The Bike Shed

Steph is joined by a very special guest and fellow thoughtbotter, Rob Whittaker. Rob shares how he became the Software Development Director for Launchpad II, thoughtbot's Europe, Middle East, and Africa team. They also dive into what it's like to be a Development Director, the differences between mentoring and coaching, working with GitHub Codespaces, and strategies for boosting your creativity and problem solving capabilities. thoughtbot is hiring! (https://thoughtbot.com/jobs) ngrok (https://ngrok.com/) Time Off Book (https://www.timeoffbook.com/) Rob's Codespace Setup (https://github.com/purinkle/codespace) Rob Whittaker on Twitter (https://twitter.com/purinkle) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: STEPH: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. And today, I'm joined by a very special guest and fellow thoughtboter, Rob Whittaker. Rob has been in

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 Google I/O where Chrome devs talked about a new feature called Page Transitions. He's also been working with a tool called Customer.io, an omnichannel communication whiz-bang adventure! Page transitions Overview (https://youtu.be/JCJUPJ_zDQ4) Using yield_self for composable ActiveRecord relations (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/using-yieldself-for-composable-activerecord-relations) A Case for Query Objects in Rails (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/a-case-for-query-objects-in-rails) Customer.io (https://customer.io/) Turning the database inside-out with Apache Samza | Confluent (https://www.confluent.io/blog/turning-the-database-inside-out-with-apache-samza/) Datomic (https://www.datomic.com/) About CRDTs • Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (https://crdt.tech/) Apache Kafka (https://kafka.apache.org/) Resilient Management | A book for new managers in tech (https://resil

Chris switched from Trello over to Linear for product management and talks about prioritizing backlogs. Steph shares and discusses a tweet from Curtis Einsmann that super resonated with the work she's doing right now: "In software engineering, rabbit holes are inevitable. You will research libraries and not use them. You'll write code just to delete it. This isn't a waste; sometimes, you need to go down a few wrong paths to get to the right one." This episode is brought to you by BuildPulse (https://buildpulse.io/bikeshed). Start your 14-day free trial of BuildPulse today. Linear (https://linear.app/) Curtis Einsmann Tweet (https://twitter.com/curtiseinsmann/status/1521451508943843329) Louie Bacaj Tweet (https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1478241322637033474?s=20) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: AD: Flaky tests take the joy out of programming. You push up some code, wait for the tests to run, and the build fails because of a test that has nothing to do with y

We've got a tricycle anniversary!

Chris came up with a mnemonic device: Fn-Delete – for when he really wants to delete something and is also thinking about password complexity requirements, which leads to an exciting discussion around security theater. Steph talks about the upcoming RailsConf and the not-in-person option for virtual attendees. She also gives a shoutout to the Ruby Weekly newsletter for being awesome. NIST Password Standards (https://specopssoft.com/blog/nist-password-standards/) 3 ActiveRecord Mistakes That Slow Down Rails Apps: Count, Where and Present (https://www.speedshop.co/2019/01/10/three-activerecord-mistakes.html) Difference between count, length and size in an association with ActiveRecord (https://bhserna.com/count-size-length-active-record.html) Ruby Weekly (https://rubyweekly.com/) Railsconf 2022 (https://railsconf.org/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: STEPH: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot

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 about hybrid teams (remote/in-person) and masked inputs. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Preemptive Pluralization is (Probably) Not Evil (https://www.swyx.io/preemptive-pluralization) iMask (https://imask.js.org/) Mitch Hedberg - Escalator Joke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHopAo_Ohy0) This episode is brought to you by Studio 3T (https://studio3t.com/free). Try Studio 3T's full suite of features for 30 days, no payment details needed. Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: STEPH: I am recording in a new room because we're in Pennsylvania, and so I'm recording at this little vanity desk which is something. [laughs] But there's a mirror right in front of me, so

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 naming things, a more technical topic that he talks about is the Crispy Brussels Snack Hour. Steph talks about Rescue Rails projects and increasing developer acceleration. They answer a listener question asking, "Why do so many developers and agencies, thoughtbot included, replace the default test suite in Rails with RSpec?" This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Translate frustrations into professional corporate (https://twitter.com/MeanestTA/status/1509936432625897474) Learn Hotwire by Building a Forum (https://twitter.com/afomera/status/1512287468078264322) parallel_tests (https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests) parallelsplittest (https://github.com/grosser/parallel_split_test) This episode is brought to

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 touches on TypeScript design decisions and edge cases. Then they answer a question captured from a client Slack channel regarding a debate about whether I18n should be used in tests and whether tests should break when localized text changes. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Emma Bostian (https://twitter.com/EmmaBostian) Ladybug Podcast (https://www.ladybug.dev/) Gerrit (https://www.gerritcodereview.com/) Gregg Tobo the Magician (https://astonishingproductions.com/) Sean Wang - swyx - better twitter search (https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1328086859356913664) Twemex (https://twemex.app/) GitHub Pull Request File Tree Beta (https://github.blog/changelog/2022-03-16-pull-request-file-tree-beta/) Sam Zimmerman -

