The Bike Shed

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On The Bike Shed, hosts Joël Quenneville and Stephanie Minn discuss development experiences and challenges at thoughtbot with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and whatever else is drawing their attention, admiration, or ire this week.

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Top 10 The Bike Shed Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Bike Shed episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Bike Shed for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Bike Shed episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

304: MEGA Crossover Episode (The Bike Shed x Rails with Jason x Remote Ruby x Ruby on Rails Podcast)

The Bike Shed

08/11/21 • 34 min

This is the sweeps week episode, the epic crossover episode, the mega episode! We have a very special episode as Chris, and Steph teamed up with the hosts of three other podcasts to bring you one giant, mega Ruby episode!

In this episode, you'll hear from the hosts of Remote Ruby, Rails with Jason, and Brittany Martin, the host of the Ruby on Rails podcast. They cover the origins of their shows, their experiences as hosts, and why podcasting is so important in keeping the Ruby community thriving.

*Transcript: *

STEPH: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. This week we have a very special episode as Chris, and I teamed up with the hosts of three other podcasts to bring you one giant, mega Ruby episode! In this episode, you'll hear from the hosts of Remote Ruby, Rails with Jason, and Brittany Martin, the host of the Ruby on Rails podcast. This episode was so much fun to record, and we have Brittany Martin to thank as she organized and moderated this special event. So without further ado, here is the mega Ruby episode.

BRITTANY: Welcome, everyone. We have a whopping seven podcast hosts recording today. So, listeners, you are in for a treat. This is the sweeps week episode, the epic crossover episode, the mega episode. We're going to need our editor to insert some epic sound effects right here.

Announcer: The mega episode.

BRITTANY: So let's go ahead and introduce the crew today. I am Brittany Martin from the Ruby on Rails Podcast.

CHRIS OLIVER: I'm Chris Oliver from Remote Ruby.

JASON CHARNES: I am Jason Charnes, also from Remote Ruby.

ANDREW: I am Andrew Mason, also from Remote Ruby.

STEPH: And I'm Stephanie Viccari from The Bike Shed.

CHRIS TOOMEY: I'm Chris Toomey from The Bike Shed.

JASON SWETT: And I'm Jason Swett from Rails with Jason

BRITTANY: Today, we're going to cover the origins of our shows, our experiences as hosts, and why podcasting is so important in keeping the Ruby community thriving. Now I know personally, I really enjoy the origin story behind Remote Ruby. So, Chris Oliver, could you kick us off with that?

CHRIS OLIVER: Yeah, we can go back maybe to the first time that Jason and I met, which was Jason emailed me out of the blue and was like, "Hey, are you going to be at RailsConf?" And I wasn't planning on it, but it was over in Kansas City, like four hours away from me. I was like, "No, I'm not going, but I'll meet you." So we went and drove over there and met and have been friends ever since. And Jason had the idea of doing an online meetup. And I'll let him explain where that started and turned into the Remote Ruby Podcast.

JASON CHARNES: I thought it would be a good idea. There weren't any online meetups. This was pre even the idea of shutting down the world for a pandemic. And maybe I was just too soon because I got Chris to speak at the first one, and we had 40, 50 people. I spoke at the next one, and there were 20. And by the third one, there were five of us. So it wasn't really a super sustainable thing for me to do. So Chris and I got together and said, "What if we tried podcasting?" Chris, you hadn't really done your own podcast at that point, had you?

CHRIS OLIVER: No, I don't think so. And you and I were just having calls every week or whatever just to hang out and chat. And we were like, why don't we just record that and publish that as a podcast? And here we are.

JASON CHARNES: Yeah. So we've been doing that. I think we started in 2018, so yeah, three years in June, and somehow people still keep listening to us talk but probably because we brought along our friend, Andrew.

ANDREW: Wow. Okay. No, that's not true. But yes, I was a guest on Remote Ruby before I joined as a host. And not to get into the details, but I was on another podcast, and something went down, and I no longer was on that podcast anymore. And Chris and Jason were like, "Do you want to come hang out with us?" And I was like, [chuckles] "Absolutely." So I started doing that, and at the same time, I also started The Ruby Blend with Nate Hopkins and Ron Cooke. And so we were doing that for a while until that had to tragically shut down. But I'm still here with Jason and Chris. I guess I should also mention that Jason Swett gave me my start in podcasting a month or two after I started full-time as a Rails developer on a now archived show called The Ruby Testing Podcast.

