Planet Argon
- Ruby on Rails Podcast: #526: Rails World with Robby Russell, Episode #481: Advice on Sunsetting a Rails Application, Episode #330: Oh My Zsh & Maintainable Rails with Robby Russell and #332: 2020 Ruby on Rails Community Survey with Robby Russell and #21: Planet Argon
- FLOSS Weekly: Episode 411: Oh My Zsh
- The Changelog: Episode #61: Oh My Zsh
- Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots: Episode 281: Reconnecting With Development (Robby Russell)
- The Creative Agency Podcast: Episode 041: Onboarding with Robby Russell of Planet Argon
- Bet On Yourself Podcast: Episode 30: Robby Russell
- DevJourney Podcast: Epidose #58 Robby Russell succeeds being selfless
- Maintainable: Turning the Mic Around with Kayla Reopelle
- Developer Tea: Maintainability part 1 part 2
- Remote Ruby Podcast: Episode
- Legacy Code Rocks!: Episode 91
- Developer Love: Ep. #16
- The Changelog: Episode #465
- Once a Maintainer: Robby Russell
- IndieRails: EP#17 Robby Russell: Maintaining Planet Argon
- Open Source Stories: Story
- Whiskey Web and Whatnot: YouTube
- Dead Code: Tech Death
- DevTools.fm: Episode 106
- WeAreDevelopers: Coffee with Developers
- Ode to RailsConf: EP-19
- Ruby Rogues: Rails Survey 2024
- GitHub's Open Source Friday: Video
- Overcommited: EP-45 - Sustainability in Software Development: Robby Russell on Tech Debt and Engineering Culture
-
rails ★ PINNED ⑂
Ruby on Rails
★ 1 2y agoExplain → -
rubyurl
💎 Your favorite URL-shortening service in all of Ruby land
Ruby ★ 220 4y agoExplain → -
shorturl
A Ruby gem that connects to various URL shortening services like RubyURL, moourl, etc.
Ruby ★ 108 11y agoExplain → -
laptop ⑂
A shell script which turns your Linux or Mac OS X laptop into an awesome development machine.
Ruby ★ 51 12y agoExplain → -
year_after_year
A (extremely) simple helper for Ruby on Ruby on Rails to output the current year... seriously folks... this is serious stuff. ;-)
Ruby ★ 24 18y agoExplain → -
active_delegate
Master/Slave delegation for ActiveRecord models for reads/writes
Ruby ★ 24 18y agoExplain → -
hoodwinkd
the travelling peanut gallery (a meta-web)
Ruby ★ 12 18y agoExplain → -
faker ⑂
A library for generating fake data such as names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Ruby ★ 12 17y agoExplain → -
GoogleAnalyticsProxy ⑂
A JavaScript proxy class for Google Analytics, which allows you to test event tracking in development mode.
JavaScript ★ 12 14y agoExplain → -
programing-best-practices-2023 ⑂
A curated list of awesome Programming Best Practices 2023
★ 11 3y agoExplain → -
indexter
Ruby gem for checking Rails database tables for missing indexes on foreign keys.
Ruby ★ 9 9y agoExplain → -
spotify-new-albums-radar
Ruby script to automate a "curated" playlist of new albums that were released this week.
Ruby ★ 9 5y agoExplain → -
robbyrussell
My README
★ 7 20d agoExplain → -
vapor.js ⑂
The World's Smallest & Fastest JavaScript Library
JavaScript ★ 5 16y agoExplain → -
homebrew ⑂
The missing package manager for OS X.
Ruby ★ 5 12y agoExplain → -
less ⑂
Leaner CSS
Ruby ★ 5 17y agoExplain → -
flash-message-conductor ⑂
A simple pattern for managing flash messages in your Ruby on Rails application.
Ruby ★ 4 17y agoExplain → -
textilizefu ⑂
Textilize plugin for rails, based on PermalinkFu
Ruby ★ 4 18y agoExplain → -
masochism ⑂
ActiveRecord connection proxy for master/slave connections
Ruby ★ 3 18y agoExplain → -
kindle-highlights ⑂
A Ruby gem for getting your Kindle highlights from Amazon.
Ruby ★ 3 13y agoExplain → -
bigtuna ⑂
Continuous Integration software written on top of Ruby on Rails 3 and DelayedJob.
