Stephanie Minn - Podcast Details

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The Bike Shed453: The Bike Shed Wrapped 2024Happy New Year from The Bike Shed! Tune in to the one wrapped edition that really matters this holiday season, The Bike Shed Wrapped! Recap the year with Joël and Stephanie as they reminisce over their favourite moments of 2024. The pair discuss ways they’ve stepped outside their comfort zone to gain a different perspective on their work, the growth they’ve each achieved as a result, and their ambitions for 2025 and beyond. Discover Joël and Stephanie’s favourite episodes from the year as well as Joël’s favourite blog post of 202...2024-12-3131 min

The Bike Shed452: Hotwire Essentials with Steve PolitoStephanie is joined by follow thoughtbot-er Steve Polito as they discuss his latest GitHub resource, Botcasts. Find out why Steve was so keen to make the app, what he learnt about Hotwire in the process and why he thinks you should stop listening to the show in your current pod-catcher and pick it up in Botcasts instead! -- Try building Botcasts for yourself over on Github! Your host for this episode has been thoughtbot’s own Stephanie Minn, and was accompanied by Steve Polito. You can find more of St...2024-12-2428 min

🧠 _451: Making Time for and Managing Focus Podcast: The Bike Shed (LS 46 · TOP 1% what is this?)Episode: 451: Making Time for and Managing FocusPub date: 2024-12-17Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationIt’s officially the holidays at the Bike Shed! Defrag your hard drives and take a break with Joël and Stephanie as they breakdown different ways to manage your focus during the day. The pair discuss separating coding time from thinking time when working, the pros and cons of blocking out time for different tasks and clever...2024-12-1929 min

The Bike Shed451: Making Time for and Managing FocusIt’s officially the holidays at the Bike Shed! Defrag your hard drives and take a break with Joël and Stephanie as they breakdown different ways to manage your focus during the day. The pair discuss separating coding time from thinking time when working, the pros and cons of blocking out time for different tasks and clever ways to move seamlessly from one project to the next without losing momentum. Joël has some more timezone facts to share, while Stephanie reveals her worst enemy when it comes to productivity. — Try ou...2024-12-1729 min

The Bike Shed450: Javascript-Driven Development?Joël and Stephanie go back to fundamentals as they pick apart some recent conversations they’ve been having around the office. Together they discuss the advantages of GraphQL over a REST API, how they utilise JSONB over a regular column or table, and the use-cases for and against a frontend framework like React. But what’s the theme that ties all these conversations together? — The article mentioned in this episode was Why I’m over GraphQL Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot’s own Stephanie Minn and Joël Quenne...2024-12-1039 min

The Bike Shed449: Evergreen skills for new-ish developersOne of the most challenging things about starting out as a developer is how much you need to master all at once. And with so much to learn, it can be difficult for experts to guide fresh developers and advise them on where to focus first. Luckily, some skills will always be useful, no matter what language you’re coding in. In today’s episode, Stephanie and Joël tackle this topic by unpacking several key evergreen skills that will always be valuable, from reading error messages to deciphering a stack trace. They break down how new-ish developers can start...2024-12-0337 min

The Bike Shed448: Other Uses for TestsHow can tests serve beyond just catching bugs in code? In this episode, Stephanie and Joël dive into the various roles that tests can play in a developer's toolkit. Covering all the fundamentals, from aiding knowledge transfer and documentation to ensuring accountability in code reviews, they explore the unexpected ways that tests support developer workflows. They also explain the balance between writing detailed tests for documentation and managing complex code, and how effective testing practices can help developers become more confident and informed in their work. Gain insights about the impact of test suites on team collaboration, code r...2024-11-2633 min

The Bike Shed447: How to (not) implement impersonationFor developers, impersonation can be a powerful tool, but with great power comes great responsibility. In today’s episode, hosts Stephanie and Joël explore the complexities of implementing impersonation features in software development, giving you the ability to take over someone’s account and act as the user. They delve into the pros and cons of impersonation, from how it can help with debugging and customer support to its prime drawbacks regarding security and auditing issues. Discover why the need for impersonation is often a sign of poor admin tooling, alternative solutions to true impersonation, and the scenarios where...2024-11-1937 min

The Bike Shed446: All about rewritesWhen is it time for a rewrite? How do you justify it? If you’re tasked with one, how do you approach it? In today’s episode of The Bike Shed, we dive into the tough question of software rewrites, sharing firsthand experiences that reveal why these projects are often more complicated and risky than they first appear. We unpack critical factors that make or break a rewrite, from balancing developer satisfaction with business value to managing stakeholder expectations when costs and timelines stretch unexpectedly. You’ll hear about real-world rewrite pitfalls like downtime and reintroducing bugs, as well as str...2024-11-1235 min

The Bike Shed445: Working IterativelyDoes having smaller, more frequent iterations help to ease your cognitive load? During this episode, we discuss the benefits and challenges of working iteratively and whether or not it can prevent costly errors. You’ll hear about juggling individual pieces effectively, factors that incentivize and de-incentivize working iteratively, and how Joël gauges whether or not a project should be broken up into smaller tasks. It can be hard to adopt small iterations, and this conversation also touches on the idea of ‘good enough code’ and discusses how agility can reduce the cost of making changes. Tuning in, you’ll hear a...2024-10-2940 min

The Bike Shed444: From Solutions To PatternsWhat’s the difference between solving problems and recognizing patterns, and why does it matter for developers? In this episode, Stephanie and Joël discuss transitioning from collecting solutions to identifying patterns applicable to broader contexts in software development. They explore the role of heuristics, common misconceptions among junior and intermediate developers, and strategies for leveling up from a solution-focused mindset to thinking in patterns. They also discuss their experiences of moving through this transition during their careers and share advice for upcoming software developers to navigate it successfully. They explore how learning abstraction, engaging in code reviews, and dev...2024-10-1534 min

The Bike Shed443: Rails World and Open Source with Stefanni BrasilLearning from other developers is an important ingredient to your success. During this episode, Joël Quenneville is joined by Stefanni Brasil, Senior Developer at Thoughtbot, and core maintainer of faker-ruby. To open our conversation, she shares the details of her experience at the Rails World conference in Toronto and the projects she enjoyed seeing most. Next, we explore the challenge of Mac versus Windows and how these programs interact with Ruby on Rails and dive into Stefanni’s involvement in Open Source for Thoughtbot and beyond; what she loves about it, and how she is working to educate oth...2024-10-0832 min

Ode to RailsConfStephanie MinnSend us a textDavid chats with Stephanie Minn about her experiences at RailsConf 2024-10-0721 min

