Podcasts by The Bike Shed

327: Estimate Crafting from 2022-02-22T00:15

Steph joins Chris in trying new things! For her, it's a new email client – the Newton email client – because she really wants to love her inbox. She also talks about implementin...

326: Dongle Life from 2022-02-15T00:15

Chris is making hiring progress and loves asdf and M1 laptops. Steph is anticipating the arrival of one dongle to rule them all and talks about moving away from having a lot of Blue...

325: Pranting from 2022-02-08T00:15

Steph is super excited about changing her schedule to dedicate a full day to focus on being a great team lead. Chris talks about his continued adventures in the world of hiring.

324: Coding Time! from 2022-02-01T00:15

Chris updates us on his new window manager of choice, Moom, and tells us what's good with it. He's also giving yet another task manager a go: OmniFocus. (Sorry Things.) Step...

323: Doing Things from 2022-01-25T00:15

Steph talks about winter storms and thoughts on name pronunciation features. Chris talks about writing a query to add a new display of data in an admin panel and making a guest appe...

322: Toxic Traits from 2022-01-18T00:15

Happy New Year (for real)! Chris and Steph both took some end-of-year time off to rest and recharge.

Steph talks about some books she enjoyed, recipes she tried, an...

321: Leaving Breadcrumbs from 2022-01-11T00:15

Steph tells a cute story about escape artist huskies, and on a technical note, shares a journey in regards to class variables and modules inheritance.

Chris talks ab...

320: Remember The Fun: 2021 Recap from 2021-12-21T00:15

Steph and Chris recap their favorite things of 2019 and 2020 and share their 2021 list. Happy Holidays, y'all!

Steph:

• Feature flags and...
  Listen

319: Wins & Losses from 2021-12-14T00:15

Steph started a new project and shares details about the new tools she's using, including working on a remote dev environment. Chris shares a journey with Lograge and Rails flas...

318: Successful Skills with Edward Loveall from 2021-12-07T00:15

Fellow thoughtboter Edward Loveall joins Steph to cohost and talk about alternative frontends and his own that he created: scribe.rip: an alternative frontend to Medium, learning ab...

317: Burn The Ships! from 2021-11-30T00:15

Steph gives an update about RSpec focus and how she often forgets to remove the focus feature from tests. She figured out two solutions: one using Rubocop, and the other from a Twit...

316: Constrain and Refactor from 2021-11-16T00:15

Chris finally got his new computer! ? ? ? He gives his initial review. He's also super excited that GitHub announced a beta for pull requests merge queue, and even more excite...

315: Emotions Are A Pendulum from 2021-11-09T00:15

Steph talks about starting a new project and identifying "focused" tests while Chris shares his latest strategy for managing flaky tests. They also ponder the squishy &quo...

314: Communication, Testing, and Accountability from 2021-10-26T00:15

Chris regains several of his developer merit badges and embarks on a perilous CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) adventure. Steph shares highlights from Plucky, a management training...

313: Forty-Seven Percent from 2021-10-19T00:15

Steph talks about binging a few Things Worth Learning podcast episodes and particularly enjoyed an episode that featured one of thoughtbot's design directors, Sameera Kapila. Sa...

312: Spooky Stories from 2021-10-12T00:15

Chris evaluates the pros and cons between using Sidekiq or Active Job with Sidekiq. He sees exceptions everywhere.

Steph talks about an SSL error that she encounter...

311: Marketing Matters from 2021-10-05T00:15

Longtime listener and friend of the show, Gio Lodi, released a book y'all should check out and Chris and Steph ruminate on a listener question about tension around marketing in ...

310: Schedule Shut Down, Complete from 2021-09-28T00:15

Chris talks feature flags featuring Flipper (Say that 3x fast!), and Steph talks reducing stress by a) having a work shutdown ritual and b) the fact that thoughtbot...

309: Naming the Change from 2021-09-21T12:00

Steph talks about a new GitHub feature and Twitter account (@RubyCards) she's really excited about and Chris talks abo...

308: That’s Picante from 2021-09-14T00:15

You know what really grinds Chris' gears? (Spoiler Alert: It's Single-Page Applications.)

Steph needs some consulting help. So much to do, so little time. Listen

307: Walking Contradictions from 2021-09-07T00:15

On this episode, Chris talks about testing external services and dissects a tweet on refinements for Result. Steph talks about thoughbot's recent improvement to their feature fl...

306: If You Want To Go Far, Go Together from 2021-08-31T00:15

In this episode, Steph and Chris talk about things they've changed their minds about over the course of their careers as software developers. Steph talks about as it turns out, ...

305: Burnout & Bugs from 2021-08-17T00:15

This week Chris talks about Bifunctor optics and introduces an app he's been liking recently called CleanShot X, which is a replacement for the built-in screenshot utilities on ...

304: MEGA Crossover Episode (The Bike Shed x Rails with Jason x Remote Ruby x Ruby on Rails Podcast) from 2021-08-11T08:00

This is the sweeps week episode, the epic crossover episode, the mega episode! We have a very special episode as Chris, and Steph teamed up with the hosts of three other podcasts to...

303: Dear Mr. Grumpy Goose from 2021-08-03T00:15

Chris gives a DB sessions update and talks bifunctors & command objects. Steph shares the coolness of a gem she's been using called after_party, and excitedly gushes about ...