BRITTANY: Which is the perfect segue because Jason Swett was also my first opportunity to guest on ...

392: Managing Changing Business Requirements

The Bike Shed

07/11/23 • 39 min

Joël has a fascinating discovery! He learned a new nuance around working with dependency graphs. Stephanie just finished playing a 100-hour video game on Nintendo Switch: a Japanese role-playing game called Octopath Traveler II. On the work front, she is struggling with a lot of churn in acceptance criteria and ideas about how features should work.

How do these get documented?
What happens when they change?
What happens when people lose this context over time?

Transcript:

JOËL: You're the one who controls the pacing here.

STEPHANIE: Oh, I am. Okay, great.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn.

JOËL: And I'm Joël Quenneville. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.

STEPHANIE: So, Joël, what's new in your world?

JOËL: So long-time Bike Shed listeners will know that I'm a huge fan of dependency graphs for modeling all sorts of problems and particularly when trying to figure out how to work in an iterative fashion where you can do a bunch of small chunks of work that are independent, that can be shipped one at a time without having your software be in a breaking state in all of these intermediate steps. And I recently made a really exciting discovery, or I learned a new nuance around working with dependency graphs.

So the idea is that if you have a series of entities that have dependencies on each other, so maybe you're trying to build, let's say, some kind of object model or maybe a series of database tables that will reference each other, that kind of thing, if you draw a dependency graph where each bubble on your graph points to other bubbles that it depends on, that means that it can't be created without those other things already existing. Then, in order to create all of those entities for the first time, let's say they're database tables, you need to work your way from kind of the outside in.

You start with any bubbles on your graph that have no arrows going out from them. That means they have no dependencies. They can be safely built on their own, and then you kind of work your way backwards up the arrows. And that's how I've sort of thought about working with dependency graphs for a long time.

Recently, I've been doing some work that involves deleting entities in such a graph. So, again, let's say we're talking about database tables. What I came to realize is that deleting works in the opposite order. So, if you have a table that have other tables that depend on it, but it doesn't depend on anything, that's the first one you want to create. But it's also the last one you want to delete. So, when you're deleting, you want to start with the table that maybe has dependencies on other tables, but no other tables depend on it. It is going to be kind of like the root node of your dependency graph.

So I guess the short guideline here is when you're creating, work from the bottom up or work from the leaves inward, and when you're deleting, work from the top-down or work from the root outward or roots because a graph can have multiple roots; it's not a tree.

STEPHANIE: That is interesting. I'm wondering, did you have a mental model for managing deleting of dependencies prior?

JOËL: No. I've always worked with creating new things. And I went into this task thinking that deleting would be just like creating and then was like, wait a minute, that doesn't work. And then, you know, a few cycles later, realized, oh, wait, deleting is the opposite of creating when you're navigating the graph. And, all of a sudden, I feel like I've got a much clearer mental model or just another way of thinking about how to work with something like this.

STEPHANIE: Cool. That actually got me thinking about a case where you might have a circular dependency. Is that something you've considered yet?

JOËL: Yes. So, when you have a dependency graph, and you've got a circular dependency, that's a big problem because...so, in the creating model, there is no leaf node, if you will, because they both reference each other. So that means that each of these entities cannot be created on its own, the entire cycle. And maybe you've got only two, but maybe your cycle is, you know, ten entities big. The entire cycle is going to be shipped as one massive change.

So something that I often try to do is if I draw a dependency graph out and notice, wait a minute, I do have...

426: Bringing "Our Selves" to Work

The Bike Shed

05/14/24 • 33 min

Joël shares his preparations for his RailsConf talk, which is D&D-themed and centered around a gnome character named Glittersense. Stephanie expresses her delight in creating pod-related puns within thoughtbot's internal team structure, like "cross-podination" for inter-pod meetings and the adorable observation that her pod resembles "three peas in a pod" when using the git co-authored-by feature.