The Bike Shed442: Paradigms - What is a Program?What is a program? Your answer to this question will determine the paradigm through which you view programming. During this episode, you’ll come to understand how things change once you develop an awareness of your paradigm, and what. To kick off this episode, Stephanie shares key insights she took from Planet Argon’s 2024 Ruby on Rails survey and dives deeper into her history with Ruby on Rails. Next, we dive into the definition of a paradigm and unpack three different paradigms you might hold as a developer: procedural, object-oriented, and functional. Considering how each of these impacts the way...2024-10-0142 min

The Bike Shed441: The Pickaxe Book with Noel RappinFor a long time, Programming Ruby was the authority in the developing world. Now, a much-needed update has been published. During this conversation, we are joined by Noel Rappin, who shares how his frustration at the idea of static type in Ruby motivated him to investigate why he felt this way, as he published his findings in The Pickaxe Book. We discuss how this book differs from previous material he has published, explore a recent blog post series that explored the idea of failing fast, and address the widespread opinion that developers should take a simpler approach that is...2024-09-2439 min

The Bike Shed440: When we stray from Rails defaultsWhen does it make sense to step away from Rails conventions? What are the limits of convention over configuration? While Rails conventions provide a solid foundation, there are times when customization is necessary to meet specific project needs. In this episode, Joël and Stephanie dive into the tradeoffs of breaking away from Rails defaults. They explore the limits of convention over configuration and share their experiences with customizing beyond the typical Rails setup. Joël offers insights from a recent project where the client opted for all dry-rb objects, and they unpack the benefits and potential challenges of th...2024-09-1742 min

The Bike Shed439: Async Ruby & Rails with Trevor TurkHow can asynchronous programming transform your Ruby on Rails applications? Today, Stephanie sits down with Hello Weather co-creator Trevor Turk to unpack asynchronous programming in Ruby on Rails. Trevor Turk is a seasoned software developer known for his work on Hello Weather, a minimalist weather app that delivers essential weather data quickly and precisely. He’s also the creator of Weather Machine, an advanced weather data platform designed to serve reliable and highly accurate forecasts via API. With a background that includes work at innovative tech companies, Trevor brings years of experience in developing intuitive, user-friendly digital tools. Trevor ta...2024-09-1034 min

The Bike Shed438: Writing abstractions in testsWriting abstractions in tests can be surprisingly similar to storytelling. The most masterful stories are those where the author has stripped away all of the extra information, and given you just enough knowledge to be immersed and aware of what is going on. But striking that balance can be tricky, both in storytelling and abstractions in tests. Too much information and you risk overwhelming the reader. Too little and they won’t understand why things are operating the way they are. Today, Stephanie and Joël get into some of the more controversial practices around testing, why people use the...2024-09-0349 min

Independent BankerGet Schooled on Banking — with Alexander Price and Stephanie GambillIf you’re looking to advance your career, you may be thinking, “Where do I start?” But options abound—you just have to know where to look. Alexander Price, CEO of Citizens State Bank in Ouray, Colo., pursued further education and career development at the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado, which is just one of the options available to bankers. “[School is] one of those things where you just have time, you have space, to think about things and to talk about things. It's worth its weight in gold,” Price says. “I would also say the Graduat...2024-09-0242 min

The Bike Shed437: Contributing to Open Source in the Midst of Daily Work with Steve PolitoAre you passionate about open source but struggling to find time amidst your daily work? Today on the podcast, Joël Quenneville sits down with Steve Polito to discuss practical strategies for making meaningful contributions to the open-source community, even when your schedule is packed. Steve is a developer with extensive experience in the open-source world seamlessly. He’s known for his ability to integrate open-source contributions into his daily workflow, all while maintaining high productivity in his professional role. In our conversation, we explore balancing professional responsibilities with open-source contributions. Steve walks us through his process, from the imp...2024-08-2735 min

Dead CodeEntangled Mess of Vines (with Stephanie Minn and Joel Quenneville)In this episode of the Dead Code podcast, Jared welcomes RailsConf speakers Joël Quenneville and Stephanie Minn, both from thoughtbot and co-hosts of The Bike Shed podcast. Stephanie discusses her talk on the stages of change model, initially about codebase changes but ultimately focusing on adopting testing practices, highlighting the evolution of her topic and the importance of addressing test pain. Joël introduces Hotwire and Turbo through building an interactive Dungeons & Dragons character sheet in Rails, emphasizing decoupling code and progressively enhancing applications without JavaScript. The conversation delves into managing coupling and cohesion in software development, the be...2024-08-1337 min

The Bike Shed436: Creating Conditions For Your Best Work with Steph ViccariHow can we optimize our time and environment to do our best work as developers? In today’s episode, we are joined by Stephanie Viccari, former co-host of The Bike Shed and Senior Developer at thoughtbot, to unpack the steps for creating work conditions that enhance productivity. In this conversation, we delve into her unique communication style and approach to optimizing productivity within a team. She explains why she decided to hang up her consulting hat and join the product team at Cisco Meraki, her new role there, and how her consulting skills benefit her new position. Tuning in, yo...2024-08-1343 min

The Bike Shed435: Cohesive Code with Jared NormanHow easy is it for a layperson to understand your systems? Jared Norman is a software consultant, speaker, and host of the Dead Code Podcast who specializes in building e-commerce applications in Ruby on Rails. This episode follows two recent talks at RailsConf and covers a theme that emerged from both of them: coupling and cohesion. Tuning in, you’ll gain insights on how to create more cohesive components to allow for change and improve your understanding of value objects, systems, and more. You’ll also hear about navigating the complexity of domain-driven design and learn how to gauge if y...2024-07-3028 min

The Bike Shed434: Git and GitHub WorkflowsIt's Calls for Proposals (CFP) season, and in the process of helping our friends and colleagues flesh out their CFPs, we came up with a few questions to help them frame their proposals for success. After learning about the importance of finding your audience and angle of approach for your CFP, we dive into today's main topic – our Git and GitHub workflows. Joel and Stephanie walk us through their current workflows before exploring the differences between main branch and future branch commits. Then, we explore commits editing and why it's okay to make mistakes, commit messages versus GitHub pull re...2024-07-2347 min

The Bike Shed433: Riffing with Kasper Timm HansenHave you ever wondered how improvisation can revolutionize coding? In today’s episode, Stephanie sits down with Kasper Timm Hansen to discuss his innovative “riffing” approach to code development. Kasper is a long-time Ruby developer and former member of the Rails core team. He focuses on Ruby and domain modeling, developing various Ruby gems, and providing consulting services in the developer space. He has become renowned for his approach of “riffing” to software development, particularly in the Ruby on Rails framework. In our conversation, we delve into his unique approach to coding, how it differs from traditional methods, and the benefi...2024-07-1637 min