302: Observability with Charity Majors from 2021-07-27T00:15

Tune in as Co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, an observability platform, Charity Majors joins Chris to drop some knowlege bombs such as:

• Thinking of observab...
  Listen

301: Ants in the Cookie Store from 2021-07-20T00:15

What do you get when you mix a worm and a hammerhead shark? Also ants. Steph made some cool new discoveries in bug-land. She also talks about deploys versus releases and how her and...

300: Mozzarella Sticks & Knowledge Silos from 2021-07-13T00:15

The big "Three Oh Oh!" What a milestone for this podcast! Aside from celebrating that the show has made it this far, Chris gives some followup on some Inertia.js issues he...

299: Is Agile Over? from 2021-07-06T00:15

Let's talk about Agile! What is it, what do we like, we do we not like?

In this episode, Steph and Chris discuss:

• Broadly, are...
  Listen

298: Jawsification from 2021-06-29T00:15

Chris gives some small updates on working with Svelte. He really likes Svelte so far. Svelte's great. Modals are complicated. He also talks about using a little JavaScript libra...

297: We’re Making A Pixar Movie! from 2021-06-22T00:15

Chris gives the deets on that new new – (he joined a startup!) and laments about the back button being so complicated. Steph talks about extracting an untrustworthy service and like...

295: To the Left, to the Left from 2021-06-07T00:15

After the last episode where database switching was discussed, a number of listeners reached out with thoughts. In particular, one listener gave a reproducible example of how to mak...

294: Perfect Duplication from 2021-05-25T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris respond to a listener question about how to know if we're improving as developers. They discuss the heuristics they think about when ...

293: Sportstaphors from 2021-05-18T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph share a speedy step to restart your rails server and chat about accessibility improvements and favorite a11y tools. They also dive into a...

292: Debugging with Joël Quenneville from 2021-05-11T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris are joined by fellow thoughtbotter, Joël Quenneville, to discuss all things debugging. Joël is helping publish a weekly debugging blog se...

291: All Things Inertia.js with Jonathan Reinink from 2021-05-04T00:15

This week Steph's taking a quick break, but while she's off, Chris is joined by a special guest - Jonathan Reinink. Jonathan is the creator of Inertia.js. Listen

290: Can You See My Secrets? from 2021-04-27T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss testing webhooks, the challenges in replicating third-party data, and troubleshooting unexpected side effects. They also respond ...

289: Have You Ever Ridden a Horse? from 2021-04-20T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris tackle a pair of questions -- the first dealing with how closely we might want to map an API to the underlying database schema, and the s...

288: 10x Puppy from 2021-04-13T09:30

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss migrating a polymorphic relationship over to UUIDs and balancing trade-offs between data integrity vs complexity. They also touch...

287: Turn it up to Eleven from 2021-03-30T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph shares a recent performance improvement, a Postgres delight, and testing concurrency in RSpec. Chris revisits an earlier theme of "Good Idea, ...

286: Time After Time from 2021-03-23T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris shares a rare airing of grievances regarding the importance of secure, encrypted websites and Steph shares a tale of time zone troubles and testing...

285: Tell a Cohesive, Testable Story from 2021-03-16T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris tackle a listener question around the world of service objects. Where, really, should we be putting our business logic. Model concerns, &...

284: Lovely, Wonderful Spam from 2021-03-09T00:15

On this week's episode Chris and Steph chat about upgrading to Rails 6, intercepting emails, and play a few rounds of Software Terminology Trivia. They also discuss "Deep W...

283: Who's The User? from 2021-03-02T00:15

On this week's episode Steph and Chris discuss a listener question around managing content within an application, weighing options like an integrated CMS, headless CMS provides,...

282: What is Normal? from 2021-02-23T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris adds Dead Man's Snitch to a personal project and considers "what is the app doing at runtime?" as he touches on the importance of cre...

281: Finding That Middle Ground from 2021-02-16T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris tackle a listener question around switching from mostly-developing, to mostly-communicating and the tactics they've used to balance t...

280: Stable New New from 2021-02-09T00:15

On this week's episode Chris and Steph discuss a new tmux feature and wvim, a script that streamlines shell command edits. They also discuss the value of taking a sabbatical and...

279: Seeking Calm from 2021-02-02T00:15

On this week's episode Steph and Chris discuss some of characteristics and behaviors they've observed in high-performing teams, touching on pull request sizing and prioritiz...

278: Beliefs in the Firmware from 2021-01-26T00:15

In this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss the popular testing themes and questions that emerged during the RSpec training course, reflecting on which testing "rules&q...

277: Making Communication Easier from 2021-01-19T00:15

In this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss some of their methods for helping out reviewers of their pull requests and keeping code review moving along smoothly. They also d...

276: Ride-Along Files from 2021-01-12T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris shares a new favorite tool for querying JSON and Steph revisits a previous deployment issue. They also dive into the new features in Ruby 3, ponder...

275: In Search of An Acronym from 2021-01-05T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris revisit their discussion about testing rack rewrite redirect logic, mystery guests, DNS configuration, and trying very hard to not be too...

274: Top 10 Review for 2020 from 2020-12-29T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph reflect on their top themes and technical picks for 2020.

