The Bike Shed

398: Developing Heuristics For Writing Software

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Want a cool cucumber salad? Joël's got you covered. Stephanie has evolved and found some pickles she enjoys. Experienced programmers use a lot of heu...

397: Dependency Graphs

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie is consciously trying to make meetings better for herself by limiting distractions. A few episodes ago, Joël talked about a frustrating bug...

396: Build vs. Buy

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël has been fighting a frustrating bug where he's integrating with a third-party database, and some queries just crash. Stephanie shares her own de...

395: Human Connection in a Virtual (Work) World

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie 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...

394: Submitting a Conference Talk Proposal from Start to Finish

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël recently had a fascinating conversation with some friends about the power of celebrating and highlighting small wins in their lives. He talks ab...

393: Is REST the Best? APIs and Domain Modeling

18 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It'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 smal...

392: Managing Changing Business Requirements

11 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël has a fascinating discovery! He learned a new nuance around working with dependency graphs. Stephanie just finished playing a 100-hour video gam...

391: Learn with APPL

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie went to her first WNBA game. Also: Bingo. Joël's new project has him trying to bring in multiple databases to back their ActiveRecord model...

390: The Truth about Truthiness

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël's new work project involves tricky date formats. Stephanie has been working with former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari and loved her peer review f...

389: Review Season

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie just got back from a smaller regional Ruby Conference, Blue Ridge Ruby, in Asheville, North Carolina. Joël started a new project at work. R...

388: Empowering Other Departments Within a Company

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël 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...

387: RubyKaigi 2023 with Mina Slater

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie is joined by very special guest, fellow thoughtboter, Senior Developer, and marathon trainer Mina Slater. Mina and Stephanie had just been t...

386: Value Objects Revisited: The `Tally` Edition

31 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If 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 ...

385: The Boring Parts of Tech

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël is joined by thoughtbot Software Developer and Dirt Jumper Daniel Nolan. Dirt jumping is BMX-style riding 🏍️ with really enormous dirt jump...

384: Not All Numbers Are Numbers

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël gives a recap after attending RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia (and yes, there was karaoke! 🎤 🎶). Stephanie plugs the The Tightly Couple...

383: Code as Storytelling with Nicole Zhu

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Engineering manager at Vox Media and author Nicole Zhu joins Stephanie on today's episode to discuss her writing practice. nicoledonut is a biweekly ...

382: Domain-Specific Languages

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël 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 kee...

381: To TDD or Not to TDD?

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's gardening season! Stephanie swaps seeds with friends and talks about her Chicago garden. Joël recently started experimenting with a dedicated bo...

380: Remote Work Life

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël 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 co...

379: Feature Flags

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël submitted a last-minute submission to RailsConf discreet math, which got picked up! 🎉 He'll be speaking at RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta at the e...

378: Leadership and Impact as an Individual Contributor

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode is "Old News"! Stephanie shares her ergonomic desk setup. Joël talks about the pyramids. Another old thing is the Bike Shed episode t...

377: Error Handling

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël 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 c...

376: Success and Fulfillment

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie 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...

375: Deleting Code

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

thoughtbot 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...

374: Discrete Math

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël is joined by a very special guest, Sara Jackson, a fellow Software Developer at thoughtbot. A few episodes ago, Stephanie and Joël talked about...

373: Empathy, Community and Gender Bias in Tech with Andrea Goulet

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie is joined today by a very special guest, Andrea Goulet. Andrea founded Empathy In Tech as part of writing her book Empathy-Driven Software D...

372: Onboarding (Well!) Onto a Project

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie raves about more software development-related zines by Julia Evans. Joël has been thinking about the mechanics of rolling dice. Stephanie a...

371: The "Fundamentals"

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël has been fighting autoloading in a Rails app recently, and it's been really unpleasant. Stephanie has been experimenting with how she interacts ...

370: Creative Expression in Software Development

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie 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...

369: Most Impactful Articles of 2022

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël has been pondering another tool for thought from Maggie Appleton: diagramming. What does drawing complex things reveal? Stephanie has updates on...