The Bike Shed432: The Semantics and Meaning of NilThe term ‘nil’ refers to the absence of value, but we often imbue it with much more meaning than just that. Today, hosts Joël and Stephanie discuss the various ways we tend to project extra semantics onto nil and the implications of this before unpacking potential alternatives and trade-offs. Joël and Stephanie highlight some of the key ways programmers project additional meaning onto nil (and why), like when it’s used to create a guest session, and how this can lead to bugs, confusion, and poor user experiences. They discuss solutions to this problem, like introduc...2024-07-0938 min

The Bike Shed431: Developers Are Professional Question AskersStephanie shares her newfound interest in naming conventions, highlighting a resource called "Classnames" that provides valuable names for programming and design. Joël, in turn, talks about using AI to generate names for D&D characters, emphasizing how AI can help provide inspiration and reasoning behind name suggestions. Then, they shift to Joël's interest in Roman history, where he discusses a blog by a Roman historian that explores distinctions between state and non-state peoples in the ancient Mediterranean. Together, the hosts delve into the importance of asking questions as consultants and developers to understand workflows, question as...2024-07-0238 min

The Bike Shed430: Test Suite Pain & Anti-PatternsStephanie and Joël discuss the recent announcement of the call for proposals for RubyConf in November. Joël is working on his proposals and encouraging his colleagues at thoughtbot to participate, while Stephanie is excited about the conference being held in her hometown of Chicago! The conversation shifts to Stephanie's recent work, including completing a significant client project and her upcoming two-week refactoring assignment. She shares her enthusiasm for refactoring code to improve its structure and stability, even when it's not her own. Joël and Stephanie also discuss the everyday challenges of maintaining a test sui...2024-06-2540 min

The Bike Shed429: Transforming Experience Into GrowthStephanie has a newfound interest in urban foraging for serviceberries in Chicago. Joël discusses how he uses AI tools like ChatGPT to generate creative Dungeons & Dragons character concepts and backstories, which sparks a broader conversation with Stephanie about AI's role in enhancing the creative process. Together, the hosts delve into professional growth and experience, specifically how to leverage everyday work to foster growth as a software developer. They discuss the importance of self-reflection, note-taking, and synthesizing information to enhance learning and professional development. Stephanie shares her strategies for capturing weekly learnings, while Joël talks about hi...2024-06-1843 min

The Bike Shed428: Ruminating on Ruby EnumeratorsJoël explains his note-taking system, which he uses to capture his beliefs and thoughts about software development. Stephanie recalls feedback from her recent RailsConf talk, where her confidence stemmed from deeply believing in her material despite limited rehearsal. This leads to a conversation about the value of mental models in building a comprehensive understanding of a topic, which can foster confidence and adaptability during presentations and discussions. The episode then shifts focus to the practical application of enumerators in Ruby, exploring various mental models to understand their functionality better. Joël introduces several metaphors, such as en...2024-06-1135 min

The Bike Shed427: RailsConf Recap and Conversing About CouplingJoël and Stephanie talk RailsConf!. Joël shares how he performed as a D&D character, Glittersense the gnome, to make his Turbo features talk entertaining and interactive. Stephanie's talk focused on addressing test pain by connecting it to code coupling, offering practical insights and solutions. They agree on the importance of continuous improvement as speakers and developers and trying new approaches in talks and code design, and recommend Jared Norman's RailsConf talk on design patterns, too! That One Thing: Reduce Coupling for More Scalable and Sustainable Software Connascence.io [Connascence as a vocabulary to di...2024-05-2837 min

The Bike Shed426: Bringing "Our Selves" to WorkJoël shares his preparations for his RailsConf talk, which is D&D-themed and centered around a gnome character named Glittersense. Stephanie expresses her delight in creating pod-related puns within thoughtbot's internal team structure, like "cross-podination" for inter-pod meetings and the adorable observation that her pod resembles "three peas in a pod" when using the git co-authored-by feature. Together, Stephanie and Joël discuss bringing one's authentic self to work, balancing personal disclosure with professional boundaries, and fostering psychological safety. They highlight the value of shared interests and personal anecdotes in enhancing team cohesion, especially remotely, and st...2024-05-1433 min

The Bike Shed425: Modeling Associations in RailsStephanie shares an intriguing discovery about the origins of design patterns in software, tracing them back to architect Christopher Alexander's ideas in architecture. Joël is an official member of the Boston bike share system, and he loves it. He even got a notification on the app this week: "Congratulations. You have now visited 10% of all docking stations in the Boston metro area." #AchievementUnlocked, Joël! Joël and Stephanie transition into a broader discussion on data modeling within software systems, particularly how entities like companies, employees, and devices interconnect within a database. They debate the semantics of...2024-05-0729 min

The Bike Shed424: The Spectrum of Automated Processes for Your Dev TeamJoël shares his experience with the dry-rb suite of gems, focusing on how he's been using contracts to validate input data. Stephanie relates to Joël's insights with her preparation for RailsConf, discussing her methods for presenting code in slides and weighing the aesthetics and functionality of different tools like VS Code and Carbon.sh. She also encounters a CI test failure that prompts her to consider the implications of enforcing specific coding standards through CI processes. The conversation turns into a discussion on managing coding standards and tools effectively, ensuring that automated systems help rather th...2024-04-3036 min

The Bike Shed423: Cognitive Strategies for CodersStephanie is back with a book recommendation: "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows. This book has helped to bolster her understanding of complex systems in environmental, organizational, and software contexts, particularly through user interactions and system changes. Joël describes his transformative experience watching last week's total solar eclipse. Together, they explore how systems thinking influences software development and team dynamics by delving into practical applications in writing and reading code, suggesting that understanding complex systems can aid developers in navigating and optimizing codebases and team interactions. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows Notetaking for developers e...2024-04-1639 min

The Bike Shed422: Listener Topics Grab BagJoël conducted a thoughtbot mini-workshop on query plans, which Stephanie found highly effective due to its interactive format. They then discuss the broader value of interactive workshops over traditional talks for deeper learning. Addressing listener questions, Stephanie and Joël explore the strategic use of if and else in programming for clearer code, the importance of thorough documentation in identifying bugs, and the use of Postgres' EXPLAIN ANALYZE, highlighting the need for environment-specific considerations in query optimization. Episode mentioning query plans Query plan visualizer RailsConf 2024 Episode 349: Unpopular Opinions Squint test Episode 405: Retro on Sandi Metz ru...2024-04-0935 min

