# By Robots

> Writing about software engineering, building effective and happy teams, SaaS, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript and other developery things.

Every post is available as Markdown at its own URL. A complete index of them,
newest first, lives at https://by-robots.dev/llms.txt.

## [AI-assisted engineers are burning out, is this fine?](https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/ai-assisted-engineers-are-burning-out-is-this-fine)

Shared on 2 June 2026. Tagged AI and Burnout.

AI-assisted code generation is not free. It comes with a hidden cost: burnout. Are we dangerously ignorant to this problem? And how can we cope with it? In this post, we discuss this question.

## [Learning French](https://by-robots.dev/posts/learning-french.md)

Published on 8 April 2023. Tagged Foreign Languages.

Personal notes from four months of learning French, written as a reference rather than a tutorial. Covers the three verb groups and their present tense conjugation patterns, the auxiliary verbs avoir and être, reflexive pronouns, articles and how to say "to the" depending on gender and number, the past tenses passé composé and l'imparfait, and the two future tenses — le futur simple and le futur proche — including guidance on when to use each.

## [Common Table Expressions in Ruby on Rails](https://by-robots.dev/posts/common-table-expressions-in-ruby-on-rails.md)

Published on 19 March 2023. Tagged Databases, Ruby on Rails, and SQL.

A practical look at Common Table Expressions in Ruby on Rails. Covers writing CTEs as raw SQL in Rails 7.0 and below, the N+1 query problem that raw SQL results introduce (because ActiveRecord's preload cannot be used), a workaround that calls the preloader directly, and the cleaner approach added in Rails 7.1 — the ActiveRecord-native "with" method, which generates the CTE and restores full preload support.

## [Begin; Return; Shenanigans](https://by-robots.dev/posts/begin-return-shenanigans.md)

Published on 19 December 2022. Tagged Ruby.

When using Ruby's begin block to memoize the result of an operation beware mixing it with return statements. Here's why.

## [Getting Started With Code Reviews](https://by-robots.dev/posts/getting-started-with-code-reviews.md)

Published on 7 December 2022. Tagged Code Reviews and Juniors.

Advice for junior developers on building confidence in code reviews. Covers common misconceptions about what reviewers are responsible for, what code reviews actually are — collaborative discussion, an opportunity to learn, a tool for catching bugs before they reach production — the 30/60/90 feedback framework for giving the right kind of feedback at the right stage, and why asking for clarification on code you don't understand is one of the most valuable contributions a junior reviewer can make.

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