The Bike Shed
Episodes
198: In Terms of Tradeoffs (Glenn Vanderburg)
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Glenn Vanderburg, VP of Engineering at First.io, live from RailsConf. They discuss Glenn's RailsConf talk, ...
197: Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls
07 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Steph and Chris discuss Redux, integration testing strategies, scoping data for React components, and take a question from a listener about improving ...
196: I Can Be Wrong on the Internet
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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, a...
195: WebAssembly & WASI (Lin Clark & Till Schneidereit)
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Lin Clark and Till Schneidereit of Mozilla to discuss all things WebAssembly. Lin and Till are helping to l...
194: My PGP Shame
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 rec...
193: A Thing I Know Almost Nothing About
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Edward Loveall, former thoughtbot design apprentice and now thoughtbot developer. After a quick chat about ...
192: I Don't Want to Think That Hard
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Sid Raval, developer in our New York studio. Chris and Sid chat about functional programming, strong types,...
191: Open Source is Created By Humans (Devon Zuegel)
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chris is joined by Devon Zuegel who recently joined GitHub in the new Open Source Product Manager role. Devon and Chris discuss the complexities inher...
190: Going Steady With a Platform
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 mobile landscape co...
189: It's Gonna Work, Definitely, No Problems Whatsoever
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 as a client p...
188: A Function by Any Other Name
22 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 plenty of opinions and i...
187: Convincing People Not to Build Software
15 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Matt Sumner, development director in our Boston Studio. Chris & Matt start with a quick update on Matt'...
186: Let's Duplicate Stuff
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Daniel Colson, developer in our New York studio and current maintainer of all things FactoryBot. Chris &...
185: The Transactional Fallacy (Avdi Grimm)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 communities, ...
184: Fun, Interesting, and I Wouldn't Recommend It
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Eebs Kobeissi, a developer in our Boston studio, for a discussion encompassing the front end, back end, and...
183: Former Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots (Ben Orenstein)
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by former thoughtbotter Ben Orenstein. Ben & team are currently feverishly working towards launc...
182: What's it in the Service Of?
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chris is joined by Eric Bailey, thoughtbot designer and champion for all things accessibility on the web. Chris & Eric chat about how Eric approac...
181: Strong Types and a Functional Flair
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris. Chris & Joe start by talking about all things data. More and more ...
180: A Citizen of the Internet (John Resig)
07 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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. The c...
179: We CAN Just Use a Form!
30 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed, Matt Sumner returns to chat with Chris about their recent adventures. They start by discussing Matt's ongoing work b...
178: Friday is For Spikes
16 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed Chris is joined by Derek Prior, former thoughtbotter and previous host of this very podcast. Derek has recently moved...
177: Tricking Computers Into Doing Things
09 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by Christina Entcheva, developer from thoughtbot's New York studio who has been a product manager an...
176: The Machines Will Learn
02 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed Chris is joined by George Brocklehurst, development director in thoughtbot's New York studio. The conversation starts...
175: Tell Me When It's Real
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Bike Shed, Chris is joined by Josh Clayton, thoughtbot's managing director in our Boston studio. Chris and Josh spend the episo...
174: I've Watched a Lot of Vim Courses
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this special crossover episode, Chris is joined by Chad Pytel, Co-founder & CEO of thoughtbot and host of Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Gian...
173: A Combinatoric Explosion of Nulls
12 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Joël Quenneville joins Chris to discuss Elm, the strongly typed functional programming language for writing reliable client side web apps. They discu...
172: What I Believe About Software
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Steph Viccari joins Chris for a conversation starting with a discussion of some deployment and orchestration issues Chris was helping out with, follow...
171: What If We Just Used a Form?
21 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Sumner joins Chris for a discussion around Matt's recent adventures with the block chain and Ethereum, as well as tackling the thorny issue of se...
170: Less Charted Territory
14 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris is joined by Paul Smith to discuss Crystal, a statically-typed and compiled language with a Ruby inspired syntax. Paul has spent much of the pas...
169: Fear Driven Development
07 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris is joined by Kane Baccigalupi, development director from thoughtbot's San Francisco office to discuss Kane's history in government working for 1...
168: An Escape Rope of Learning
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
167: I Feel Like We Should've Solved This By Now
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris is joined by German Velasco for a discussion ranging from German's recent transition to remote working to the wonders of the Elixir language and...
166: Are Services the New Rewrite?
10 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris & Derek discuss the world of services, exploring the various forms SOA can take, the oft stated benefits, and some of the pitfalls they comm...
165: The Tables Have Turned
03 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris & Derek talk about beginnings and ends, borrowing from their consulting mindset for a conversation spanning CI, deployment, communication, t...
164: A Piece of My Identity
27 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
163: Insert Some Colons For Me
20 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 per...