This episode is brought to you by:

273: Revisiting 2019, A Top 10 Review from 2020-12-22T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris begin wrapping up 2020 with a review of their 2019 top 10 list. They share what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what they&...

272: Hacking the Gibson from 2020-12-15T00:15

In this week's episode, Chris undertakes long-running background jobs that are performing duplicate work and adding significant load on the database. Steph shares her initial ta...

271: Is That Your Final Answer? from 2020-12-08T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris describes his continued explorations with Svelte specifically bringing TypeScript into the mix. Steph discusses the first cohort for the RSpec trai...

270: Both Nothing and Deeply Special from 2020-12-01T00:15

In this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss redirecting requests for various hostnames to one canonical host, creating student personas to improve educational content, and w...

269: Things are Knowable (Gary Bernhardt) from 2020-11-17T00:15

Steph's taking a quick break this week, but while she's away, Chris is joined by special guest Gary Bernhardt. Gary is the creator of Destroy All Software screencasts as wel...

268: Getting Your First-Through-N Jobs from 2020-11-10T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph discusses the value of conducting student research when creating course content and Chris revisits a recent architecture decision to use Svelt and ...

267: Shiny New Things from 2020-11-03T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph describes her unique new project where they're building and presenting a training course around RSpec, testing, and TDD specific to an organiza...

266: Spring is My Least Favorite Season from 2020-10-27T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph share mixed-feelings about Spring preloader and how to use Spring just for tests. They also dive into troubleshooting an OpenSSL error, P...

265: There Are No Free Lunches from 2020-10-20T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris chat about database transactions and job queues, building static sites with GatsbyJS and NetlifyCMS, the performance impacts of front end...

264: How to Win Friends and Influence Processes from 2020-10-13T00:15

On this week's episode Steph and Chris discuss the ins and outs of joining teams, building trust, and working together to improve processes and communication. They also touch on...

263: Keeping The Night Brain At Bay (Dave Rupert) from 2020-10-06T00:15

Steph's taking a quick break this week, but in her absence, Chris is joined by Dave Rupert. Dave is the lead developer at Pa...

262: Good Idea, Terrible Idea? from 2020-09-29T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris introduces a new segment called "Good Idea, Terrible Idea?" as he considers introducing a read-only mode to avoid interrupting users duri...

261: A Jenga Tower of Lets and Context from 2020-09-22T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris tackle a listener question around composition over inheritance, especially in the context of Rails which makes regular use of inheritance...

260: N+1s For Days from 2020-09-15T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris shares a tale of performance improvements and a recent discussion about replacing a REST API with GraphQL. Steph dives into migrating a database co...

259: That's Not How Numbers Work from 2020-09-08T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris tackle the thorny topic of 10X engineers. Do we think they really exist? What characteristics make an individual more effective, and more...

258: Digital Gardeners from 2020-09-01T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss a git-blame feature that supports bypassing less helpful commits. They also revisit a discussion about Dependabot PRs and recent ...

257: How Late On a Friday Can You Deploy? from 2020-08-18T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph & Chris take a deep dive into all things technical debt. How do you know when your code has reached "good enough"? When might we purp...

256: Rational Pessimism from 2020-08-11T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris shares his recent adventures of working with a team that prioritizes async-first communication and Steph revisits a previous discussion around the ...

255: Aiming for 'Capable' from 2020-08-04T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris chat about the relatively new Rails view_component library from GitHub, Steph talks about her work with Storybook as part of extracting a...

254: Listener Mailbag Roundup Rodeo from 2020-07-28T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph celebrates passing an important test and discovers an API that returns different data than it's provided while Chris asks the important bikeshe...

253: Find Yourself Through The Art of Podcast from 2020-07-21T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris have a brief chat about Snowpack, a new and ultra-speedy bundler in the front-end world, and revisit a conversation around namespacing mo...

252: I'm a Designer Now from 2020-07-14T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss leveraging the Unix utility sed to search files and remove unnecessary test setup, using Vim's Arglist to create...

251: Absent-Minded Whistling from 2020-07-07T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss using JSONB to store survey responses and the differences between JSON and JSONB, using (or not using!) exceptions in Ruby and th...

250: To Infinity and Beyond from 2020-06-30T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss the importance of using inclusive language, branching into new branch names, and strategies that encourage the use of inclusive t...

249: What Would You Say You Do Here? from 2020-06-23T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris trade some consulting and everyone comes out a winner. Steph talks about a win and a loss on the battlefield of refactoring, and Chris sh...

248: Here Be Dragons from 2020-06-16T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph shares a keyboard confession and interest in migrating to a split keyboard layout. Chris dives into creating static error pages that are independen...

247: Acronyms By Moonlight from 2020-06-09T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss potential approaches to a complex client-side workflow, Chris shares the highs and lows of his recent adventures revising the cac...

246: A True Movement (Pariss Athena) from 2020-06-02T00:15

We are pausing our normal tech-talk this week in support of the ongoing protests and to re-share the #BlackTechTwitter episode with Pariss Athena from our sister podcast, Giant Robo...

245: Developer Therapy (German Velasco) from 2020-05-27T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph is joined by thoughtbotter German Velasco. German and Steph chat about remote work and the rewards and challenges of their new(ish) roles as Develo...

244: Existential JavaScript from 2020-05-19T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph troubleshoots a mysterious Ember test failure that can't find a visible element, and Chris recounts an exciting three-act adventure that spans ...