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 question regarding having some fear around potential merge conflicts. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Deckset (https://www.deckset.com/) parallel_tests (https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests) paralleltests - important line that may alter the `groupby` strategy (https://github.com/grosser/parallel_tests/blob/9bc92338e2668ca4c2df81ba79a38759fcee2300/lib/parallel_tests/cli.rb#L305) KnapsackPro (https://knapsackpro.com/) rspec-queue (https://github.com/conversation/rspec-queue) Vim Conflicted Overview (https://github.com/christoomey/vim-conflicted#overview) Mastering Git Course on Upcase (https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/mastering-git) Git Object Model (https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/videos/git-object-model)

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 TeamCity. She also shares a minor update regarding the work that thoughtbot is doing to scale horizontally and add more machines quickly and efficiently to process more RSpec tests. Chris was alarmed by logs and unknown-unknowns and had some fun using Git down. Git bless his heart! This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. TeamCity (https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/) lograge (https://github.com/roidrage/lograge) Cleaning up local git branches deleted on a remote (https://www.erikschierboom.com/2020/02/17/cleaning-up-local-git-branches-deleted-on-a-remote/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podca

BIG NEWS! Steph's expecting a baby boy!

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 rectifying potentially missing and/or confusing existing documentation. He also has a gripe, and that is accounts. Handling too many accounts. Additionally, he talks about triaging an error and how it was tough initially to understand if something was actually broken. And then it was even harder to understand what was broken. So he paired through it and used the power of putting two heads together. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot

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, one for iOS and one for Android, and is considering pursuing having them be all native. Good idea? Terrible idea? Chris and Steph riff on that a bit. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Services down? New Relic (https://newrelic.com/bikeshed) offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform. GitHub - alassek/activerecord-pg_enum (https://github.com/alassek/activerecord-pg_enum): Integrate PostgreSQL's enumerated types with t

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. Together they answer a listener question who asked for advice on crafting project estimates for clients. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Services down? New Relic (https://newrelic.com/bikeshed) offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform. Newton (https://newtonhq.com/) Subscribe to Email Newsletters in Feedbin (https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsletters-in-feedbin/) GitHub - Shopify/packwerk (htt

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 in tests instead. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Services down? New Relic (https://newrelic.com/bikeshed) offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform. GitHub - asdf-vm/asdf: Extendable version manager with support for Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang & more (https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf) Factories Should be the Bare Minimum (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/factories-should-be-the-bare-minimum) Mystery Guest (https://tho

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 (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Services down? New Relic (https://newrelic.com/bikeshed) offers full stack visibility with 16 different monitoring products in a single platform. ClickHouse (https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse) Timescale (https://www.timescale.com/) InfluxDB (https://www.influxdata.com/) ddl-partitioning (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-partitioning.html) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: STEPH: I just feel like every time I listen to Celine Dion, there are lots of

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 discuss potential ways Chris could gain back a little bit of coding time at work. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Moom (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12) OmniFocus (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/omnifocus-3/id1346190318) Is It Worth the Time? (https://xkcd.com/1205/) Knapsack Pro (https://knapsackpro.com/) Shopify Monolith (https://shopify.engineering/shopify-monolith) Sacrificial Test Classes (https://blog.bitwrangler.com/2016/11/10/sacrific

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. How do you, dear Listener, keep track of all your stuff in the world? This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Upcase advanced Active Record (https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/advanced-activerecord-querying) Svelte Radio (https://www.svelteradio.com/episodes/chris-toomey-talks-svelte-rails-and-banking) Things (https://culturedcode.com/things/) Todoist (https://todoist.com/) MeetingBar (https://meetingbar.onrender.com/) SavvyCal (https://savvycal.com/) Become a Sponsor (https

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 coming weeks. Since they aren't really big on New Year's Eve resolutions, Steph and Chris answer a listener question regarding toxic traits inspired by the listener question related to large pull requests and reflect on their own. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (http://www.matthaig.com/books/midnight-library/) Tim Urban on Twitter (https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1367871165319049221) How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (http:/

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 working with his team to remedy that. This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Mike Burns: How to Skim a Pull Request (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/a-smelly-list) RSpec Documentation (https://rspec.info/documentation/) Don't Let the Internet Dupe You, Event Sourcing is Hard (https://chriskiehl.com/article/event-sourcing-is-hard) Datomic (https://www.datomic.com/) timefora_boolean (https://github.com/calebhearth/time_for_a_boolean) Sentry (https://sentry.io/) Become a Spo