The Bike Shed421: The Idealistic vs. Pragmatic ProgrammerStephanie revisits the concept of "spiking"—a phase of exploration to determine the feasibility of a technical implementation or to address unknowns in feature requests—sharing her recent experiences with a legacy Rails application. Joël brings a different perspective by discussing his involvement with a client project that heavily utilizes the dry-rb suite of gems, highlighting the learning curve associated with adapting to new patterns and libraries. Joël used to be much more idealistic and has moved to be more pragmatic. Stephanie has moved the other way. So together, Stephanie and Joël engage in a philo...2024-04-0241 min

The Bike Shed420: Test Database WoesJoël shares his recent project challenge with Tailwind CSS, where classes weren't generating as expected due to the dynamic nature of Tailwind's CSS generation and pruning. Stephanie introduces a personal productivity tool, a "thinking cap," to signal her thought process during meetings, which also serves as a physical boundary to separate work from personal life. The conversation shifts to testing methodologies within Rails applications, leading to an exploration of testing philosophies, including developers' assumptions about database cleanliness and their impact on writing tests. Avdi’s classic post on how to use database cleaner RSpec change mat...2024-03-2628 min

The Bike Shed419: What's New in Your World? (Extended Edition)Stephanie introduces her ideal setup for enjoying coffee on a bike ride. Joël describes his afternoon tea ritual. Exciting news from the hosts: both have been accepted to speak at RailsConf! Stephanie's presentation, titled "So, Writing Tests Feels Painful. What now?" aims to tackle the issues developers encounter with testing while offering actionable advice to ease these pains. Joël's session will focus on utilizing Turbo to create a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet, combining his passion for gaming with technical expertise. Their conversation shifts to artificial intelligence and its potential in code refactoring and other applications, su...2024-03-1937 min

The Bike Shed418: Mental Models For Reduce FunctionsJoël talks about his difficulties optimizing queries in ActiveRecord, especially with complex scopes and unions, resulting in slow queries. He emphasizes the importance of optimizing subqueries in unions to boost performance despite challenges such as query duplication and difficulty reusing scopes. Stephanie discusses upgrading a client's app to Rails 7, highlighting the importance of patience, detailed attention, and the benefits of collaborative work with a fellow developer. The conversation shifts to Ruby's reduce method (inject), exploring its complexity and various mental models to understand it. Joël and Stephanie discuss when it's preferable to use reduce over ot...2024-03-1242 min

The Bike Shed417: Module DocsStephanie shares about her vacation at Disney World, particularly emphasizing the technological advancements in the park's mobile app that made her visit remarkably frictionless. Joël had a conversation about a topic he loves: units of measure, and he got to go deep into the idea of dimensional analysis with someone this week. Together, Joël and Stephanie talk about module documentation within software development. Joël shares his recent experience writing module docs for a Ruby project using the YARD documentation system. He highlights the time-consuming nature of crafting good documentation for each public method in a c...2024-03-0539 min

The Bike Shed416: Multi-Dimensional NumbersJoël discusses the challenges he encountered while optimizing slow SQL queries in a non-Rails application. Stephanie shares her experience with canary deploys in a Rails upgrade. Together, Stephanie and Joël address a listener's question about replacing the wkhtml2pdf tool, which is no longer maintained. The episode's main topic revolves around the concept of multidimensional numbers and their applications in software development. Joël introduces the idea of treating objects containing multiple numbers as single entities, using the example of 2D points in space to illustrate how custom classes can define mathematical operations like addition and...2024-02-2739 min

The Bike Shed415: Codebase CalibrationStephanie has a delightful and cute Ruby thing to share: Honeybadger, the error monitoring service, has created exceptionalcreatures.com, where they've illustrated and characterized various common Ruby errors into little monsters, and they're adorable. Meanwhile, Joël encourages folks to submit proposals for RailsConf. Together, Stephanie and Joël delve into the nuances of adapting to and working within new codebases, akin to aligning with a shared mental model or vision. They ponder several vital questions that every developer faces when encountering a new project: the balance between exploring a codebase to understand its structure and diving st...2024-02-0630 min

The Bike Shed414: Spike TasksJoël shares his recent experience with Turbo, a JavaScript framework that simplifies adding interactivity to websites without extensive JavaScript coding. Stephanie gives an update on her quest to work from her office more, and the birds have arrived—most notably, chickadees. Stephanie and Joël address a listener question from Edward about the concept of a "spike" in software development. They discuss the nature of spikes, emphasizing that they are typically throwaway work aimed at learning and de-risking rather than producing final code, and explore how spikes can lead to better decision-making and prioritization in software deve...2024-01-3031 min

The Bike Shed413: Developer Tales of Package ManagementStephanie shares her task of retiring a small, internally-used link-shortening app. She describes the process as both celebratory and a bit mournful. Meanwhile, Joël discusses his deep dive into ActiveRecord, particularly in the context of debugging. He explores the complexities of ActiveRecord querying schemas and the additional latency this introduces. Together, the hosts discuss the nuances of package management systems and their implications for developers. They touch upon the differences between system packages and language packages, sharing personal experiences with tools like Homebrew, RubyGems, and Docker. Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to...2024-01-2333 min

The Bike Shed412: Vertical SlicesJoël shares a unique, time-specific bug he encountered, which causes a page to crash only in January. This bug has been fixed in previous years, only to reemerge due to subsequent changes. Stephanie talks about her efforts to bring more structure to her work-from-home environment. She describes how setting up a bird feeder near her desk and keeping chocolates at her desk serve as incentives to work more from her desk. Together, Stephanie and Joël take a deep dive into the challenges of breaking down software development tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. They explore th...2024-01-1632 min

The Bike Shed411: Celebrating and Recapping 2023!Stephanie is hosting a holiday cookie swap. Joël talks about participating in thoughtbot's end-of-the-year hackathon, Ralphapalooza. We had a great year on the show! The hosts wrap up the year and discuss their favorite episodes, the articles, books, and blog posts they’ve read and loved, and other highlights of 2023 (projects, conferences, etc). Olive Oil Sugar Cookies With Pistachios & Lemon Glaze thoughtbot’s Blog Episode 398: Developing Heuristics For Writing Software Episode 374: Discrete Math Episode 405: Sandi Metz’s Rules Episode 391: Learn with APPL Engineering Management for the Rest of Us Confident Ruby Working with Maybe from Elm Eur...2023-12-1938 min