243: I'm Not a Couch Worker from 2020-05-12T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris shares his recent explorations of railway oriented programming (hint: not what you think!) while doing his best to avoid words like "monad&quo...

242: As Few Consonants as Possible from 2020-05-05T00:15

On this week’s episode, Chris and Steph share their excitement for Roam Research and formatting Ruby with Prettier Ruby. They also discuss writing test coverage for an important GDP...

241: What If We Just Put a Phone Number? from 2020-04-28T00:15

On this week's episode Steph and Chris dig into MVP thinking and asking how we can write as little code as possible before finding out if any user will actually want the thing w...

240: A Framework in Motion Tends to Stay in Motion from 2020-04-21T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss troubleshooting a race condition, trusting your intuition and pessimistic locks. They also touch briefly on TailWind CSS before ...

239: Admins All the Way Down from 2020-04-07T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss what it really means to make a project "open source". Is it just about making the code publicly available, or should we...

238: All the Single Quotes from 2020-03-31T00:15

In this week's episode, Chris shares details about his new greenfield project, implementing static pages with high voltage, opting for just-in-time architecture decisions and wo...

237: I Love The Squiggles from 2020-03-17T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss the pros and cons of memoization, Chris revisits the discussion around the value of react snapshot tests as well as his continued...

236: What's GNU With You? from 2020-03-10T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss recent challenges associated with upgrading React Router and uploading files to Amazon S3. Steph also shares her latest reading a...

235: Take a Deep Breath from 2020-03-03T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris dig into their shared love of refactoring. How do they think about it, have they ever reverted a refactor, thoughts on deferred refactori...

234: No More Weird Stuff from 2020-02-25T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph respond to a listener question about the complex tradeoffs between craft, preferences, and business needs. They also revisit Steph's ...

233: Software Development in Ancient Rome (Joël Quenneville) from 2020-02-18T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph is joined by Joël Quenneville. It's the season for CFPs (call for proposals) and Joël shares insights about his past conference talk submission...

232: I'm Not Allowed to Play With Other Shells from 2020-02-11T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph celebrate the new Bike Shed website and logo!

Steph finds a new way to optimize her keyboard happiness and Chris dabbles...

231: Fun and Useful from 2020-02-04T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph shares more of her Ember adventures, specifically sharing some of her work with the Mirage API mocking and prototyping library, and her search for ...

230: The Broken Road from 2020-01-28T00:15

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph revisit the long-lived feature branch Chris has been working on and chat about adventures with Yalc. They also dive into the common quest...

229: Nothing but Positive Fire from 2020-01-21T00:15

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris catch up in their first recording of 2020. They discuss git workflows and the surprisingly strong opinions often associated with them, te...

228: Friends and Food (George Brocklehurst) from 2020-01-14T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph is joined by George Brocklehurst, a Development Director in the NYC thoughtbot office. Steph and George chat about the variety of projects and t...

227: Hacks and Cheats from 2020-01-07T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss their recent holiday hackathon efforts building a game in Elm. They discuss their experiences with Elm and the broader prospec...

226: Bespoke Nonsense from 2019-12-31T00:00

On this week's episode, in celebration of the new year, Thom shares the 2019 blooper reel! Words are hard and here's the audio to prove it. Listen to all of the silly mis...

225: Pepper in Some Security from 2019-12-10T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph gets Chris to share his biggest developer regrets over the years. They also revisit a favorite topic of estimation and story points, and round o...

224: The One Manhattan Rule from 2019-12-03T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris catches us up on his latest keyboard adventures and Steph shares her first impression of working with Ember.

They also dive into Chris's experien...

223: Terrible and Easy from 2019-11-26T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss identifying refactoring opportunities by highlighting overly coupled code and Chris announces that he has advanced his vim setup ...

222: That Eureka Moment from 2019-11-12T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris dive into the world of crafting pull requests for optimal code review, as well as the flip side of providing code review. How can we make it ...

221: An Informed Opinion from 2019-11-05T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph catch up on recent client adventures, revisit their feelings on using let in rspec, and spend a bit of time outside their respective c...

220: Adequately Fun from 2019-10-29T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph chat about their new client projects, VimScript, and ways to automate refreshing materialized views in tests. They also play the game Overrat...

219: Seeking That Middle Option from 2019-10-22T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph catches us up on her ever-growing collection of mechanical keyboards, Chris talks about his recent purchase of an apple watch, and they follow up a pre...

218: Finesse in Quitting (Brittany Martin) from 2019-10-15T10:00

On this week's episode, Steph is joined by Brittany Martin, an avid Rubyist and the host of the Ruby on Rails Podcast. They discuss Brittany's passion for roller derby an...

217: A Vote For Reasonableness from 2019-10-08T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph shares an update on her mechanical keyboard adventures and provides a summary for the Ruby pipeline operator being reverted. Chris gets Steph...

216: I'm Not the Best Criminal from 2019-10-01T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph recounts an issue with an email client that lowercases URLs and Chris ponders the art of logging and using structured logs. They also highlight a plugi...

215: Start With People from 2019-09-24T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph returns from vacation and Chris makes some noise about a fantastic new button. They discuss Steph's continued adventures in search of the pe...