368: Sustainable Web Development

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie talks about hosting a Soup Group! Joël got nerd-sniped during the last episode and dove deeper into Maggie Appleton's "Tools for Thought."...

367: Value Objects

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joël'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 ...

366: Componentization and Branching Strategies

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Happy New Year! It's 2023 🎉 Joël and Stephanie chat about developer resolutions or things they'd like to do this year and then discuss componentiz...

365: Career Progression

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joël has been thinking a lot recently about array indexing. Stephanie started volunteering at the Chicago Tooele Library, a non-profit community lend...

364: Constructive vs Predicative Data

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie and Joël attended RubyConf Mini, and both spoke there. They discuss takeaways and highlights from the conference. The core idea for this ep...

363: Deployments

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joël discovered Bardcore. Stephanie planned and executed an IRL meetup for folks in the WNB.rb virtual community group in Chicago and had a consultin...

362: Prioritizing Learning

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This 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 yo...

361: Working Incrementally

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

thoughtbotter Stephanie Minn joins The Bike Shed as co-host! 🎉 Joël and Stephanie talk about continuing on a rewrite and redesign of a legacy Rail...

360: ActiveRecord Models

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Fellow thoughtboter Sarah Lima joins Joël to discuss an issue Sarah had when she was doing a code review recently: making HTTP requests in an ActiveR...

359: Serializers

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Toomey is back! (For an episode.) He talks about what he's been up to since handing off the reins to Joël. He's been playing around with someth...

358: Class Methods

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Inspired by a Slack thread, Joël invites fellow thoughtbotter Aji Slater on the show to talk about when you should use class methods and when you sho...

357: Notetaking For Developers

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joël is joined by Amanda Beiner, a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub, who is known for her legendary well-organized notes. They talk about various t...

356: The Value of Specialized Vocabulary

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guest and fellow thoughtbotter Stephanie Minn and Joël chat about how the idea of specialized vocabulary came up during a discussion of the Ruby Scie...

355: Test Performance

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guest Geoff Harcourt, CTO of CommonLit, joins Joël to talk about a thing that comes up with a lot with clients: the performance of their test suite. ...

354: The History of Computing

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Why does the history of computing matter? Joël and Developer at thoughtbot Sara Jackson, ponder this and share some cool stories (and trivia!!) behin...

353: Mental Models

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mental models are metaphors that help us understand complex problems we work on. They can be a simplified roadmap over an infinite area of complexity....

352: Case Expressions

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As 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 o...

351: Learning in Public

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's Joël's first episode as host of The Bike Shed! 👋 Joël has fellow thoughtbotter Steve Polito (https://twitter.com/stevepolitodsgn) join him t...

350: 21 Bell Salute

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's Steph and Chris' last show. Steph found a game, and if you've been following the journey, all of the Test::Unit test files are now live in RSpec...

349: Unpopular Opinions

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph and Chris announce Joël Quenneville as the new host of the show! 🎉 Joël talks about his grand plans for where The Bike Shed is going to go ...

348: Breaking News

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph and Chris share some big news about the future of The Bike Shed. Steph shares an update about integrating with Knapsack Pro. Chris is excited fo...

347: Tracking Velocity

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris talks about a small toy app he maintains on the side and working with a project called capybara_table. Steph is getting ready for maternity leav...

346: Occasional Biscuits

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Natural disaster movies, anyone? It's what Steph's been into, and Chris has THOUGHTS on the drilling in Armageddon. Additionally, a chat around RuboCo...

345: Fire Drill

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris is getting ready to travel, and of course, Sagewell started the day with an incident, a situation, if you will... Steph talks books perfect for ...

344: Spinner Armageddon

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph has an update and a question wrapped into one about the work that is being done to migrate the Test::Unit test over to RSpec. Chris got to do s...

343: Opt-In To Oversharing

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris is weathering through a slight lull, a holding period, where his team waits for new features to become available with some of the platforms they...

342: Sky Icing

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Another toaster strudel debate?! Plus, the results are in for the most listened-to podcast in the RoR community! :: drum roll :: Steph has a "Dear Ger...

