The Bike Shed

BIG NEWS! Steph's expecting a baby boy! 🍼🎉 Aaaand unfortunately, the rest of the show isn't nearly as exciting. Chris talks about admin pagination using Pagy, and Steph wants to delete some code and is nervous that she's going to break something. They answer a listener question from Slash, who asks, "What are the first keyboard shortcuts you teach junior devs?" This episode is brought to you by...

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 with her team and appreciated their process. She's also looking into tooling around spinning up more machines to process more RSpec tests. Chris had a developer start their new job at Sagewell and highlights how they involved the new person in rectif...

Chris is helping with efforts to introduce security, practices, and policies at Sagewell. Right now, they are refining the usage of 1Password to standardize passwords and secure information. He also shares (what he believes) is a terrible idea around fixing inconsistencies around symbols and strings. Steph shares an update around factories. Also, at Sagewell, Chris is helping to build mobile apps,...

Steph joins Chris in trying new things! For her, it's a new email client – the Newton email client – because she really wants to love her inbox. She also talks about implementing a suggestion from Chris on improving CI speed. Chris continues his search for the perfect to-do list app. (It's not going great.) But he has made hiring progress and is excited to move on to the next step: onboarding. Tog...

Chris is making hiring progress and loves asdf and M1 laptops. Steph is anticipating the arrival of one dongle to rule them all and talks about moving away from having a lot of Bluetooth connections. Two other big things on Steph's mind are education around factories because they're v important and shared examples and how they can be overused. She and Chris agree that it is better to tell stories...

Steph is super excited about changing her schedule to dedicate a full day to focus on being a great team lead. Chris talks about his continued adventures in the world of hiring. Together they answer a listener question about what they consider a “large” table in a database and how they review schema changes. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM . Give Scout a try for free today and Scout wil...

Chris updates us on his new window manager of choice, Moom, and tells us what's good with it. He's also giving yet another task manager a go: OmniFocus. (Sorry Things.) Steph talks about defining test classes in RSpec and readdresses flaky tests to improve CI build time. Chris is worried about productivity. He's still not coding as much as he'd like to be. Steph lends an ear, and together, they di...

Steph talks about winter storms and thoughts on name pronunciation features. Chris talks about writing a query to add a new display of data in an admin panel and making a guest appearance on the Svelte Radio Podcast. Finally, Chris decided that his productivity to-do list system was failing him. So he's on the search now for something new. He asks Steph what she uses and if she's happy with it. Ho...

Happy New Year (for real)! Chris and Steph both took some end-of-year time off to rest and recharge. Steph talks about some books she enjoyed, recipes she tried, and trail-walking adventures with her dog, Utah. Chris' company is now in a good position to actually start hiring within the engineering team. He's excited about that and will probably delve into more around the hiring process in the com...

Steph tells a cute story about escape artist huskies, and on a technical note, shares a journey in regards to class variables and modules inheritance. Chris talks about how he's starting to pursue analytics and one of the things that he's struggling with that he's always historically struggled with is the idea of historical data. He's also noticed a lack of formalization of certain things and is w...

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 Creating observable systems Debugging Working in seasons Don't forget the fun “The longer I’m in the software game, the more I want things to be calm” - Steph Chris: Pushing logic back to the server Svelte Remote work (but maybe hybrid!) Vim Joining a...

Steph started a new project and shares details about the new tools she's using, including working on a remote dev environment. Chris shares a journey with Lograge and Rails flash messages as he strives to capture user-facing errors. They also discuss "silencing" flaky tests, using Graphviz to visualize data dependencies, and porting Devise views to use Inertia and Svelte. It's also interesting how...

Fellow thoughtboter Edward Loveall joins Steph to cohost and talk about alternative frontends and his own that he created: scribe.rip: an alternative frontend to Medium, learning about what it's like to be a manager/non-IC, and helps answer a listener question re: how do you think about empathy in your work? This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM . Give Scout a try for free today and Scout wil...