214: Have You Tried Refreshing the Page? from 2019-09-17T00:00

On this week's episode, Matt Sumner guest stars to discuss his recent adventures on a project that uses React, TypeScript and GraphQL. Along the way, Matt and Chris discuss V...

213: Admins Matter Too from 2019-09-10T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph discusses a mini design sprint she led to help validate an internal admin tool while Chris muses on the merits of net negative lines of code on ...

212: Award Winning Sheds from 2019-09-04T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris share the news that The Bike Shed won the Best Dev Podcast on the Hackernoon Noonies awards! After a bit of celebration, they get back to the...

211: I'm Not a Lawyer, But... from 2019-08-27T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss their preferred strategy when building an admin portal (spoiler: it's not using a client-side technology), separating our identity fr...

210: Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen from 2019-08-20T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss mechanical keyboards, combating error fatigue, the joy of admin features and respond to two listener questions about typed vs dynamic...

209: We Will Never Know Enough (Michael Chan) from 2019-08-13T00:00

On this week's episode Chris is joined by Michael Chan aka @chantastic, host of the React Podcast and prolific maker and sharer throughout the internets. They discuss Micheal's work...

208: Goldilocks and the Three Monitors from 2019-08-06T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph weigh-in on curved monitors, discuss how pairing improves productivity and team morale, and respond to two listener questions inquiring what ...

207: Very-Bad, Or Just Normal-Bad? from 2019-07-30T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss a handful of utilities that help with their workflows and GitHub, and then dive into a handful of ActiveRecord, SQL, and postg...

206: No-One Wants to be the Canary from 2019-07-23T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss working with Django, Angular, and explore the new features released in Ruby 2.7.0-preview1! They also respond to a listener...

205: Won't Somebody Think of The Jokes (Aaron Patterson) from 2019-07-09T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined in a live recording from RailsConf by the one and only Aaron Patterson. They discuss Aar...

204: I Don't Like Rest from 2019-07-02T00:00

In this week's episode, Steph and Chris discuss ways to unplug and protect personal downtime, RESTful sorting, altering production data within a Rails migration vs a rake task, adop...

203: A Blessed Monkeypatch (Eileen M. Uchitelle) from 2019-06-25T00:00

On this week's episode, we revisit RailsConf 2019 for another live recording, this time with Eileen M. Uchitelle, GitHubber and rails c...

202: I Left it All on The Dance Floor from 2019-06-18T00:00

In this week's episode, Chris and Steph discuss how working with typed-languages influences their work with dynamic languages. They also chat about the benefits of pair programming,...

201: Artisanally Indented Code (Kevin Deisz) from 2019-06-11T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Kevin Deisz, CTO of CultureHQ, live from RailsConf. They...

200: FOMO for Hallway Track (200th Episode!) from 2019-05-29T00:00

On this very special Bike Shed, Steph and Chris celebrate reaching the 200th episode. They discuss the origins of the show and thank some of the wonderful folks who helped make it h...

199: Pave That Path from 2019-05-21T00:00

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris talk about PR sizing, load testing (the weird way), and ponder the merits and pitfalls of personal style in code. They also discuss Hertz sui...

198: In Terms of Tradeoffs (Glenn Vanderburg) from 2019-05-14T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Glenn Vanderburg, VP of Engineering at First.io, live from Rails...

197: Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls from 2019-05-07T00:00

Steph and Chris discuss Redux, integration testing strategies, scoping data for React components, and take a question from a listener about improving process and reducing bugs in a ...

196: I Can Be Wrong on the Internet from 2019-04-30T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris welcomes Steph as the new co-host of The Bike Shed! Chris and Steph discuss their experiences using React, TypeScript, and Angular.

Listen

195: WebAssembly & WASI (Lin Clark & Till Schneidereit) from 2019-04-19T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Lin Clark and Till Schneidereit of Mozilla to d...

194: My PGP Shame from 2019-04-12T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Mike Burns, developer in our New York studio, to discuss the ins and outs of application security. Mike recently added a comprehensive Listen

193: A Thing I Know Almost Nothing About from 2019-04-05T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Edward Loveall, former thoughtbot design apprentice and now thoughtbot developer. After a quick c...

192: I Don't Want to Think That Hard from 2019-03-29T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Sid Raval, developer in our New York studio. Chris and Sid chat about functional programming, st...

191: Open Source is Created By Humans (Devon Zuegel) from 2019-03-22T00:00

Chris is joined by Devon Zuegel who recently joined GitHub in the new Open Source Product Manager role. Devon and Chris discuss the com...

190: Going Steady With a Platform from 2019-03-15T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Alex Sullivan, mobile developer in our Boston office. Alex takes Chris on a tour of the m...

189: It's Gonna Work, Definitely, No Problems Whatsoever from 2019-03-01T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Steph Viccari to chat about Steph's recent experience working on the Hubspot API ruby wrapper a...

188: A Function by Any Other Name from 2019-02-22T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by German Velasco for a conversation

that fully lives up to the name of the show with pl...

187: Convincing People Not to Build Software from 2019-02-15T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Matt Sumner, development director in our Boston Studio. Chris & Matt start with a qui...

186: Let's Duplicate Stuff from 2019-02-01T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Daniel Colson, developer in our New York studio and current maintainer of all things Factor...