Together, Stephanie and Joël discuss bringing one's authentic self to work, balancing personal disclosure with professional boundaries, and fostering psychological safety. They highlight the value of shared interests and personal anecdotes in enhancing team cohesion, especially remotely, and stress the importance of an inclusive culture that respects individual preferences and boundaries.

Transcript:

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STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn.

JOËL: And I'm Joël Quenneville. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.

STEPHANIE: So, Joël, what's new in your world?

JOËL: So, at the time of this recording, we're recording this the week before RailsConf. I've been working on some of the visuals for my RailsConf talk and leaning on AI to generate some of these. So, my talk is D&D-themed, and it's very narrative-based. We follow the adventures of this gnome named Glittersense throughout the talk as we learn about how to use Turbo to build a D&D character sheet. And so, I wanted the AI to generate images for me.

And the problem I've had with a lot of AI-generated images is that you're like, okay, I need a gnome, you know, in a fight doing this, doing that. But then, like, every time, you get, like, totally different images. You're like, "Oh, I need an image where it's this," but then, like, the character is different in all the scenes, and there's no consistency. So, I've been leaning a little bit more into the memory aspect of ChatGPT, where you can sort of tell it, "Look, these are the things. Now, whenever I refer to Glittersense, whenever you draw an image, do it with these characteristics that we've established what the character looks like."

Sometimes I'll have, like, a text conversation kind of, like, setting up the physical characteristics. And then, it's like, okay, now every time you draw him, draw him like this, or now every time you draw him, draw him with this particular piece of equipment that we've created. And so, leaning into that memory has allowed me to create a series of images that feel a little bit more consistent in a way that's been really interesting.

STEPHANIE: Cool. Yeah, that makes sense because you are telling a story, right? And you need it to have a through line and the imagery be matching as you progress in your presentation. I actually don't know a lot about how that memory works. Does it persist across sessions? Do you have to do it all in one [laughs] go, or how does that work?

JOËL: So, there's, like, a persistent chat. So, you can start sort of multiple conversations, but each conversation is its own thread with its own memory. And it will sort of keep track of certain things. And sometimes I'll even say, "Hey..." instead of, like, prompting it for something to get a response, you could prompt it to add things to its memory. So say like, "From now on, when I ask you these types of questions, I want you to respond in this way," or, "From now on, when I ask you to generate an image, I want it done in this format." So, for example, RailsConf requires all of their slides to be 16 by 9. If I want, like, a kind of cover image or, like, something full-screen, I need an image that is 16 by 9. So, one of the things I prompt the AI with is just, "From now on, whenever you generate an image, give me an image in 16:9 aspect ratio."

STEPHANIE: Cool. I also was intrigued by your gnome's name, Glittersense. And I was wondering what the story behind that character is.

JOËL: The story behind the name is that I was playing D&D with a friend who was this very kind of eclectic Dragonborn character. And I did some sort of valiant deed and got the name Glittersense bestowed upon me by this Dragonborn for having helped him out in some, like, cool way. So, that's a fun name. And so, when I w...

418: Mental Models For Reduce Functions

The Bike Shed

03/12/24 • 42 min

Joël talks about his difficulties optimizing queries in ActiveRecord, especially with complex scopes and unions, resulting in slow queries. He emphasizes the importance of optimizing subqueries in unions to boost performance despite challenges such as query duplication and difficulty reusing scopes. Stephanie discusses upgrading a client's app to Rails 7, highlighting the importance of patience, detailed attention, and the benefits of collaborative work with a fellow developer.

The conversation shifts to Ruby's reduce method (inject), exploring its complexity and various mental models to understand it. Joël and Stephanie discuss when it's preferable to use reduce over other methods like each, map, or loops and the importance of understanding the underlying operation you wish to apply to two elements before scaling up with reduce. The episode also touches on monoids and how they relate to reduce, suggesting that a deep understanding of functional programming concepts can help simplify reduce expressions.

Transcript:

STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn.

JOËL: And I'm Joël Quenneville. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.

STEPHANIE: So, Joël, what's new in your world?

JOËL: I've been doing a bunch of fiddling with query optimization this week, and I've sort of run across an interesting...but maybe it's more of an interesting realization because it's interesting in the sort of annoying way. And that is that, using ActiveRecord scopes with certain more complex query pieces, particularly unions, can lead to queries that are really slow, and you have to rewrite them differently in a way that's not reusable in order to make them fast.