341: Fundamentals and Weird Stuff

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph and Chris are recording together! Like, in the same room, physically together. Chris talks about slowly evolving the architecture in an app they...

340: Solving People Problems with Rob Whittaker

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph is joined by a very special guest and fellow thoughtbotter, Rob Whittaker. Rob shares how he became the Software Development Director for Launch...

339: What About Pictures?

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph has a baby update and thoughts on movies, plus a question for Chris related to migrating Test Unit tests to RSpec. Chris watched a video from Go...

338: Meticulously Wrong

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris switched from Trello over to Linear for product management and talks about prioritizing backlogs. Steph shares and discusses a tweet from Curtis...

337: Oh, Henry

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We've got a tricycle anniversary! 🥳 Will it be ruined by a cockroach? Steph shares an update regarding some of the progress and discoveries that sh...

336: Million Dollar Password

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris came up with a mnemonic device: Fn-Delete – for when he really wants to delete something and is also thinking about password complexity requir...

335: Start Messy

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph has a question for Chris: When you have no idea how you're going to implement a feature, how do you write your first test? Chris has thoughts ab...

334: Name That Bike

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris got a bike. Specifically, he bought a bike to use in a triathlon he signed up to participate in. Now he needs to name the bike, and speaking of ...

333: Tapas

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Being pregnant is hard, but this tapas episode is good! Steph discovered and used a #yelling Slack channel and attended a remote magic show. Chris tou...

332: Ludicrous Speed

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris is back from vacation and gives hiring and onboarding updates. Steph has an update about the CI slowdown and scaling CI. They tackle a listener ...

331: Git Down

22 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph celebrates Utah's adoption day and Daylight Savings Time and troubleshoots a CI build time that had suddenly spiked for a client project using T...

330: Bikeshed Baby

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

BIG NEWS! Steph's expecting a baby boy! 🍼🎉 Aaaand unfortunately, the rest of the show isn't nearly as exciting. Chris talks about admin paginati...

329: Fire Mode

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Steph is excited to be headed on a retreat with her mom in the mountains, but before that, she details how she helped troubleshoot a production issue ...

328: Terrible Simplicity

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris is helping with efforts to introduce security, practices, and policies at Sagewell. Right now, they are refining the usage of 1Password to stand...

327: Estimate Crafting

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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. S...

326: Dongle Life

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

325: Pranting

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 adventu...

324: Coding Time!

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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: OmniFocu...

323: Doing Things

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 admi...

322: Toxic Traits

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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, recipe...

321: Leaving Breadcrumbs

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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....

320: Remember The Fun: 2021 Recap

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Steph and Chris recap their favorite things of 2019 and 2020 and share their 2021 list. Happy Holidays, y'all! Steph: * Feature flags and calm deploys...

319: Wins & Losses

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

318: Successful Skills with Edward Loveall

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

317: Burn The Ships!

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Rub...

316: Constrain and Refactor

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chris finally got his new computer! 🎉 🎉 🎉 He gives his initial review. He's also super excited that GitHub announced a beta for pull reques...

315: Emotions Are A Pendulum

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

314: Communication, Testing, and Accountability

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

313: Forty-Seven Percent

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

312: Spooky Stories

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chris evaluates the pros and cons between using Sidekiq or Active Job with Sidekiq. He sees exceptions everywhere. Steph talks about an SSL error tha...

311: Marketing Matters

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

310: Schedule Shut Down, Complete

28 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

309: Naming the Change

21 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

308: That’s Picante

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

307: Walking Contradictions

07 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

306: If You Want To Go Far, Go Together

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ta...

305: Burnout & Bugs

17 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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-...

304: MEGA Crossover Episode (The Bike Shed x Rails with Jason x Remote Ruby x Ruby on Rails Podcast)

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 h...

303: Dear Mr. Grumpy Goose

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

302: Observability with Charity Majors

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 obs...

301: Ants in the Cookie Store

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

300: Mozzarella Sticks & Knowledge Silos

13 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

299: Is Agile Over?

06 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 they fans? What makes t...