162: You Have Ruined Your Rails App (Sam Phippen)
13 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Phippen joins us to discuss the maintenance burden of supporting old Rubies, service oriented architecture, and explorations of GraphQL and graph ...
161: Re-Incoherence
06 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rails performance, rebalancing coherence, and themes from career advice requests. Jeff Atwood on Rails performance An analysis of memory bloat in Act...
160: Praise Hands Emoji 🙌 (Vaidehi Joshi)
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We're joined by Vaidehi Joshi to discuss her multimedia empire, conference talk prep, getting started with computer science, and the applicability of ...
159: Confusing and Hard to Use
22 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
157: Whiz-Bangy Frontend Thing (Chris Toomey)
08 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Toomey joins Derek to talk about their shared experience in Elm and their excitement about GraphQL. Chris on Twitter The Reader Monad — Part ...
156: It's a Commercial Enterprise (Olivier Lacan)
01 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We speak with Olivier Lacan about KeepAChangelog.com, tooling improvements for better developer experience, and the emotional impact of shutting down ...
155: Abstractions on Abstractions (Alex Sullivan)
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda is joined by Alex Sullivan, Android developer at thoughtbot, to discuss the state of React Native and its new competitor from Google, Flutter. ...
154: We All Have Work to Do (Eileen Uchitelle)
18 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Eileen Uchitelle joins us live from RailsConf to talk about exciting improvements coming to Rails 6, problems encountered by larger Rails apps, strate...
153: 🎶 I Would Lose 3,000 Crates, and I Would Lose 12,000 More 🎶
11 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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. Logical Rep...
152: I Look For Stories (Nickolas Means)
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We catch up with Nick Means at RailsConf and discuss storytelling, "human error", advice for job seekers, and the idea of licensing software...
151: Scheming About Schema
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
150: I Fight For the Users
13 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Derek and Sean discuss ethical concerns in software development and the prospect of licensing software developers. XFINITY Data Usage Center Reply Al...
149: E With an Umlaut
06 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sean experiences a frustrating Ruby bug while building tooling to enforce module boundaries in Shopfiy's monolith. Derek deprecates Rails functionalit...
148: Baseball is a Legacy App
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda and Sean discuss Flutter, modeling the game of baseball, and the state of persistence and networking in Android. Flutter - Beautiful native ap...
147: Is a Lambda a Sandwich?
23 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Derek shares his experiences with new features in Ruby 2.5 before we turn our ire towards daylight savings time and timezones once more. Using yield_...
146: --YOLO
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda, Derek, and Sean discuss style guides, automated code formatting, and the cycle of disillusionment in development work. elm-format elm-analyse...
145: The Internet is Ruined
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Derek and Sean commiserate about the latest generation of MacBooks, Slack, and the state of the Web. SoftRAM thoughtbot/laptop: A shell script to set...
144: Fisher Price™ Tools
02 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
143: It's Hard to Have a Secret Rocket
16 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We chat about the Falcon Heavy launch before discussing a couple of issues Derek encountered when upgrading to Rails 5.2 Starman Double rocket landin...
142: What if We Didn't Do Any of This?
09 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Derek and Sean debate the value provided by database migrations written in your programming language of choice versus those written in SQL. RailsConf...
141: Go Baby, Go
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the challenges in parallelizing development work and also take a look at what's coming soon in Rails 5.2. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays o...
140: A Sign of... Stability?
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sean and Derek argue the semantics of versioning and opine for automated reporting on more structured changelogs as a feature of future package manage...
139: Red, Green, Refactor (Alex Clark & Sean Doyle)
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 TD...
138: I Don't Know How the World Works Anymore
12 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 re...
137: What's Up, Docs
05 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
136: Propagating Conspiracy Theories
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda joins Derek to discuss KotlinConf, powerful IDEs, our Ralphapalooza hackathon, and the React Native experience from a native mobile developer's...
135: A Series of Unfortunate Examples
13 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss a possible ActiveRecord bug Derek encountered and explore the ambiguity of SQL formatting best practices. thoughtbot podcast swag Working ...
134: Fastributes
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We share our favorite talks from RubyConf and discuss how Sean has made ActiveRecord attributes allocation significantly faster with Rust. Saving Rub...
133: A Very Special Bike Shed
23 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sean is on to a significant ActiveRecord optimization using an extension written in Rust and Derek shares an overdue thanks to an excellent manager. ...
132: What Went Well?
16 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss patterns and anti-patterns encountered in agile retrospectives and revisit a favorite topic: form objects. Running a Retrospective Scrum S...
131: Nouns For Verbs Sake
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 tradeoff...
130: I Grew Up in Balloons
03 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
129: You Wanna Talk About GraphQL?
27 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss an issue in the interaction between Rails, Chrome, and the HTTP referrer policy before Derek shares his love for GraphQL. Referrer-Policy ...