In particular, if you have sort of two other scopes that involve joins and then you combine them using a union, you're unioning two sort of joins. Later on, you want to change some other scope that does some wares or something like that. That can end up being really expensive, particularly if some of the underlying tables being joined are huge. Because your database, in my case, Postgres, will pull a lot of this data into the giant sort of in-memory table as it's, like, building all these things together and to filter them out. And it doesn't have the ability to optimize the way it would on a more traditional relation.

A solution to this is to make sure that the sort of subqueries that are getting unioned are optimized individually. And that can mean moving conditions that are outside the union inside. So, if I'm chaining, I don't know, where active is true on the outer query; on the union itself, I might need to move that inside each of the subqueries. So, now, in the two or three subqueries that I'm unioning, each of them needs to have a 'where active true' chained on it.

STEPHANIE: Interesting. I have heard this about using ActiveRecord scopes before, that if the scopes are quite complex, chaining them might not lead to the most performant query. That is interesting. By optimizing the subqueries, did you kind of change the meaning of them? Was that something that ended up happening?

JOËL: So, the annoying thing is that I have a scope that has the union in it, and it does some things sort of on its own. And it's used in some places. There are also other places that will try to take that scope that has the union on it, chain some other scopes th...

272: Hacking the Gibson

The Bike Shed

12/15/20 • 33 min

In this week's episode, Chris undertakes long-running background jobs that are performing duplicate work and adding significant load on the database. Steph shares her initial take of the book "Soul of a New Machine", a non-fiction account that chronicles the development of a mini-computer in the 1980s.

They also dive into the question "how can teams turn a slow, hard to maintain test suite from a liability into an asset?" and touch on how to identify highly-functioning teams.

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428: Ruminating on Ruby Enumerators

The Bike Shed

06/11/24 • 35 min

Joël explains his note-taking system, which he uses to capture his beliefs and thoughts about software development. Stephanie recalls feedback from her recent RailsConf talk, where her confidence stemmed from deeply believing in her material despite limited rehearsal. This leads to a conversation about the value of mental models in building a comprehensive understanding of a topic, which can foster confidence and adaptability during presentations and discussions.

The episode then shifts focus to the practical application of enumerators in Ruby, exploring various mental models to understand their functionality better. Joël introduces several metaphors, such as enumerators as cursors, lazy collections, and sequence generators, which help demystify their use cases.

Transcript:

STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn.

JOËL: And I'm Joël Quenneville, and together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.

STEPHANIE: So, Joël, what's new in your world?

JOËL: So, what's new in my world isn't exactly a new thing. I've talked about it on the podcast here before, and it's my note-taking system. I have a system where I try to capture notes that are things I believe about software or things I think are probably true about software. They're chunked up in really small pieces, such that every note is effectively one small thesis statement and a paragraph of text, and maybe a diagram or a code snippet to support that. And then, it's highly hyperlinked to other notes. So, I sort of build out some thoughts on software that way.

A thing that I've done recently that's been pretty exciting with that is introducing a sort of separate set of notes that connect to my sort of opinion notes. So, I create individual notes for public works that I've done, things like blog posts or conference talks. Because a lot of those are built on top of ideas that have been sitting in my note system for a while. Readers and listeners get to sort of see the final product, but often sort of built up over several months or even a couple of years as I added different notes that kind of circled a topic and then eventually got to a thing.

What I did, though, was actually making those connections explicit. And so I use Obsidian. Obsidian has this cool graph view where it just sort of shows all of the notes, and it circles them with, like, connections between them where the notes connect. So, I can now see in a visual format how my thoughts cluster in different topics, but then also which clusters have talks and blog posts hanging off of them and also which ones don't, which ones are like, oh, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and I've not yet written about it in a public forum; maybe that would be a thing to explore. So, seeing that visual got me really excited. I was having a good time.