The Bike Shed410: All About DocumentationJoël shares his experiences with handling JSON in a Postgres database. He talks about his challenges with ActiveRecord and JSONB columns, particularly the unexpected behavior of storing and retrieving JSON data. Stephanie shares her recent discovery of bookmarklets and highlights a bookmarklet named "Check This Out," which streamlines searching for books on Libby, an ebook and audiobook lending app. The conversation shifts to using constants in code as a form of documentation. Stephanie and Joël discuss how constants might not always accurately reflect current system behavior or logic, leading to potential misunderstandings and the importance of...2023-12-1232 min

The Bike Shed409: Support & Maintenance and Rotating DevelopersStephanie recommends "Blue Eye Samurai" and a new ceramic pot (donabe) for cooking. Joël talks about the joy of holding a warm beverage in a unique mug. Stephanie discusses her shift to a part-time support and maintenance role at thoughtbot, contrasting it with her full-time development work. She highlights the importance of communication, documentation, and workplace flexibility in this role. Stephanie appreciates the professional growth opportunities and aligns this flexible work style with her long-term career goals. Blue Eye Samurai Donabe pots thoughtbot’s Support & Maintenance services Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welc...2023-12-0528 min

The Bike Shed408: Work Device ManagementJoël recaps his time at RubyConf! He shares insights from his talk about different aspects of time in software development, emphasizing the interaction with the audience and the importance of post-talk discussions. Stephanie talks about wrapping up a long-term client project, the benefits of change and variety in consulting, and maintaining a balance between project engagement and avoiding burnout. They also discuss strategies for maintaining work-life balance, such as physical separation and device management, particularly in a remote work environment. Rubyconf Joël’s talk slides Flaky test summary slide Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hell...2023-11-2832 min

The Bike Shed407: Tech Opinions Online with Edward LoveallStephanie interviews Edward Loveall, a former thoughtbotter, now software developer at Relevant Healthcare. Part of their discussion centers around Edward's blog post on the tech industry's over-reliance on GitHub. He argues for the importance of exploring alternatives to avoid dependency on a single platform and encourages readers to make informed technological choices. The conversation broadens to include how to form opinions on technology, the balance between personal preferences and team decisions, and the importance of empathy and nuance in professional interactions. Both Stephanie and Edward highlight the value of considering various perspectives and tools in software development...2023-11-2136 min

The Bike Shed406: Working SoloJoël got to do some pretty fancy single sign-on work. And when it came time to commit, he documented the ridiculous number of redirects to give people a sense of what was happening. Stephanie has been exploring Rails callbacks and Ruby debugging tools, using methods like save_callbacks and Kernel.caller, and creating a function call graph to better understand and manage complex code dependencies. Stephanie is also engaged in an independent project and seeking strategies to navigate the challenges of solo work. She and Joël explore how to find external support and combat isolation, co...2023-11-1432 min

The Bike Shed405: Retro: Sandi Metz RulesStephanie discovered a new book: The Staff Engineer's Path! Joël's got some D&D goodness. Together, they revisit a decade-old blog post initially published in 2013, which discussed the application of Sandi Metz's coding guidelines and whether these rules remain relevant and practiced among developers today. The Manager’s Path The Staff Engineer’s Path Not Another D&D Podcast Sandi Metz rules for developers Bike Shed episode on heuristics In Relentless Pursuit of REST Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike S...2023-11-0731 min

The Bike Shed404: EstimationJoël was selected to speak at RubyConf in San Diego! After spending a month testing out living in Upstate New York, Stephanie is back in Chicago. Stephanie reflects on a recent experience where she had to provide an estimate for a project, even though she didn't have enough information to do so accurately. In this episode, Stephanie and Joël explore the challenges of providing estimates, the importance of acknowledging uncertainty, and the need for clear communication and transparency when dealing with project timelines and scope. RubyConf 2023 How to estimate well XKCD hard problems Tr...2023-10-1722 min

The Bike Shed403: Productivity TricksStephanie is engrossed in Kent Beck's Substack newsletter, which she appreciates for its "working thoughts" format. Unlike traditional media that undergo rigorous editing, Kent's content is more of a work-in-progress, focusing on thought processes and evolving ideas. Joël has been putting a lot of thought into various tools and techniques and realized that they all fall under one umbrella term: analysis. From there, Stephanie and Joël discuss all the productivity tricks they like to use in their daily workflows. Do you have some keyboard shortcuts you like? Are you an Alfred wizard? What are some to...2023-09-2637 min

The Bike Shed402: Musings on MentorshipJoël describes an old-school object orientation exercise that involves circling nouns in a business problem description. The purpose is determining which nouns could become entities or objects in a system. Stephanie shares she's working from the Hudson Valley in New York as a trial run for potentially relocating there. She enjoys the rail trails for biking and contrasts it with urban biking in Chicago. The conversation between Joël and Stephanie revolves around mentorship, both one-on-one and within a group setting. They introduce a new initiative at thoughbot where team members pair up with principal developers fo...2023-09-1937 min

The Bike Shed401: Making the Right Thing EasyStephanie has another debugging mystery to share. Earlier this year, Joël mentioned that he was experimenting with a bookmark manager to keep track of helpful and interesting articles. He's happy to report that it's working very well for him! Together, they discuss tactics to ensure the easiest route also upholds app health and aids fellow developers. They explore streamlining test fixes over mere re-runs and how to motivate desired actions across teams and individuals. Raindrop.io Railway Oriented Programming Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a...2023-09-1231 min

The Bike Shed400: How To SearchJoël shares he has been getting more into long-form reading. Stephanie talks about the challenges she faced in a new project that required integrating with another company's system. Together, they delve into the importance of search techniques for developers, covering various approaches to finding information online. Domain Modeling Made Functional Episode on heuristics Episode on specialized vocabulary Episode on discrete math Joël’s discrete math talk at RailsConf Dash Alfred Indiana Jones and the Crypt of Cryptic Error Messages Browser History confessional by Kevin Murphy Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to anot...2023-09-0536 min

The Bike Shed399: Scaling Code Ownership and AccountabilityStephanie experienced bike camping. Joël describes his experience during a week when he's in between projects. Stephanie and Joël discuss the concept of code ownership, the mechanisms to enforce it, and the balance between bureaucracy and collaboration. They highlight the challenges and benefits of these systems in large codebases and emphasize that scaling a team is as much a social challenge as it is a technical one. Out Our Front Door Conway’s Law Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your...2023-08-2934 min

