Porting YJIT to Rust, investing $$ in Ruby research, and communicating in a remote world

Hello!

This month we're sharing why we ported YJIT to Rust and what we learned in the process. We're also talking about storytelling with data, how we invest in academic Ruby research, and how to communicate effectively in a remote work environment. Plus, we went to RailsConf 2022!

• Follow the Engineering Blog to catch up on previous posts and take a deep dive into the engineering stories powering Shopify. 
• Join us on Twitter to engage in captivating conversations, enjoy our best gifs, and debate tabs vs spaces.
• Visit our events page to find out where you can meet with and hear from Shopify engineers, both physically and virtually.

— Jennie Lundrigan, Senior Engineering Writer

Our Experience Porting the YJIT Ruby Compiler to Rust

By Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert, Senior Staff Engineer

Last year, Shopify implemented YJIT, a new Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler for CRuby, which was recently upstreamed as part of Ruby 3.1 . Because the CRuby codebase is implemented in C99, we also decided to implement YJIT in C99 so that integration with the rest of the CRuby codebase would be as simple as possible. However, we found that implementing a JIT compiler in plain C quickly became tedious, and as we kept adding features to YJIT, we found that the complexity of our project became hard to manage.

In this post, Maxime gives a nuanced perspective on our experience porting YJIT from C to Rust. She talks about the positives, but also discuss the things that we found challenging or suboptimal in our experience.

Data Is An Art, Not Just A Science—And Storytelling Is The Key

By Wendy Foster, Director of Engineering & Data Science

Data science is a balancing act—math and science have their role to play, but so do art and communication. Storytelling can be the binding force that unites them all. In this article, Wendy explores how to tell an effective data story and illustrate with examples from our practice at Shopify.

Shopify Invests in Research for Ruby at Scale

By Chris Seaton, Senior Staff Engineer

Shopify is continuing to invest on Ruby on Rails at scale. We’ve taken that further recently by funding high-profile academics to focus their work towards Ruby and the needs of the Ruby community. Over the past year we have given nearly half a million dollars in gifts to influential researchers that we trust to make a significant impact on the Ruby community for the long term.

In this post, Chris introduces Shopify’s new research collaborators.

Asynchronous Communication is the Great Leveler in Engineering

By James Stanier, Director of Engineering

In March 2020—the early days of the pandemic—Shopify transitioned to become a remote first- company. We call it being Digital by Design. We are now proud to employ Shopifolk around the world.

Being remote isn’t without its challenges. Much of the technology industry has spent decades working in colocated office space. This has formed habits in all of us that aren’t compatible with effective remote work. We’re now on a journey of mindfully unraveling these default behaviors and replacing them with remote-focused ways of working.

Shopify at RailsConf 2022

Shopify was well-represented at RailsConf 2022 in Portland, Oregon with 15 (15!!) speakers from our Rails team, including keynote talks by Rails Core team members Eileen Uchitelle and Aaron Patterson (aka Tenderlove).

If you missed the event and have FOMO, we got you! Here are three ways to stay in the loop:

• Check out our RailsConf wrap-up post to learn about a few big themes that emerged and some key takeaways from Shopify developers
• Listen to the recording of our RailsConf afterparty on Twitter Spaces
• Sign up for the RailsConf: Home Edition virtual conference, happening June 15-16!

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