STEPHANIE: Yes, I have several thoughts coming to mind in response, which is, I know you love a visual. I really like the system of, even if you have created content for it, like, you have a space for, like, thoughts about it to evolve. Because you said, like, sometimes content comes out of notes that you've been...or, like, thoughts you've been having over years, but it's like, even afterwards, I'm sure there will still be new thoughts about it, too. I always have a hard time finding a place for that thing kind of once I, I don't know, it's like some of that stuff is never really considered done, right? So, that is really cool.

And I also was just thinking about an old episode of The Bike Shed back when Chris Toomey and Steph Viccari hosted the podcast called "What We Believe About Software," I think...

429: Transforming Experience Into Growth

The Bike Shed

06/18/24 • 43 min

Stephanie has a newfound interest in urban foraging for serviceberries in Chicago. Joël discusses how he uses AI tools like ChatGPT to generate creative Dungeons & Dragons character concepts and backstories, which sparks a broader conversation with Stephanie about AI's role in enhancing the creative process.

Together, the hosts delve into professional growth and experience, specifically how to leverage everyday work to foster growth as a software developer. They discuss the importance of self-reflection, note-taking, and synthesizing information to enhance learning and professional development. Stephanie shares her strategies for capturing weekly learnings, while Joël talks about his experiences using tools like Obsidian's mind maps to process and synthesize new information. This leads to a broader conversation on the value of active learning and how structured reflection can turn routine work experiences into meaningful professional growth.

Transcript:

JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville.

STEPHANIE: And I'm Stephanie Minn. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.

JOËL: So, Stephanie, what's new in your world?

STEPHANIE: So, as of today, while we record this, it's early June, and I have started foraging a little bit for what's called serviceberries, which is a type of tree/shrub that is native to North America. And I feel like it's just one of those, like, things that more people should know about because it makes these little, tiny, you know, delicious fruit that you can just pick off of the tree and have a little snack. And what's really cool about this tree is that, like I said, it's native, at least to where I'm from, and it's a pretty common, like, landscaping tree.

So, it has, like, really pretty white flowers in the spring and really beautiful, like, orange kind of foliage in the fall. So, they're everywhere, like, you can, at least where I'm at in Chicago, I see them a lot just out on the sidewalks. And whenever I'm taking a walk, I can just, yeah, like, grab a little fruit and have a little snack on them. It's such a delight. They are a really cool tree. They're great for birds. Birds love to eat the berries, too.

And yeah, a lot of people ask my partner, who's an arborist, like, if they're kind of thinking about doing something new with the landscaping at their house, they're like, "Oh, like, what are some things that I should plant?" And serviceberry is his recommendation. And now I'm sharing it with all of our Bike Shed listeners. If you've ever wondered about [laughs] a cool and environmentally beneficial tree [laughs] to add to your front yard, highly recommend, yeah, looking out for them, looking up what they look like, and maybe you also can enjoy some June foraging.

JOËL: That's interesting because it sounds like you're foraging in an urban environment, which is typically not what I associate with the idea of foraging.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, that's a great point because I live in a city. I don't know, I take what I can get [laughs]. And I forget that you can actually forage for real out in, you know, nature and where there's not raccoons and garbage [laughs]. But yeah, I think I should have prefaced by kind of sharing that this is a way if you do live in a city, to practice some urban foraging, but I'm sure that these trees are also out in the world, but yeah, have proved useful in an urban environment as well.

JOËL: It's really fun that you don't have to, like, go out into the countryside to do this activity. It's a thing you can do in the environment that you live in.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, that was one of the really cool things that I got into the past couple of years is seeing, even though I live in a city, there's little pieces of nature around me that I can engage with and picking fruit off of people's [inaudible 03:18] [laughs], like, not people's, but, like, parkway trees. Yeah, the serviceberry is also a pretty popular one here that's planted in the Chicago parks. So, yeah, it's just been like, I don'...

337: Oh, Henry

The Bike Shed

05/10/22 • 43 min

We've got a tricycle anniversary! 🥳 Will it be ruined by a cockroach?

Steph shares an update regarding some of the progress and discoveries that she's helped make with a client in regards to speeding up CI.

Chris is finally getting a little bit more back into the code at work and finds himself riding another time management struggle bus. P.S.: Who even names these apps?!?!

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Transcript:

STEPH: I have officially started recording. You are on the mic, friend.