185: The Transactional Fallacy (Avdi Grimm) from 2019-01-25T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Ruby Hero Avdi Grimm. They discuss Avdi's history of guiding the Ruby and broader programming commu...

184: Fun, Interesting, and I Wouldn't Recommend It from 2019-01-18T00:00

On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Eebs Kobeissi, a developer in our Boston studio, for a discussion encompassing the front en...

183: Former Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots (Ben Orenstein) from 2019-01-11T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by former thoughtbotter Ben Orenstein. Ben & team are currently feverishly working towar...

182: What's it in the Service Of? from 2019-01-04T00:00

Chris is joined by Eric Bailey, thoughtbot designer and champion for all things accessibility on the web. Chris & Eric chat about h...

181: Strong Types and a Functional Flair from 2018-12-14T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris. Chris & Joe start by talking about all things data. M...

180: A Citizen of the Internet (John Resig) from 2018-12-07T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, we're thrilled to welcome special guest John Resig, creator of jQuery and front-end architect at Khan Academy....

179: We CAN Just Use a Form! from 2018-11-30T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, Matt Sumner returns to chat with Chris about their recent adventures. They start by discussing Mat...

178: Friday is For Spikes from 2018-11-16T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed Chris is joined by Derek Prior, former

thoughtbotter and previous host of this very podcast. ...

177: Tricking Computers Into Doing Things from 2018-11-09T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by Christina Entcheva, developer from thoughtbot's New York studio who has been a pr...

176: The Machines Will Learn from 2018-11-02T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed Chris is joined by George Brocklehurst, development director in thoughtbot's New York studio. The conv...

175: Tell Me When It's Real from 2018-10-26T00:00

On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by Josh Clayton, thoughtbot's managing director in our Boston studio. Chris and Jos...

174: I've Watched a Lot of Vim Courses from 2018-10-18T00:00

In this special crossover episode, Chris is joined by Chad Pytel, Co-founder & CEO of thoughtbot and host of Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, to d...

173: A Combinatoric Explosion of Nulls from 2018-10-12T00:00

Joël Quenneville joins Chris to discuss Elm, the strongly typed functional programming language for writing reliable client side web apps....

172: What I Believe About Software from 2018-10-05T00:00

Steph Viccari joins Chris for a conversation starting with a discussion of some deployment and orchestration issues Chris was helping out ...

171: What If We Just Used a Form? from 2018-09-21T00:00

Matt Sumner joins Chris for a discussion around Matt's recent adventures with the block chain and Ethereum, as well as tackling the thor...

170: Less Charted Territory from 2018-09-14T00:00

Chris is joined by Paul Smith to discuss Crystal, a statically-typed and compiled language with a Ruby inspired syntax. Paul has spent m...

169: Fear Driven Development from 2018-09-07T00:00

Chris is joined by Kane Baccigalupi, development director from thoughtbot's San Francisco office to discuss Kane's history in government...

168: An Escape Rope of Learning from 2018-08-31T00:00

Chris is joined by Rachel Mathew to discuss Rachel's recent experiences with

Scala on a handful of client and side projects. They discuss the benefits of

working...

167: I Feel Like We Should've Solved This By Now from 2018-08-24T00:00

Chris is joined by German Velasco for a discussion ranging from German's

recent transition to remote working to the wonders of th...

166: Are Services the New Rewrite? from 2018-08-10T00:00

Chris & Derek discuss the world of services, exploring the various forms SOA can take, the oft stated benefits, and some of the pitfalls they commonly see in the

wild....

165: The Tables Have Turned from 2018-08-03T11:00

Chris & Derek talk about beginnings and ends, borrowing from their consulting mindset for a conversation spanning CI, deployment, communication, team structure, and everything i...

164: A Piece of My Identity from 2018-07-27T00:00

Support The Bike Shed

163: Insert Some Colons For Me from 2018-07-20T11:00

After Sean confronts some breaking changes to Diesel, we discuss what we like about Visual Studio Code and how changing your tools can change your perspective.

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162: You Have Ruined Your Rails App (Sam Phippen) from 2018-07-13T12:00

Sam Phippen joins us to discuss the maintenance burden of supporting old Rubies, service oriented architecture, and explorations of GraphQL and graph databases.

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161: Re-Incoherence from 2018-07-06T00:00

Rails performance, rebalancing coherence, and themes from career advice requests.

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160: Praise Hands Emoji ? (Vaidehi Joshi) from 2018-06-29T02:45

We're joined by Vaidehi Joshi to discuss her multimedia empire, conference talk prep, getting started with computer science, and the applicability of a computer science education in...

159: Confusing and Hard to Use from 2018-06-22T12:00

An ORM that's a pleasure to use with raw SQL when needed? Sean discusses how that can be. Plus, Derek shares a new and exciting way for migrations to break!

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158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson) from 2018-06-15T00:00

We're joined by Aaron Patterson for puns. Aaron also updates us on compacting GC for Ruby and Ruby 2.6's JIT compiler before telling us how he really feels about functional programm...

157: Whiz-Bangy Frontend Thing (Chris Toomey) from 2018-06-08T00:00

Chris Toomey joins Derek to talk about their shared experience in Elm and their excitement about GraphQL.