The Bike Shed398: Developing Heuristics For Writing SoftwareWant a cool cucumber salad? Joël's got you covered. Stephanie has evolved and found some pickles she enjoys. Experienced programmers use a lot of heuristics or "rules of thumb" about what makes their code better. These aren't always true, but they work in most situations. Stephanie and Joël discuss a range of heuristics, how to use them, how to come up with them, how to know when to break them, and how to teach them to more junior devs. Pickled mustard seeds The purpose of a system is what it does Intro to empirical so...2023-08-2234 min

The Bike Shed397: Dependency GraphsStephanie is consciously trying to make meetings better for herself by limiting distractions. A few episodes ago, Joël talked about a frustrating bug he was chasing down and couldn't get closure on, so he had to move on. This week, that bug popped up again and he chased it down! AND he got to use binary search to find its source–which was pretty cool! Together, Stephanie and Joël discuss dependency graphs as a mental model, and while they apply to code, they also help when it comes to planning tasks and systems. They talk abou...2023-08-1542 min

The Bike Shed396: Build vs. BuyJoël has been fighting a frustrating bug where he's integrating with a third-party database, and some queries just crash. Stephanie shares her own debugging story about a leaky stub that caused flaky tests. Additionally, they discuss the build vs. buy decision when integrating with third-party systems. They consider the time and cost implications of building their own integration versus using off-the-shelf components and conclude that the decision often depends on the specific needs and priorities of the project, including how quickly a solution is needed and whether the integration is core to the business's value proposition.2023-08-0833 min

The Bike Shed395: Human Connection in a Virtual (Work) WorldStephanie had a small consulting win: saying no to a client. GeoGuessr is all the rage for thoughtbot's remote working culture, which leads to today's topic of forming human connections in a virtual (work) environment. GeoGuessr Strategies for saying no by Elle Meredith NYT Let’s Ignore Each Other in the Same Room Random question generator Transcript: JOËL: And this is just where it ends. [laughter] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Qu...2023-08-0130 min

The Bike Shed394: Submitting a Conference Talk Proposal from Start to FinishJoël recently had a fascinating conversation with some friends about the power of celebrating and highlighting small wins in their lives. He talks about bringing this into his work life. May Stephanie interest you in a secret she learned regarding homemade pizza? RubyConf is coming! Who's submitting talks?! It's hekkin scary. Don't fret! Joël and Stephannie are here to help. Today, they discussed submitting a conference talk proposal from start to finish. Sheet pan pizza RubyConf CFP Speakerline.io WNB.rb Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bi...2023-07-2538 min

The Bike Shed393: Is REST the Best? APIs and Domain ModelingIt's updates on the work front today! Stephanie was tasked with removing a six-year-old feature flag from a codebase. Joël's been doing a lot of small database migrations. A listener question sparked today's main discussion on gerunds' interesting relationship to data modeling. Episode 386: Value Objects Revisited: The Tally Edition RailsConf 2017: In Relentless Pursuit of REST by Derek Prior REST Turns Humans Into Database Clients Parse, don’t validate Wikipedia Getting to Philosophy Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thou...2023-07-1833 min

The Bike Shed392: Managing Changing Business RequirementsJoël has a fascinating discovery! He learned a new nuance around working with dependency graphs. Stephanie just finished playing a 100-hour video game on Nintendo Switch: a Japanese role-playing game called Octopath Traveler II. On the work front, she is struggling with a lot of churn in acceptance criteria and ideas about how features should work. How do these get documented? What happens when they change? What happens when people lose this context over time? Strangler Fig Pattern Octopath Traveler 2 Empowering other departments Transcript: JOËL: You're the one who controls the pacing here....2023-07-1139 min

The Bike Shed391: Learn with APPLStephanie went to her first WNBA game. Also: Bingo. Joël's new project has him trying to bring in multiple databases to back their ActiveRecord models. He's never done multi-database setups in Rails before, and he doesn't hate it. Stephanie shares bits from a discussion with former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari about learning goals. Four elements stood out: Adventure (try something new) Passion (topic) Profit (from recent learnings) Low-risk (applicable today) = APPL Stephanie and Joël discuss what motivates them, what they find interesting vs. what has im...2023-07-0540 min

The Bike Shed390: The Truth about TruthinessJoël's new work project involves tricky date formats. Stephanie has been working with former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari and loved her peer review feedback. The concept of truthiness is tough to grasp sometimes, and JavaScript and Ruby differ in their implementation of truthiness. Is this a problem? Do you prefer one model over the other? What can we learn about these design decisions? How can we avoid common pitfalls? [EDI](https://www.stedi.com/blog/date-and-time-in-edi](https:/www.stedi.com/blog/date-and-time-in-edi) [Booleans don’t exist in Ruby](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/what-is-a-boolean](https://tho...2023-06-2739 min

The Bike Shed389: Review SeasonStephanie just got back from a smaller regional Ruby Conference, Blue Ridge Ruby, in Asheville, North Carolina. Joël started a new project at work. Review season is upon us. Stephanie and Joël think about growth and goals and talk about reviews: how to do them, how to write them for yourself, and how to write them for others. Blue Ridge Ruby Impactful Articles of 2022 Constructive vs Predicative Data by Hillel Wayne Parse, don’t validate by Alexis King Working Iteratively thoughtbot’s 20th Anniversary Live AMA 20th Anniversary e-book Transcript: JOËL: Hell...2023-06-2033 min

The Bike Shed388: Empowering Other Departments Within a CompanyJoël has a bike shorts update; Stephanie has a garden one. Often, power is centralized within the dev team. This is usually because they are the only ones able to execute. Sometimes this ends up interfering with team processes and workload. Joël is a fan of empowering other teams to do things themselves. Strangler Fig Pattern What Being a Staff Developer Means at Shopify by Rose Wiegley End-User Programming Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing gr...2023-06-1334 min

The Bike Shed387: RubyKaigi 2023 with Mina SlaterStephanie is joined by very special guest, fellow thoughtboter, Senior Developer, and marathon trainer Mina Slater. Mina and Stephanie had just been traveling together for two weeks, sponsored by WNB.rb for RubyKaigi in Matsumoto, Japan, and together, they recount their international adventure! RubyKaigi WNB.rb Understanding the Ruby Global VM Lock by observing it by Ivo Anjo gvl-tracing Justin Searls' RubyKaigi 2023 live coverage Prioritizing Learning episode Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie...2023-06-0631 min

