I’m deeply grateful and truly honored to be named a Rails Luminary this year. Thank you to everyone who supported me, my work, and took the time to nominate me. Recognition like this only exists because of a community that cares about long-term contribution, and I don’t take that lightly.
Rails has given me a lot over the years.
Not just technically, but professionally and personally. Rails gave me a way to build things that matter, a community that values craft, and an environment where curiosity and care are encouraged. A community where people build, ship, and want to be productive. It helped me grow in ways I didn’t expect, including getting started with public speaking, and then getting more comfortable standing on a stage sharing knowledge and the work I’ve been doing.
In such a supportive and welcoming environment, giving back stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like the natural thing to do. That’s how Rails became what it is today: people showing up, doing the work because it needed doing, smoothing out rough edges, building tools, and helping others ship. It’s part of the culture. Being part of that feels right, and being part of this community is an honor and a privilege.
The way I try to give back is by building things I need myself and sharing them openly, as honest attempts to solve real problems. I genuinely love open source, and I especially enjoy solving tricky problems: tooling, parsers, developer experience, and the infrastructure that quietly supports everything else.
Projects like Herb, ReActionView, Hotwire-related tooling (Stimulus LSP, …), the Hotwire Weekly Newsletter, and RubyEvents.org all grew out of that mindset. They started as personal needs and became shared efforts because others showed up with feedback, issues, reviews, and ideas.
This year was particularly humbling. I had the privilege of traveling and speaking at conferences around the world: 18 talks across 15 countries and four continents. Being able to share my work, exchange ideas, and meet Ruby friends in so many places reminded me how global, generous, and thoughtful this community really is. I’m incredibly thankful for every conversation, question, and moment of encouragement along the way. Being able to connect with the Ruby community face to face is something very special.
I also want to explicitly thank Xavier Noria, Amanda Perino, and the entire Renuo team for putting on the event and for the care they bring to creating spaces like this. It shows, and it matters.
None of this work happens in isolation. I’m grateful to everyone who tested early versions, filed issues, challenged assumptions, shared encouragement, or quietly helped in ways that never make it into release notes or commit messages. And I’m especially thankful to those who nominated me, that trust means a lot.
I don’t see this award as a finish line. If anything, it’s encouragement to keep going. I plan to continue doing the work I care about, pushing on the parts of the ecosystem that can be better, and sharing what I build along the way, openly and with care.
Looking ahead to 2026, I’ll keep pushing on the Herb tooling, the Herb::Engine, and improving ReActionView as we work our way through the 6 adoption levels I outlined earlier this year. There’s still a lot to explore, build and iterate on.
I’m also planning to write a full 2025 Year-in-Review post soon. If you’re curious about what’s next, feel free to follow along.
Thank you for the support, and for making Rails a place worth caring deeply about.
Marco
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