CHRIS: This is on the mic. Oh goodness.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey.

STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari.

CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, normally, I would say, "What's new in your world?" But this week, this day, in fact, is a very special day. Actually, technically, it's tomorrow. But did you happen to know that you have achieved your tricycle anniversary here on The Bike Shed?

STEPH: No. [laughs]

CHRIS: Three years. Three years ago tomorrow, Episode 196:I Can Be Wrong on the Internet, wonderful title for it, was released. That was the first episode where you were formally a co-host. You'd come on a few times before that, but that was three years ago.

STEPH: That's incredible. Man, you totally got me. [laughs] You were switching it up for our intro, and our intro is very formalized. As you've said before, it is per your contract that’s how we do our intro. [laughs]

CHRIS: Yes.

STEPH: That is incredible. Three years. Wow. You know, I had thought about not the particular anniversary, but I was chatting with the Boost team earlier because I'm always encouraging people like, "Hey, write a blog post. What you just said sounds incredible. That would be wonderful as a blog post." And so I felt the need to convey like, I'm terrible at writing blog posts. I have written a grand total of two. I have a third one that's in draft state and has been that way for a long time, at least a month, I believe.

And so, I am not great about writing and publishing blog posts. But I was like, but I could podcast. And so I looked up, and I was like, I know I've done around over 100; I think around 140 episodes. And so I was like, that makes me feel better. Those who can't write podcast. [laughs]

CHRIS: I'm with you on that front, that she can just keep editing a blog post for forever. I actually do have some stats that I gathered for this as well. So like you said, you're close to 140 episodes. Let's assume an average of 40 minutes per. That gets us to around 5,000 minutes of audio or said differently; that's like 87 hours or 3.6 days.

STEPH: Whoa.

CHRIS: I know, right?

STEPH: The hours really hit home for me. [laughs]

CHRIS: Not the days? I like the days one.

STEPH: No. The hours one, I don't know, the hours one resonates with me. That is something. That's very cool.

CHRIS: 87 hours, yeah. Hopefully, in that time, I think we've said some useful things.

STEPH: I was going to say as someone who started out as your co-host, and I was really certain I had nothing to say, I have 87 hours that documents otherwise. [chuckles]

CHRIS: Indeed. And having been on the other side of the mic from you for most, if not the vast majority of those, you have wonderful things to say. It has been such an absolute pleasure getting to share the mic with you and talk about tech, and nonsense, and life, and all of the things. So yeah, thanks for coming on this adventure.

STEPH: Well, that's very sweet. Thank you so much. And I appreciate you. And it has been amazing. It's been so fun to be your co-host. So I'm really glad that you convinced me to come on this adventure with you. Speaking of adventures, I have a very silly one that I'm going to start us out with. I want to tell you about Henry. You don't know Henry, so I'm going to introduce you to who Henry is.

So we have moved into our new place ...

335: Start Messy

The Bike Shed

04/26/22 • 35 min

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. 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
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Mitch Hedberg - Escalator Joke

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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 I feel very vain because it's just like, [laughs] I'm just looking at myself while I'm recording with you. It's something.

CHRIS: [laughs] That is something.

STEPH: [laughs] So, you know.

CHRIS: Fun times.

STEPH: Pro podcast tip, you know, just stare at yourself while you chat, while you record.

CHRIS: I mean, if that works for you, you know, plenty of people in the gym have the mirrors up, so podcasting is like exercising in a way, and I think it makes sense.

STEPH: I appreciate the generosity. [laughs]

CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey.

STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari.

CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, what's new in your world?

STEPH: Hey, Chris. So I have a funny/emotional story that [laughs] I'm going to share with you first because I feel like it kind of encapsulates how life is going at the moment. So we've officially moved from South Carolina to North Carolina. I feel like I've been talking about that for several episodes now. But this is it: we have finally vacated all of our stuff out of South Carolina house and relocated to North Carolina. And once we got to North Carolina, we immediately had to then leave town for a couple of days.

And normally, Utah, our dog, stays with an individual in South Carolina, someone that we found, trust, and love. And he has a great time, and I just know he's happy. But we didn't have that this time. So I had to find just a boarding facility that had really high reviews that I felt like I could trust him with. I didn't even have time to take him for a day to test it out. It was one of those like, I got to show up and just drop him off and hope this goes well, so I did.