• Chris o...
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156: It's a Commercial Enterprise (Olivier Lacan) from 2018-06-01T11:45

We speak with Olivier Lacan about KeepAChangelog.com, tooling improvements for better developer experience, and the emotional impact of shutting down CodeSchool.com

155: Abstractions on Abstractions (Alex Sullivan) from 2018-05-25T06:00

Amanda is joined by Alex Sullivan, Android developer at thoughtbot, to discuss the state of React Native and its new competitor from Google, Flutter.

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154: We All Have Work to Do (Eileen Uchitelle) from 2018-05-18T01:00

Eileen Uchitelle joins us live from RailsConf to talk about exciting improvements coming to Rails 6, problems encountered by larger Rails apps, strategies for upgrading Rails and mo...

153: ? I Would Lose 3,000 Crates, and I Would Lose 12,000 More ? from 2018-05-11T02:00

Is the bug in Postgres? Sean takes over operations of crates.io and keeps himself very busy. We also wrap up our experience at RailsConf.

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152: I Look For Stories (Nickolas Means) from 2018-05-04T00:00

We catch up with Nick Means at RailsConf and discuss storytelling, "human error", advice for job seekers, and the idea of licensing software developers.

<...
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151: Scheming About Schema from 2018-04-27T00:00

Derek & Sean discuss their final preparations for RailsConf, the role of Diesel's schema.rs is in comparison to schema.rb in Rails, and how Derek took ...

150: I Fight For the Users from 2018-04-13T00:00

Derek and Sean discuss ethical concerns in software development and the prospect of licensing software developers.

• ...
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149: E With an Umlaut from 2018-04-06T00:00

Sean experiences a frustrating Ruby bug while building tooling to enforce module boundaries in Shopfiy's monolith. Derek deprecates Rails functionality instead of preparing his talk...

148: Baseball is a Legacy App from 2018-03-30T17:00

Amanda and Sean discuss Flutter, modeling the game of baseball, and the state of persistence and networking in Android.

• Flutt...
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147: Is a Lambda a Sandwich? from 2018-03-23T11:00

Derek shares his experiences with new features in Ruby 2.5 before we turn our ire towards daylight savings time and timezones once more.

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146: --YOLO from 2018-03-16T12:45

Amanda, Derek, and Sean discuss style guides, automated code formatting, and the cycle of disillusionment in development work.

• Listen

145: The Internet is Ruined from 2018-03-09T00:00

Derek and Sean commiserate about the latest generation of MacBooks, Slack, and the state of the Web.

• SoftRA...
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144: Fisher Price™ Tools from 2018-03-02T00:00

We talk about everyone's favorite Fisher-Price web framework and a small upcoming change to it before pivoting to discuss Derek's experience with his first Elm PR.

...
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143: It's Hard to Have a Secret Rocket from 2018-02-16T10:00

We chat about the Falcon Heavy launch before discussing a couple of issues Derek encountered when upgrading to Rails 5.2

• Listen

142: What if We Didn't Do Any of This? from 2018-02-09T00:00

Derek and Sean debate the value provided by database migrations written in your programming language of choice versus those written in SQL.

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141: Go Baby, Go from 2018-02-01T00:00

We discuss the challenges in parallelizing development work and also take a look at what's coming soon in Rails 5.2.

• Listen

140: A Sign of... Stability? from 2018-01-25T12:00

Sean and Derek argue the semantics of versioning and opine for automated reporting on more structured changelogs as a feature of future package managers.

• <...
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139: Red, Green, Refactor (Alex Clark & Sean Doyle) from 2018-01-19T10:15

Derek is joined by coworker Sean Doyle and Codecademy’s Alex Clark to discuss the process of test-driven development and the development of a new TDD course for Codecademy.

138: I Don't Know How the World Works Anymore from 2018-01-12T00:00

We chat about how shared global state in tests can cause you to doubt foundational truths of the universe, some issues with Rails system tests, and recent changes in browser behavio...

137: What's Up, Docs from 2018-01-05T00:00

Who should library documentation be written for? How do you, as an author, know what your users will need to know? Should you have long form guides in addition to API documentation?...

136: Propagating Conspiracy Theories from 2017-12-22T00:00

Amanda joins Derek to discuss KotlinConf, powerful IDEs, our Ralphapalooza hackathon, and the React Native experience from a native mobile developer's perspective.

...
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135: A Series of Unfortunate Examples from 2017-12-13T00:00

We discuss a possible ActiveRecord bug Derek encountered and explore the ambiguity of SQL formatting best practices.

• Listen

134: Fastributes from 2017-12-08T00:00

We share our favorite talks from RubyConf and discuss how Sean has made ActiveRecord attributes allocation significantly faster with Rust.

• Listen

133: A Very Special Bike Shed from 2017-11-23T00:00

Sean is on to a significant ActiveRecord optimization using an extension written in Rust and Derek shares an overdue thanks to an excellent manager.

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132: What Went Well? from 2017-11-16T11:30

We discuss patterns and anti-patterns encountered in agile retrospectives and revisit a favorite topic: form objects.

• Listen

131: Nouns For Verbs Sake from 2017-11-08T00:00

We briefly discuss the renaming of factory_girl to factory_bot before diving in to the visitor pattern; what is it, and what are its inherent tradeoffs.

