Chunky Bacon! Let's Geek Out About Early Ruby & Rails.

The guys chat about the early days of Ruby and Rails and discuss how the developer community has changed from a more individual hacking pursuit to more of a team sport. Ben also talks about his experiences at the very first RailsConf and teaches young whippersnappers about Why The Lucky Stiff, Shoes, Caboose, and Chunky Bacon. Lastly, is BadgerConf morphing from running joke to a reality? Tune in and find out!

Full Transcript:
Ben: 00:00 All right.

Starr: 00:01 All right, are we good?

Ben: 00:02 Yep.

Josh: 00:03 Yeah, I'm already up to one megabyte.

Ben: 00:05 We are so good.

Starr: 00:06 Dang. Okay maybe we might have to back up for maximum quality, I don't know.

Ben: 00:10 We'll see how it goes.

Announcer: 00:11 They've been in business for seven years, and they still don't know what they're doing. I guess a podcast seemed natural. Here's FounderQuest.

Josh: 00:23 It should be. I've got terabyte in here, so hopefully we'll...

Ben: 00:26 Yeah. Now you're glad you bought the big disk.

Josh: 00:30 Yeah so I can podcast for an hour without crashing my computer.

Starr: 00:34 Oh that's awesome. So I have been up since four o'clock. Ida woke up at four and decided she wasn't sleeping anymore...

Ben: 00:42 Ouch.

Starr: 00:42 ...so I may lean a bit on your guys for things like making sense.

Ben: 00:46 I've been up since 1:30 because...

Josh: 00:48 No, Come on Ben.

Josh: 00:48 Oh damn, Ben, you always have to one up me.

Starr: 00:54 Alright, so, you guys recently went to RailsConf. You came back, thankfully. You weren't lured away by all those, I don't know...

Starr: 01:07 This is what I mean when I say I'm tired.

Starr: 01:10 Yeah, so you guys went to RailsConf and...

Josh: 01:13 We did get distracted by elixir along the way and...

Ben: 01:16 Today's gonna be the punch drunk podcast.

Starr: 01:19 Yes, yes it is, oh man. You guys recently came back from RailsConf, I was here in my little home office, not at RailsConf, editing the show all on my lonesome. I'm feeling pretty lonely and wistful, and now you guys are back and I'm so happy.

Ben: 01:36 You know what the best thing about RailsConf was? You didn't have to step outside to go to it. Because of all the sky bridges there, we stayed in the conference hotel, which was three blocks away from the conference center. But yet we walked through a sky bridge all the way there. So handy.

Josh: 01:53 This was in Minneapolis right?

Starr: 01:56 You know, I think that's a theme, I don't think I've been outside at any of the RailsConfs I've gone to.

Ben: 02:01 Really?

Starr: 02:03 No, even Atlanta, didn't go outside, tried to walk someplace for lunch, let me tell you, you don't walk places for lunch in Atlanta. You get in your Escalade.

Ben: 02:16 I did a lot of walking around outside in Kansas City.

Starr: 02:17 So how many RailsConfs have you guys been to?

Ben: 02:21 Oh wow.

Starr: 02:22 I've been to, I think, three or four.

Josh: 02:25 I think I've been to, two.

Starr: 02:26 I've spoken at two.

Josh: 02:27 Because I didn't go to RailsConf for a really long time because I went to RubyConf every year.

Starr: 02:33 Yeah.

Josh: 02:33 And I just never got to RailsConf until, I think Phoenix was my first year at RailsConf.

Starr: 02:40 Was it because you were trying to be one of those hipsters that who's like "I don't do Rails, I'm a Rubyist."

Josh: 02:44 Yeah, I don't do Rails, just tell me about garbage collection, okay.

Ben: 02:49 I think I've been to about eight of them.

Starr: 02:50 You went to the first one right?

Ben: 02:52 Yeah, well there's actually two first ones.

Starr: 02:55 Well that's confusing.

Ben: 02:56 Yeah, funny story. So the first official RailsConf was Chicago, but the first international RailsConf happened before the first official RailsConf. And the first international RailsConf happened in Vancouver, Canada.

Josh: &nbs...