Source: https://jessewaites.com/blog/post/introducing-the-strftime-roulette-rubygem

# Introducing the Strftime Roulette Rubygem

*January 16, 2026*

![Introducing the Strftime Roulette Rubygem](https://jessewaites.com/images/roulette.jpeg)

Ever looked at your app's date output and thought, "This is too predictable"? Yeah, me neither. But here we are.

I'm releasing **strftime_roulette**, a Ruby gem that adds a `strftime_roulette` method to Date and Time objects. Every call returns a randomly formatted string. That's it. That's the gem.

## Why?

Why not?

## How it Works

```ruby
require 'strftime_roulette'

Date.today.strftime_roulette
# => "2026-01-16 12:00:00"

Date.today.strftime_roulette
# => "January 16, 2026 12:00 AM"

Date.today.strftime_roulette
# => "01/16/2026 12:00:00"
```

Each call picks a random format. You never know what you're gonna get.

## Filter by Category

Want only date formats? Only time formats? You can do that:

```ruby
Time.now.strftime_roulette(:time)
# => "14:30:45"
# => "2:30 PM"
# => "14:30"

Date.today.strftime_roulette(:date)
# => "Thu Jan 16"
# => "January 16, 2026"
# => "01-16-2026"
```

## Go Atomic

Pass `single: true` to get output from a single strftime directive:

```ruby
Date.today.strftime_roulette(:date, single: true)
# => "Thursday"  # or "16" or "January" or "2026"

Time.now.strftime_roulette(:time, single: true)
# => "PM"  # or "45" or "14" or "UTC"
```

## Practical Uses

1. Annoying your coworkers
2. Testing if your UI handles various date formats gracefully
3. Adding chaos to your development environment
4. Making QA question their sanity

## Installation

```ruby
gem 'strftime_roulette'
```

## Disclaimer

Please do not use this in production. Unless you want to. I'm not your boss.

---

[GitHub](https://github.com/jessewaites/strftime_roulette) | MIT License