• Listen

130: I Grew Up in Balloons from 2017-11-03T00:00

Is Database Cleaner necessary anymore? Tune in for our exciting play-by-play reporting on that issue and stick around for chatter on personal defaults for new Rails applications. Listen

129: You Wanna Talk About GraphQL? from 2017-10-27T10:00

We discuss an issue in the interaction between Rails, Chrome, and the HTTP referrer policy before Derek shares his love for GraphQL.

• Listen

128: And Now for My Next Trick! from 2017-10-19T00:00

We discuss strategies for fighting back against project management overhead, refactoring workflows, and on-call rotations.

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127: Bike Shed: Discovery from 2017-10-13T10:00

We discuss Bundler warning us to update to a prerelease version and other recent annoyances with our favorite dependency manager. We also wonder what GitHub diff stats can tell you ...

126: Speaking of Compilers... from 2017-10-05T10:00

We discuss a major change to Diesel's insert statements in advance of its 1.0 release and reexamine Contracts.ruby after Derek spends some time with it in use.

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125: Less Bad Than Expected from 2017-09-28T10:00

We share and discuss some user feedback on fakes and mocks, discuss the benefits and drawbacks to FactoryGirl and share exasperation over the handling of the Equifax data breach. Listen

124: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. from 2017-09-20T00:00

We go inside the RubyConf CFP review process before turning our attention to questions about the impact of code review. Stick around post credits for some spoiler-filled, lukewarm G...

123: Too Many Parameters from 2017-09-13T00:00

Derek and Sean discuss the troubles encountered when code reuse is a goal above all others and strategies to have your reusable cake and eat it too.

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122: Name That Smell from 2017-09-05T00:00

Derek and Sean discuss going from zero to code on new projects, writing tests that deal with external services, and a tricky floating point precision bug Sean encountered in ActiveR...

121: The Bike Log (Jerod Santo) from 2017-08-21T00:00

The Changelog's Jerod Santo joins the show to talk finding time for, sustaining, and funding open source development.

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120: Free Apples from 2017-08-03T10:00

We do some follow-up on open source fundraising and discuss some interesting patterns in Derek's new client project.

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119: Questions Are For the Weak (Caleb Thompson & Matt Mongeau) from 2017-07-26T00:00

Sean and Derek are joined by Caleb Thompson and Matthew Mongeau for our annual live episode to discuss lessons learned from past projects, and speaking at conferences.

118: Nonsense In, Nonsense Out from 2017-07-18T00:00

We discuss the economics of remote work, ActionDispatch::SystemTest in RSpec, and the use of Patreon on open source projects.

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117: S.A.L.T. (Justin Searls) from 2017-07-10T00:00

We chat with Justin Searls about testing, programmer personality types, programming communities, and putting spreadsheets on the Internet.

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116: A More "WALL-E" Future from 2017-06-28T00:00

Amanda is joined by SF thoughtbot developers Tony, Josh, & Greg to discuss learning new languages (and whether developers should do that in their free time), machine learning, t...

115: I Don't Need Another Google Hangout (Cecy Correa) from 2017-06-22T00:00

We talk with Cecy Correa about how to hire and get hired.

• Cecy Correa


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114: Reasonably Thread Safe from 2017-06-16T10:00

We discuss a tiny DOS caused when upgrading thoughtbot.com to Rails 5.1 and how Rails could better surface warnings that only occur in your production configuration. We also get an ...

113: Have You Considered Rust? (Matt Casper) from 2017-06-09T00:00

We talk to Matt Casper about contributing to Diesel, Rust's ecosystem, and the next big thing.

• Matt Casper Listen

112: Lifecycles Are Dead, Long Live Lifecycles! from 2017-06-01T00:00

Amanda joins Sean to discuss all the Android news to come out of Google I/O, Kotlin as a "first class language", and features of Android "O"!

111: Trike Shed (Aaron Patterson) from 2017-05-25T00:00

We talk with Aaron Patterson about Ruby and Rails upgrades, and the goal of making Ruby 3 three times faster than Ruby 2.

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110: Green Chips from 2017-05-18T00:00

What’s the deal with green potato chips? Also: RailsConf wrap up and an AST pass refactor for Diesel.

• Gre...
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109: The Final Countdown from 2017-04-26T00:00

Follow up about Service Objects and Computer Engineering. Plus, RailsConf prep, code slide woes, and modal pop-ups.

• ...
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108: Have You Tried Rebooting? from 2017-04-18T16:00

Is your operating system hosed? That might be related to Rails! We also chat about the trend towards compiled languages.

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107: "Composition" Over Inheritance from 2017-04-14T00:00

Single table inheritance, polymorphic associations, state machines and service objects, oh my!

• RailsConf Shirts- Ple...
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106: Nerd Sniping (Chris Toomey) from 2017-04-05T00:00

Chris Toomey joins to talk about Tell Me When It Closes, Haskell, and GraphQL.

• Chris Toomey - twitter, Listen

105: For Display Purposes Only from 2017-03-30T00:00

Complexity vs Functionality, Validations vs Database Constraints, plus whatever a Cap'n Proto is.

• Second...
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104: It's Dangerous to Refactor Alone! from 2017-03-23T00:00

Google's carrot-and-stick HTTPS policies and how playing The Legend of Zelda is like refactoring.

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103: I Just Want to See Green Dots from 2017-03-16T00:00

When a hash isn't a hash, GitHub as your Résumé, and porting Crates.io to Diesel.

• ActionControl...
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