The Bike Shed386: Value Objects Revisited: The `Tally` EditionIf you're in the market for bicycle shorts, Joël's got you. Stephanie just returned from RubyKaigi in Japan and shares details of her trip. Recently at thoughtbot, there have been conversations around an interesting data modeling exercise. Joël and Stephanie discuss the following: Value Objects vs. Hashes Doing Math on Compound Numbers Monoids and Folding Naming Concepts in Code This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Ruby Kaigi Google Translate Lens Video on city parks Enumerable#tally Hash#merge Monoids En...2023-05-3141 min

The Bike Shed384: Not All Numbers Are NumbersJoël gives a recap after attending RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia (and yes, there was karaoke! 🎤 🎶). Stephanie plugs the The Tightly Coupled Book Club Podcast from friends and fellow thoughtboters Aji and Mina Slater where they're reading The Rails Guides from cover to cover and treating it like a book club and having a discussions about the documentation as they read it together. Stemming from a Twitter thread by Joël, their main topic focuses on not all numbers being numbers. So: if someone is submitting a phone number through a form: How would you store that in...2023-05-1637 min

The Bike Shed383: Code as Storytelling with Nicole ZhuEngineering manager at Vox Media and author Nicole Zhu joins Stephanie on today's episode to discuss her writing practice. nicoledonut is a biweekly newsletter about the writing process and sustaining a creative life that features creative resources, occasional interviews with creative folks, short essays on writing and creativity, farm-to-table memes and TikToks, and features on what Nicole is currently writing, reading, and watching. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Kieran Culkin on learning about billionaires filming Succession The Home Depot skeleton ...2023-05-0943 min

The Bike Shed382: Domain-Specific LanguagesJoël has been integrating a third-party platform into a testing pipeline...and it has not been going well. Because it's not something she usually keeps up-to-date with, Stephanie is excited to learn about more of the open-source side of things in Ruby, what's new in the Ruby tooling world, and what folks are thinking about regarding the future of the language. Today's topic is inspired by an internal thoughtbot Slack thread about writing a custom matcher for Rspec. Stephanie and Joël contrast DSLs vs. Object APIs and also talk about: CanCanCan vs Pundit RSpec DS...2023-05-0236 min

The Bike Shed381: To TDD or Not to TDD?It's gardening season! Stephanie swaps seeds with friends and talks about her Chicago garden. Joël recently started experimenting with a dedicated bookmark manager. They discuss the aspirational (and sometimes dogmatic) sides of TDD and explore when to test: first or after. How does that affect the tests? How does that affect the code? How does that affect workflow? Are you a "better" programmer because you 100% TDD? This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Cassidy William's Productivity t...2023-04-2540 min

The Bike Shed380: Remote Work LifeJoël has been working on his RailsConf talk about various aspects of discrete math useful in day-to-day work as a developer and going deep on some concepts from propositional logic and Boolean algebra, particularly DeMorgan's Laws, which explain how to negate a compound condition. Stephanie attended a meeting with a fun "Spicy Takes" topic. She gave a short talk on how frictionless technology may not be the best path forward and tried to argue in favor of more friction in our software. Together, they talk about ways they've made remote work work for them and things t...2023-04-1832 min

The Bike Shed379: Feature FlagsJoël submitted a last-minute submission to RailsConf discreet math, which got picked up! 🎉 He'll be speaking at RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta at the end of April about why it's relevant to developers and all the different practical ways he uses it daily. Stephanie recommends headlamps for in-bed reading sessions and sets up the feature flags topic for today based on a project that must be released to the public in one go. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Joël's Railsconf talk ...2023-04-1141 min

The Bike Shed378: Leadership and Impact as an Individual ContributorToday's episode is "Old News"! Stephanie shares her ergonomic desk setup. Joël talks about the pyramids. Another old thing is the Bike Shed episode two weeks ago about success and fulfillment. Stephanie and Joël realized off-mic that one area they didn't really talk about so much is impact, and that is something that is very fulfilling for both of them. Today, they talk about impact and leadership as individual contributors because leadership is typically associated with management. But they believe that as ICs, at any level, you can be displaying attributes of leadership and show up...2023-04-0438 min

The Bike Shed377: Error HandlingJoël is a mentor for RailsConf and got matched with a speaker. Stephanie has been having trouble stepping away from her work. It's frustrating when chasing down a bug because something's gone wrong, and you spend a whole afternoon figuring out where it is. Joël and Stephanie discuss error handling as a possible solution. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Mis en Place Writing Errors accumulate at boundaries Retryable errors Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of...2023-03-2845 min

The Bike Shed376: Success and FulfillmentStephanie has a win and a gripe from her client project this week. In a previous episode, Joël talked about his work exploring how to model dependent side effects, particularly D&D dice rolls. He went from the theoretical to the practical and wrote up a miniature D&D damage dice roll app that you put in a few inputs. Then it will roll all the dice necessary and tell you did you successfully hit your target and, if so, how much damage you did. Together, they discuss how they think about fulfillment at work and w...2023-03-2141 min

The Bike Shed375: Deleting Codethoughtbot had an in-person Summit in the UK! Joël recalls highlights. Stephanie is loving daily sync meetings on a new project. The idea of deleting code has been swimming around in Stephanie's brain recently because she's been feeling nervous about it. Together, Joël and Stephanie explore ways of gaining confidence to delete code while feeling good about it. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Thoughtbot summit video Gather Town Sustainable Rails episode Chelsea Troy on deleting features Unused elm-review-unused ...2023-03-1431 min

The Bike Shed373: Empathy, Community and Gender Bias in Tech with Andrea GouletStephanie is joined today by a very special guest, Andrea Goulet. Andrea founded Empathy In Tech as part of writing her book Empathy-Driven Software Development. She's also the founder of the community Legacy Code Rocks and the Chief Vision Officer of two companies: Corgibytes and Heartware (which provides financial support to keep Empathy In Tech running). Stephanie has strong opinions about the concept of "Makers and Menders" that the Corgibytes folks have written/spoken about, especially around those personas and gender stereotypes. Andrea joins Steph to evolve the conversation and add nuance to the discussion about legacy...2023-02-2842 min

The Bike Shed372: Onboarding (Well!) Onto a ProjectStephanie raves about more software development-related zines by Julia Evans. Joël has been thinking about the mechanics of rolling dice. Stephanie also started on a new client project that Joël has already been working on for many months. They talk about onboarding. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Julia Evan's Wizard Zines Why's Poignant Guide To Ruby Learn You A Haskell For Great Good Mazes for Programmers thoughtbot dotfiles rcm Transcript: AD: thoughtbot is th...2023-02-2137 min

