Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Ben Orenstein is joined by Gary Berhardt from Destroy All Software Screencasts. Ben and Gary discuss DAS, how it has changed over the two years he's been doing it, and how his thinking has changed over that time. They then discuss Gary's thoughts on how to write software and tests, how we wants to "fix the kernel", and his exciting plans for the future. They also discuss his background, the produc...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Alex Godin from dispatch.io. Ben and Alex discuss Alex's hectic time in both apprentice.io and TechStars, how he got started at his age, what he's accomplished so far, what he worries about, when he is happiest, and his outlook on the future. apprentice.io TechStars NYC dispatch.io Seth Godin Follow @thoughtbot , @alex_godin , and @r00k on twitter.

Ben Orenstein is joined by Sarah Mei, RailsBridge co-founder, a developer at Pivotal Labs, and Diaspora core team member. In this episode, recorded at RubyConf 2012, Ben and Sarah discuss how communication patterns of your team manifest themselves in the code it writes, and how understanding those patterns can help you improve your code. They discuss RailsBridge, teaching, how teaching is an incre...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Tammer Saleh and Randall Thomas, the founders of Thunderbolt Labs. In this episode, recorded at RubyConf 2012, they discuss their philosophy of running and building the company, how they differ from other consulting companies, and how they do much more than just Rails programming and how its leading to very interesting new kinds of work. Why they list their prices right...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Bryan Helmkamp, founder of Code Climate, hosted software metrics for Ruby apps. In this episode, recorded at RubyConf 2012, they discuss what code climate is, how Bryan considers it a small business not a startup, and what its like being a solo founder. They also discuss how code metrics can help you write and maintain better software, how it helps, and how it changes be...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Jim Gay, author of Clean Ruby, and Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot, in the episode recorded at RubyConf 2012. Ben, Joe, and Jim discuss Data, Context and Interaction (DCI), what it is, whether it is at odds with Object-Oriented Programming, how it can be applied to your applications, and much more. Clean Ruby DCI DTO Radiant CMS Writing Effective Use Cases Follow @thoughtb...

In this special episode from RubyConf 2012 we pulled aside some of the attendees and found out what they're working on. We also include a selection of the great lightning talks at the conference. Enjoy! Rob Mack from Spiceworks Dr. Nic Williams from Engine Yard talks about BOSH Ray Hightower from WisdomGroup , WindyCityRails , and ChicagoRuby Noel Rapin from Groupon John Foley and Nick Howard talk...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Aaron Patterson, Ruby Core team member, Rails Core team member, and a Señior Software Engineer at AT&T Interactive. Aaron and Ben discuss the upcoming features and excitement for Ruby 2.0 and some things Aaron would like to see in Ruby in the future that didn't quite make it into Ruby 2.0. They also discuss how the Rails Core team differs from the Ruby Core team, how...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Brennan Dunn, author of double your freelancing rate and planscope.io. Ben and Brennan discuss transitioning from a freelancer to a consulting company, the issues he faced doing it, and how he overcame them. How he promoted someone to replace him in his consulting company and is focused exclusively on products now, where Planscope came from, how it works, and how he more...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Kyle Fiedler, a designer at thoughtbot, and one of the creators of Bourbon Neat. Ben and Kyle discuss responsive design, what it is, and how to implement it. They also discuss Bourbon (a library of Sass mixins) and Neat (a fluid grid framework based on Bourbon), what's wrong with Twitter Bootstrap and why Bourbon Neat is better, and the other reasons why Bourbon Neat was...