Steph gives an update about RSpec focus and how she often forgets to remove the focus feature from tests. She figured out two solutions: one using Rubocop, and the other from a Twitter user, suggesting using a GitHub gist. She also suggests that if you're one of those people who misses being in an office environment, you check out soundofcolleagues.com for ambient office noise selection. Chris has...

Chris finally got his new computer! 🎉 🎉 🎉 He gives his initial review. He's also super excited that GitHub announced a beta for pull requests merge queue, and even more excited that multiple people who listen to this show very kindly pointed that out to him on Twitter! Steph discovered something that is quite niche, but she's excited to tinker with it more, called CookLang. It's a markup langua...

Steph talks about starting a new project and identifying "focused" tests while Chris shares his latest strategy for managing flaky tests. They also ponder the squishy "it depends" side of software and respond to a listener question about testing all commits in a pull request. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM . Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source pr...

Chris regains several of his developer merit badges and embarks on a perilous CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) adventure. Steph shares highlights from Plucky, a management training course, including ways we can "click" and "break apart" from our current role, and how to have hard conversations. They also discuss how software development processes change at different team sizes, processes that bre...

Steph talks about binging a few Things Worth Learning podcast episodes and particularly enjoyed an episode that featured one of thoughtbot's design directors, Sameera Kapila. Sam shared her expertise about management and inclusion, and Steph shares her favorite parts. Chris shares the story of a surprising error and the resulting journey through database transactions and Sidekiq that eventually re...

Chris evaluates the pros and cons between using Sidekiq or Active Job with Sidekiq. He sees exceptions everywhere. Steph talks about an SSL error that she encountered recently. It's officially spooky season, y'all! sidekiq-symbols Transcript: CHRIS: Additional radiation just makes Spider-Man more powerful. STEPH: [laughs] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from...

Longtime listener and friend of the show, Gio Lodi, released a book y'all should check out and Chris and Steph ruminate on a listener question about tension around marketing in open-source. Say No To More Process, Say Yes To Trust by German Velasco Test-Driven Development in Swift with SwiftUI and Combine by Gio Lodi Transcript: CHRIS: Our golden roads. STEPH: All right. I am also golden. CHRIS: [...

Chris talks feature flags featuring Flipper (Say that 3x fast!), and Steph talks reducing stress by a) having a work shutdown ritual and b) the fact that thoughtbot is experimenting with half-day Fridays. (Fri-yay?) Flipper Drastically Reduce Stress with a Work Shutdown Ritual Iceland's Journey to a Short Working Week Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle Transcript: STEPH: Hey, do you...

Steph talks about a new GitHub feature and Twitter account ( @RubyCards ) she's really excited about and Chris talks about his new job as a CTO of a startup and shifting away from writing code regularly. GitHub RubyCards Resilient Management The Manager's Path Transcript: CHRIS: Oh God, my computer is so stupid slow. I need a new computer. STEPH: Come on, little computer, you can do it. You know y...

You know what really grinds Chris' gears? (Spoiler Alert: It's Single-Page Applications.) Steph needs some consulting help. So much to do, so little time. Sarah Drasner tweet about shared element transitions Article about Page Transitions API Svelte Crossfade layout demo Svelte Crossfade tutorial page (Note - click "Show Me" on the bottom left) Transcript: CHRIS: I have restarted my recording, and...

On this episode, Chris talks about testing external services and dissects a tweet on refinements for Result. Steph talks about thoughbot's recent improvement to their feature flag system. Links: refinements For Result Faking External Services in Tests with Adapters by German Velasco Testing Interaction with 3rd-party APIs Transcript: CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a...

In this episode, Steph and Chris talk about things they've changed their minds about over the course of their careers as software developers. Steph talks about as it turns out, arm chair rests are good, feature flags and comments are also good, she's changed her mind about how teams structure the work that each person is doing at once, and believes strongly in representation in the field. Chris is...