128: And Now for My Next Trick!
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss strategies for fighting back against project management overhead, refactoring workflows, and on-call rotations. Make the change easy, then...
127: Bike Shed: Discovery
13 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss Bundler warning us to update to a prerelease version and other recent annoyances with our favorite dependency manager. We also wonder what ...
126: Speaking of Compilers...
05 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
125: Less Bad Than Expected
28 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We share and discuss some user feedback on fakes and mocks, discuss the benefits and drawbacks to FactoryGirl and share exasperation over the handling...
124: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
123: Too Many Parameters
13 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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. ...
122: Name That Smell
05 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
121: The Bike Log (Jerod Santo)
21 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Changelog's Jerod Santo joins the show to talk finding time for, sustaining, and funding open source development. Jerod Santo The Changelog Reque...
120: Free Apples
03 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We do some follow-up on open source fundraising and discuss some interesting patterns in Derek's new client project. Sean is back from leave Patroniz...
119: Questions Are For the Weak (Caleb Thompson & Matt Mongeau)
26 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sean and Derek are joined by Caleb Thompson and Matthew Mongeau for our annual live episode to discuss lessons learned from past projects, and speakin...
118: Nonsense In, Nonsense Out
18 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the economics of remote work, ActionDispatch::SystemTest in RSpec, and the use of Patreon on open source projects. Robin Sparkles ActiveRe...
117: S.A.L.T. (Justin Searls)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We chat with Justin Searls about testing, programmer personality types, programming communities, and putting spreadsheets on the Internet. Justin Sea...
116: A More "WALL-E" Future
28 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda is joined by SF thoughtbot developers Tony, Josh, & Greg to discuss learning new languages (and whether developers should do that in their ...
115: I Don't Need Another Google Hangout (Cecy Correa)
22 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We talk with Cecy Correa about how to hire and get hired. Cecy Correa Girl Develop It Austin on Rails Why We’ve Stopped Saying “Culture Fit” ...
114: Reasonably Thread Safe
16 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
113: Have You Considered Rust? (Matt Casper)
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Matt Casper about contributing to Diesel, Rust's ecosystem, and the next big thing. Matt Casper Matt’s Diesel’s Diesel contributions T...
112: Lifecycles Are Dead, Long Live Lifecycles!
01 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 &qu...
111: Trike Shed (Aaron Patterson)
25 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We talk with Aaron Patterson about Ruby and Rails upgrades, and the goal of making Ruby 3 three times faster than Ruby 2. Aaron Patterson DHH’s Rai...
110: Green Chips
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the deal with green potato chips? Also: RailsConf wrap up and an AST pass refactor for Diesel. Green Potato Chips Baby Ruby Stickers Justin ...
109: The Final Countdown
26 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Follow up about Service Objects and Computer Engineering. Plus, RailsConf prep, code slide woes, and modal pop-ups. Sandi Metz- Gilded Rose Kata Ben ...
108: Have You Tried Rebooting?
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Is your operating system hosed? That might be related to Rails! We also chat about the trend towards compiled languages. RailsConf Shirts- Please onl...
107: "Composition" Over Inheritance
14 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Single table inheritance, polymorphic associations, state machines and service objects, oh my! RailsConf Shirts- Please only order if you will be at ...
106: Nerd Sniping (Chris Toomey)
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Toomey joins to talk about Tell Me When It Closes, Haskell, and GraphQL. Chris Toomey - twitter, github Tell Me When It Closes RFactory Nerd Sn...
105: For Display Purposes Only
30 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Complexity vs Functionality, Validations vs Database Constraints, plus whatever a Cap'n Proto is. Second Quests in Zelda Games 5 Useful Tips For A Be...
104: It's Dangerous to Refactor Alone!
23 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Google's carrot-and-stick HTTPS policies and how playing The Legend of Zelda is like refactoring. Google Will Soon Shame All Websites That Are Unencr...
103: I Just Want to See Green Dots
16 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When a hash isn't a hash, GitHub as your Résumé, and porting Crates.io to Diesel. ActionController::Parameters should implement reverse_merge Expre...
102: To the Moon!
10 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Going "to" the moon, hidden type errors in our Rails apps, the process of talk prep, and the S3 outage. SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dra...
101: Hey, You Leaned!
28 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda and Sean discuss the evolving stages of open source projects, native apps vs web apps, and space. AppVeyor Electron Xamarin is the Microsoft-o...
100: Nouns You Can Verb
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Phippen helps us celebrate episode 100, as we discuss Diesel bugs, REST, RPC, and more. Diesel LEFT JOINS bug Google Spanner Information Schema S...
99: Just Sayin'
16 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We go into the weeds with MySQL and discuss the virtues of database migrations written in SQL. Big and little endian mysql_real_escape_string Should ...