Ben Orenstein is joined by William Josephson and Jay Moorthi from Solano Labs, the makers of tddium, the hosted, scalable continuous integration service. They discuss the architecture of the service, including how they're using Go to speed up parts of it, the surprises they've had in getting started, how they've gotten involved in the Ruby community, and how they validated their idea and get feedb...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Seth Priebatsch, creator of SCVNGR and LevelUp. Ben and Seth talk about LevelUp, how it got started, how they make money, and what the future holds. They also discuss his daily schedule, maintaining focus, what he worries about, how your motives can limit your success, how to change the world by choosing the right thing to change, why he stopped hiding doubt and started...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Prem Sichanugrist, a developer at thoughtbot and the #31 top Rails contributor. Ben and Prem walk through the major changes that will be introduced in Rails 4, including strong parameters, the new built in queue, cache_digest, changes in ActiveRecord::Relation, and ActiveResource. The also discuss what people can do to ease contribution and issue submission to Rails, how...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot, and Josh Clayton, developer at thoughtbot and the lead maintainer of FactoryGirl. In this Rails focused episode, Ben, Joe, and Josh dish on ActiveRecord callbacks, observers, state machines, and before_filters vs. middleware. They discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of each, and how to keep your app clean while doing the right thing. Th...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Matt Jankowski, COO of thoughtbot. Ben and Matt start off by talking about how Matt came to join thoughtbot and his role at the company. They then discuss the typical thoughtbot sales process. How all problems are communication problems. How the way thoughtbot works is appealing to startups and how they hear about thoughtbot. How thoughtbot handles its 20% investment tim...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Sean Cribbs, Software Engineer at Basho, the makers of Riak. Ben and Sean start off discussing the interesting overlap of programmers and musicians and why it seems to happen so much. They then discuss Sean's role at Basho, what Riak is, how it works, and how it differs from other NoSQL databases. Sean works remotely for Basho, which has several offices, so Ben and Sean...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Joe Ferris and Mike Burns. They start off with some recommendations for awesome programming books and then dive right in to questions about not following "Tell don't ask" in the view, how MVC and the Single Responsibility Principle may be at odds with "Tell don't ask" in the view, and what a more object oriented approach may look like. They also discuss "Class-oriented p...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Chad Pytel, the CEO and Founder of thoughtbot. Ben and Chad talk about the history of thoughtbot, success, failures, lessons learned, the current growth plans for the company, and much more. They also answer listener questions about hiring, growing, balancing client and internal work like open source and products, and contractor rates and how to set them. Stand-up meetin...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Gabe Berke-Williams and Edward Loveall. Gabe is developer at thoughtbot and the product manager of the thoughtbot apprenticeship program, apprentice.io. Edward is a current design apprentice. Gabe, Edward, and Ben talk about apprentice.io, how it works, it's successes, and lessons learned. They also discuss how Gabe goes about mentoring new developers, and effective lear...

Ben Orenstein is once again joined by Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot. Joe and Ben dive right in to a technical discussion about Objects versus Structures. They then discuss what Joe does as the new CTO of thoughtbot, and how his goal is to set up a system where everybody is teaching everybody. Finally, they discuss why Joe doesn't like using rspec's let and subject, and his strategy for writing tes...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Dan Powell, founder of Abakas. Dan plays the role of Consulting CTO for his clients. They discuss the best and the worst of his job, his history as a Linux hacker, and what his experience has taught him about technology and technology trends, and how he stays on top of them. Also, how to create effective, well-written, maintainable software, the Rails talent crunch, deve...

Ben Orenstein is joined by “Cowboy” Ben Alman, JavaScript open source developer and Director of Pluginization at Bocoup. They discuss how Ben Alman got started with programming and his crazy projects, the open web, favorite tools, and one of his latest projects, Grunt. They also discuss CoffeeScript, and why Ben Alman’s not using it yet, speaking at conferences and how Ben Alman got more comfortab...

Ben Orenstein is joined by David Thyresson, the founder of Stattleship and a past client of thoughtbot. Ben and David discuss how he got started with Stattleship, how he came to work with thoughtbot, and what it was like to work with us. Also, how the idea of what he would initially build changed, and how through agile software development he discovered how it was wrong. How he learned Ruby on Rai...

Ben Orenstein is joined by Josh Clayton, the maintainer of FactoryGirl, and a developer at thoughtbot. Ben and Josh discuss FactoryGirl: using it, its development progress, and features. What it's like to run an open source project, and how to contribute to open source effectively. Looking at your old code and being a better developer. Approaches to testing. And answer your questions about: Factor...

Ben Orenstein is joined this week by Phil LaPier, the creator of Bourbon and a designer at thoughtbot. Ben and Phil discuss the design process, fundamentals of visual design, common design errors, and how to be a better designer (even if you're a developer), and how to work with designers as a developer. They also answer some audience questions about design: How to handle feedback from clients, an...