Ruby ★ 3 15y agoExplain → -
covidchat-14days-waterfall ⑂ ▣
No description.
★ 2 6y agoExplain → -
standard ⑂
🌟 Ruby Style Guide, with linter & automatic code fixer
★ 2 4y agoExplain → -
asdf ⑂
Extendable version manager with support for Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang & more
★ 2 4y agoExplain → -
contrast-robbyonrails ⑂
Jekyll Theme for Robby on Rails
★ 2 1y agoExplain → -
advanced-sample-app ⑂
An advanced sample custom app design built with starter-kit
JavaScript ★ 2 9y agoExplain → -
active_merchant ⑂
(fork for integrating with MeS) Active Merchant is a simple payment abstraction library used in and sponsored by Shopify. It is written by Tobias Luetke, Cody Fauser, and contributors. The aim of the project is to feel natural to Ruby users and to abstract as many parts as possible away from the user to offer a consistent interface across all supported gateways.
Ruby ★ 2 17y agoExplain → -
github-services ⑂
Official GitHub Services Integration
Ruby ★ 2 17y agoExplain → -
rubyonrails-website ⑂
No description.
HTML ★ 1 5d agoExplain → -
rubygems.org ⑂
The Ruby community's gem hosting service.
★ 1 2y agoExplain → -
ruby-bookmarks ⑂
Ruby and Ruby on Rails bookmarks collection
★ 1 8y agoExplain → -
www.ruby-lang.org ⑂
Source of the https://www.ruby-lang.org website.
★ 1 5mo agoExplain → -
planner ⑂
🗓 the main codebar site
Ruby ★ 1 9y agoExplain → -
scout_apm_ruby ⑂
Scout Ruby Application Monitoring Agent
Ruby ★ 1 8y agoExplain → -
rack-proxy ⑂
A request/response rewriting HTTP proxy. A Rack app.
Ruby ★ 1 8y agoExplain → -
contributor_covenant ⑂
Pledge your respect and appreciation for contributors of all kinds to your open source project.
CSS ★ 1 7y agoExplain → -
ruby ⑂
The Ruby Programming Language [mirror]
Ruby ★ 1 7y agoExplain → -
subdomain-fu ⑂
A new plugin approach to attempting to solve the usage of subdomains in linking and routing in Rails projects.
★ 1 5y agoExplain → -
pay ⑂
Payments for Ruby on Rails apps
★ 1 4y agoExplain → -
docs ⑂
Trying to do a better job of documenting the Portland startup scene
★ 1 10y agoExplain → -
future-repo
Can I create a repository and commit in the future?
★ 1 13y agoExplain → -
rbot-svnwatch
Plugin that allows a subversion post-commit hook to talk to rbot (ruby irc bot) through Drb
Ruby ★ 1 16y agoExplain → -
builder ⑂
Provide a simple way to create XML markup and data structures.
Ruby ★ 1 16y agoExplain → -
docrails ⑂
PLEASE CHECK http://github.com/lifo/docrails/wikis
Ruby ★ 1 16y agoExplain → -
redux ⑂
A JS library for predictable global state management
★ 0 4mo agoExplain → -
fzf ⑂
:cherry_blossom: A command-line fuzzy finder
★ 0 4mo agoExplain → -
sinatra.github.com ⑂
“The best revenge is massive success.”
HTML ★ 0 9y agoExplain → -
toilet ⑂
No description.
C ★ 0 9y agoExplain → -
puma_worker_killer ⑂
Automatically restart Puma cluster workers based on max RAM available
Ruby ★ 0 9y agoExplain → -
neveragaindottech.github.io ⑂
Source files for the neveragain.tech site
HTML ★ 0 9y agoExplain → -
time_manager ⑂
Rails app to help users track personal time usage.
HTML ★ 0 9y agoExplain → -
pdxruby.github.io ⑂
Public site (WIP)
CSS ★ 0 10y agoExplain → -
harvested ⑂
A Ruby Wrapper for the Harvest API http://www.getharvest.com/api
Ruby ★ 0 13y agoExplain → -
delayed_job ⑂
Database based asynchronously priority queue system -- Extracted from Shopify
Ruby ★ 0 14y agoExplain →
No repos match these filters.