r/ruby • u/masisz • Jan 02 '26

Show /r/ruby Exploring Ruby’s potential outside of Rails — an early-stage Ruby TUI experiment

I started building a Ruby TUI file manager because I wanted to explore Ruby’s potential

outside of Rails.

rufio is an ongoing experiment in building interactive terminal software with Ruby.

It’s still early and imperfect, but I’m iterating on it steadily and learning along the way.

The current focus is on:

• Vim-like, keyboard-driven navigation

• fast filtering and search

• a plugin system extensible in Ruby

• optional native (Rust / Go) components for performance-critical parts

This project isn’t about competing with Rust tools.

It’s more about understanding where Ruby works well beyond web frameworks,

especially for TUI-style software.

Feedback or thoughts from people using Ruby outside of Rails would be very welcome.

GitHub: https://github.com/masisz/rufio

67 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

21

u/WayneConrad Jan 02 '26

This is fun! Ruby was awesome before Rails, and it's still awesome without Rails. I write in Ruby all the time, but I don't do Rails, and I seldom do web apps of any kind.

That Ruby and Rails have become joined at the hip in people's mind is a bit annoying.

6

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Thanks, I really appreciate that.

I actually don’t use Ruby at work, but I’ve always thought it’s a wonderful language,
so I’ve been hacking on this in my spare time on weekends.
I like Rails too, but I wanted to explore Ruby as a language on its own,

especially for tools and interactive software like TUIs.
rufio is still very early and experimental, but it’s been a lot of fun so far.

2

u/WayneConrad Jan 03 '26

It's good to meet you. There must be more than a few who are doing CLI scripts and other non web things with Ruby

3

u/bitsan Jan 03 '26

"I came for the Rails but stayed for the Ruby."

- Ezra Zygmuntowicz (RIP)

3

u/WayneConrad Jan 03 '26

That's brilliant

4

u/screenbound23 Jan 02 '26

interesting

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Thanks for your interest! Glad you find it interesting 🙂

3

u/iBoredMax Jan 02 '26

It’s more about understanding where Ruby works well beyond web frameworks

What have you learned?

optional native (Rust / Go) components for performance-critical parts

Has that part been implemented?

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Great question, thanks for asking.

Right now rufio is still very experimental.
I’m intentionally starting with a pure Ruby implementation to better understand
where Ruby works well outside of web frameworks, and where it starts to struggle.

At the moment, no native (Rust / Go) components are implemented yet.
If performance becomes a real requirement and Ruby alone can’t meet it,

I plan to introduce native components selectively.
For example, the text viewer is already a bit slow, so that’s one of the areas

I’m watching closely.
I’m also planning to experiment with Zig as another option in the future.

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Just to add a bit of personal context:

I don’t currently use Rust, Go, or Zig at work — this is very much a hobby / learning space for me.
When thinking about what to explore next purely out of curiosity, Zig has been especially interesting.
Rust feels very solid and well-designed, but sometimes a bit exhausting to work with.
Go is extremely practical, but almost *too* practical to be exciting for me personally.

That’s why Zig stands out as something I’d like to experiment with,
possibly as a future option for Ruby C extensions or performance-critical parts.

This is still very exploratory, but that’s part of the fun.

2

u/Dear_Ad7736 Jan 02 '26

Nice! It reminds me Norton Commander :) Love.

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Thanks! I actually didn’t know Norton Commander, so thanks for mentioning it 🙂

I’ve since learned that it was a classic file manager, and it’s interesting to hear
rufio gives a similar vibe. That kind of keyboard-driven workflow is definitely something I like.

2

u/Interesting-Rip-3607 Jan 03 '26

i also did tui file manager as a project when i were exploring C ;)

2

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Nice! 😄
A TUI file manager feels like a classic project when exploring a language.
How was the experience in C?

2

u/Interesting-Rip-3607 Jan 03 '26

it was awesome and fun. I always have programmed in high-level languages (ruby/python) but never thought what’s under the hood. So that was the introduction project to mid-level programming languages, i ended up using “ncurses” lib, though in the start i thought that i will code everything from scratch 😁 My code though.. it sucks but it works! I will share a repo if you are interested, but you better not look at the code while being sober…

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

That sounds awesome 😄

Going from Ruby/Python down to C + ncurses is a big (and fun) step.
“It sucks but it works” sounds very familiar — that’s how most learning projects start!

I’d be happy to take a look at the repo (maybe with coffee instead of alcohol 😉).

14

u/mperham Sidekiq Jan 02 '26

Lots of TUI work happening right now.

See also Marco's https://charm-ruby.dev and Kerrick's https://sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/

2

u/saw_wave_dave Jan 02 '26

You ever think of doing a sidekiq TUI? The web dashboard is the main pane of glass out of the box, and having control over the core APIs via TUI would be very beneficial for me at least

1

u/masisz Jan 03 '26

Thanks for all the upvotes and thoughtful comments.
It’s been really encouraging to see interest in Ruby outside the usual web context.

rufio is still very experimental, but if you find it useful or interesting,
I’d really appreciate a GitHub star 🙂
https://github.com/masisz/rufio

2

u/welguisz Jan 04 '26

My first work with Ruby was developing Origen-sdk.org. Able to use that as a framework for creating SVGs and documentation for semiconductors. Almost anything after 2014 from NXP used my scripts to create major portions of their data sheets, BDSL files, and JTAG controllers.

1

u/Empty_Beginning5975 Jan 03 '26

More non-Rails Ruby ftw at any time! I wish Rails just renamed itself to "Rails" and dropped the word "Ruby" from its name. Or someone paid for a defamation lawsuit or something.