And everything looks wonderful. Like, the facility is very clean. I had a list of things to look for to make sure it was a good place. But it's the first time leaving him somewhere where he's going to spend significant time in a kennel that has indoor-outdoor access. And as I walked away from him, I started to cry. And I just thought, oh no, this is embarrassing. I'm that dog mom who's going to start crying in this boarding facility as she's leaving her dog for the first time. So I put on my shades, and I managed to make it through the checkout process.

But then I went to my truck and just sat there and cried for 15 minutes and called my husband and was like, "I'm doing the right thing, right? Like, tell me this is okay because I'm having a moment." And I finally got through that moment. But then I even called you because you and I were scheduled to chat. And I was like, I am not in a place that I can chat right now. I think I told you when you answered the phone. I was like, "Everything is fine, but I sound like the world's ending, or I sound like a mess." [laughs]

And yeah, so I had like two hours of where I just couldn't stop crying. I partially blame pregnancy hormones. I'm going to go with that as my escape rope for now. So I feel like that's been life lately. Life's been a little overwhelming, and that felt like the cherry on top. And that was the moment that I broke. Update: he's doing great. I've gotten pictures of Utah. He's having a wonderful time at camp, it seems. [laughs] It was just me, his mom, who is having trouble.

CHRIS: Well, you know, reasonable to worry, and life's dialed up to 11 and all of that. But yeah, I will say even though you lead the conversation with everything's fine, your tone of voice did not imply that everything ...

333: Tapas

The Bike Shed

04/12/22 • 41 min

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. 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
Ladybug Podcast
Gerrit
Gregg Tobo the Magician
Sean Wang - swyx - better twitter search
Twemex
GitHub Pull Request File Tree Beta
Sam Zimmerman - CEO of Sagewell Financial on Giant Robots
TypeScript 4.1 feature
The Bike Shed: 269: Things are Knowable (Gary Bernhardt)
TSConfig Reference - Docs on every TSConfig option
Rails I18n

This episode is brought to you by Studio 3T. Try Studio 3T's full suite of features for 30 days, no payment details needed.

Become a Sponsor of The Bike Shed!

Transcript:

CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey.

STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari.

CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, what's new in your world?

STEPH: Hey, Chris. There are a couple of new things in my world, so one of them that I wanted to talk about is the fact that being pregnant is hard. I feel like this is probably a known thing, but I feel like I don't hear it talked about as much as I'd really like, especially in sort of like a professional context. And so I just wanted to share for anyone else that may be listening, if you're also pregnant, this is hard.

And I also really appreciate my team. Going through the first trimester is typically where you experience a lot of morning sickness and fatigue, and I had all of that. And so I was at the point that most of my days, I didn't even start till about noon and even some days, starting at noon was a struggle. And thankfully, the thoughtbot client that I'm working with most of the teams are on West Coast hours, so that worked out pretty well.

But I even shared a post internally and was like, "Hey, I'm not doing great in the mornings. And so I really can't facilitate any morning meetings. I can't be part of some of the hiring intros that we do," because we like to have a team lead provide a welcoming and then closing for anyone that's coming for interview day. I couldn't do those, and those normally happen around 9:00 a.m. for Eastern Time. And everybody was super supportive of it. So I really appreciate all of thoughtbot and my managers and team being so great about this. Also, the client team they're wonderful.

It turns out growing a little human; I'm learning how hard it is and working full time. It's an interesting challenge. Oh, and as part of that appreciation because...so there's just not a lot of women that I've worked with. This may be one of those symptoms of being in tech where one, I haven't worked with tons of women, and then two, working with a woman who is also pregnant and going through that as well. So it's been a little bit isolating in that experience.

But there is someone that I follow on Twitter, @EmmaBostian. She's also one of the co-hosts for the Ladybug Podcast. And she has been just sharing some of her, like, I am two months sleep deprived. She's had her baby now, and she is sharing some of that journey. And I really appreciate people who just share that journey and what they're going through because then it helps normalize it for me in terms of what I'm feeling. I hope this helps normalize it for anybody else that might be lis...

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