The Bike Shed371: The "Fundamentals"Joël has been fighting autoloading in a Rails app recently, and it's been really unpleasant. Stephanie has been experimenting with how she interacts with Slack. What are "the fundamentals"? People often argue for the value of Computer Science classes for the jobbing programmer because we need "the fundamentals." But what are they? And does CS really provide that for us? This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. RailsConf talk on autoloading Joël's RubyConf Mini talk Stephanie's RubyConf Mini talk Fun, Fr...2023-02-1436 min

The Bike Shed370: Creative Expression in Software DevelopmentStephanie shares that she's been taking an intro to basket weaving class at a local art studio, and it's an interesting connection to computer science. Joël eats honeycomb live on air and shares a video that former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari found from Ian Anderson. It's a parody to the tune of "All I Want For Christmas Is You," but it's all about the Ruby 3.2 release. In this episode, Stephanie and Joël shift away from literature and lean into art. Writing code is technical work, but in many ways, it's also aesthetic work. It's a...2023-02-0738 min

The Bike Shed369: Most Impactful Articles of 2022Joël has been pondering another tool for thought from Maggie Appleton: diagramming. What does drawing complex things reveal? Stephanie has updates on how Soup Group went, plus a clarification from last week's episode re: hexagons and tessellation. They also share the top most impactful articles they read in 2022. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Maggie Appleton tools for thought Squint test Cardinality of types Honeycomb hexagon construction Coachability Strangler Fig Pattern Finding time to refactor Parse don't validate Errors cluster a...2023-01-3150 min

The Bike Shed368: Sustainable Web DevelopmentStephanie talks about hosting a Soup Group! Joël got nerd-sniped during the last episode and dove deeper into Maggie Appleton's "Tools for Thought." Stephanie has been thinking a lot about Sustainable Web Development. What is sustainability? How does it relate to tech and what we do? This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Maggie Appleton's Tools for Thought Tangrams Tessellation Hexagons are the Bestagons Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails Transcript: AD: thoughtbot is thrilled to a...2023-01-2436 min

BASS hubE19 – All about your electronics with John Pryhoda and Danny HartsellWelcome to the BASS hub with your hosts Harvey Horne and Stephanie Hemphill-Pellerin. This week BASS hub welcomes John Pryhoda from Humminbird Tips and Tricks Facebook Group and Danny Hartsell from the Electronic Fisherman. They will be answering questions about Humminbird and Minn Kota products. If you enjoy the show, go subscribe to our YouTube channel @Basshubpodcast BASS hub ..... raw ... informative ... addicting #Tnpfl #BassFishing 2023-01-181h 25

The Bike Shed367: Value ObjectsJoël's been traveling. Stephanie's working on professional development. She's also keeping up a little bit more with Ruby news and community news in general and saw that Ruby 3.2 introduced a new class called data to its core library for the use case of creating simple value objects. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Maggie Appleton's Tools for Thought Episode on note-taking with Amanda Beiner Obsidian Zettelkasten Evergreen notes New Data class Joël's article on value objects Episode on specialized vocabulary Primitive Ob...2023-01-1734 min

The Bike Shed366: Componentization and Branching StrategiesHappy New Year! It's 2023 🎉 Joël and Stephanie chat about developer resolutions or things they'd like to do this year and then discuss componentization and branching strategies. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Joël's Elm Meetup talk wasn't recorded but the slides are here Joël hasn't published an article on the 3 principles of branching, but he does discuss them in this twitter thread Making Impossible States Impossible Cardinalities Component-Driven Development Storybook BEM View Components at GitHub Confident Ruby Case Expressions Episode Tran...2023-01-1038 min

The Bike Shed365: Career ProgressionJoël has been thinking a lot recently about array indexing. Stephanie started volunteering at the Chicago Tooele Library, a non-profit community lending library for Chicagoans to borrow tools and equipment for DIY home projects! It's the end of the year and often a time of reflection: looking back on the year and thinking about the next. Stephanie and Joël ponder if open source is a critical way to advance careers as software developers. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Ch...2022-12-1337 min

The Bike Shed364: Constructive vs Predicative DataStephanie and Joël attended RubyConf Mini, and both spoke there. They discuss takeaways and highlights from the conference. The core idea for this episode is explained in this article: Constructive vs. Predicative Data. This came up recently in a conversation at thoughtbot about designing a database schema and what constraints could be encoded in the schema directly versus needing some kind of trigger or Rails validation to cover it. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. RubyConf Mini Episode o...2022-12-0634 min

The Bike Shed363: DeploymentsJoël discovered Bardcore. Stephanie planned and executed an IRL meetup for folks in the WNB.rb virtual community group in Chicago and had a consulting win. Together, they discuss what deployment processes look like for clients in their current workloads. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Hildegard von Blingen YouTube Channel Hildegard von Bingen - Historical Character WNB.rb git flow Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike S...2022-11-2234 min

The Bike Shed362: Prioritizing LearningThis week, Steph and Joël discuss investment time and keeping track of things they want to learn. How do you, dear listener, keep track of things you want to learn? When investment time rolls around, what do you reach for, or how do you prioritize that list? Are there things you actively decide not to focus on when choosing where to develop deep expertise? Are there things you wish you could spend time on if you could? This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your a...2022-11-1529 min

The Bike Shed361: Working Incrementallythoughtbotter Stephanie Minn joins The Bike Shed as co-host! 🎉 Joël and Stephanie talk about continuing on a rewrite and redesign of a legacy Rails app and working incrementally. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack. Stephanie's listener question Stephanie's older episodes Case Expressions Specialized Vocabulary Mike Burns' smelly list Previous episode about note taking systems Transcript: JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great...2022-11-0830 min

The Bike Shed356: The Value of Specialized VocabularyGuest and fellow thoughtbotter Stephanie Minn and Joël chat about how the idea of specialized vocabulary came up during a discussion of the Ruby Science book. We have all these names for code smells and refactors. Before knowing these names, we often have a vague sense of the ideas but having a name makes them more real. They also give us ways to talk precisely about what we mean. However, there is a downside since not everyone is familiar with the jargon. This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance i...2022-09-2739 min

The Bike Shed352: Case ExpressionsAs developers, we care a lot about code quality. How do we know how good is good enough? When do we stop improving code? Alternatively, when working on code that's really bad, how much do you improve it before calling it a day? thoughtbot's Stephanie Minn joins Joël to chat about this and case expressions: We recently discussed these as part of thoughtbot's RubyScience reading group. Are case expressions bad? Are they equivalent to multi-way conditionals? When do you use polymorphism? This episode is brought to you by Airbrake. Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight f...2022-08-3032 min