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PODCAST

The Bike Shed

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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All Episodes

42:18

462: Decomposition as a key developer skill with...

The Bike Shed ·

2025/05/06

Joël and Steve sit down to discuss the ins and outs of decomposition within their respective workflows and how they use it to their advantage when working on certain projects. Together they look at working with vertical slices over other decomposition methods, when and how to break down code as efficiently as possible, and Joël lays out his three key principles that help him write code dubbed “The Triangle of Separation”. — The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way

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42:20

461: Writing new vs existing code with Sara Jackson

The Bike Shed ·

2025/04/29

Joël talks with fellow thoughtboter Sara about the different ways developers can help one another across the various stages of an app’s lifecycle. They highlight the importance of utilising notes early on to clarify your work for others who may need it later down the line, how tooling can aid with this at all stages of development, and what lessons can be learnt from coding decisions made by someone else. — The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way

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36:10

460: Programer Productivity with Valerie Burzynski

The Bike Shed ·

2025/04/22

Start taking notes in this episode as Joël and Valerie discuss the different ways in which they structure their note taking systems to improve their workflows. Together they cover the best ways to get started with serious note taking, how to best map out your thoughts so they make the most sense when you come back round to them, as well as examining the different use cases they have for them both over the course of a working day. — The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Autoscale the

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42:20

459: Paper Data Structures with Sally Hall

The Bike Shed ·

2025/04/15

Joël and thoughtbot colleague Sally Hall set out to find an answer to the question, what exactly are the differences between paper data structures and digitals ones?They compare the different ways humans store and access data, from rolodexs to the dewey decimal system, browsing a system vs searching it, and how the digital age has changed the way we assess and look at data stored in those systems. — Change your organisational workflow and get yourself a Rolodex

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42:31

458: Learning Typescript with Aji Slater

The Bike Shed ·

2025/04/08

Joël and fellow thoughtboter Aji Slater examine the unfamiliar world of Typescript (https://www.typescriptlang.org/) and various ways of working within it’s system. They lay out the pros and cons of Typescript over other environments such as Ruby and Elm and discuss their experience of adopting LLM partners to assist in their workflows. Using ChatGPT and Claude to verify code and trim down syntax, all while trying to appease the type checker. Discover the little tips, tricks and bad habits they

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46:29

457: Time Zones with Sally Hall

The Bike Shed ·

2025/03/18

Joël enlists the help of thoughtbot colleague Sally Hall as they dive into the complex world of time zones, daylight savings, measurements and coding.Together they discuss their struggles with daylight savings throwing off their recent project reporting, the constant struggles of writing for different time zones and why writing your own code is never worth the hassle, and the similar battle of writing for different units of measurement. — Check out the idea behind "If Hemingway Wrote Javascript

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37:19

456: Typescript with Jimmy Thigpen

The Bike Shed ·

2025/02/25

Joël turns to fellow thoughtboter Jimmy Thigpen as he looks to expand his knowledge about the wide world of Typescripts. Together they discuss the differences between Typescript and other common systems such as Elm and Javascript, how to best handle their edge cases and error flags, as well as the benefits of using Zod as your typescript library. — Just starting out in Typescript? Try enabling Strict Mode! (https://www.typescriptlang.org/tsconfig/#strict) Try out Zod for yourself

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46:06

455: Noisy Animals Kata with Fritz Meissner

The Bike Shed ·

2025/02/18

Joël talks with fellow thoughtboter Fritz Meissner about the thinking process behind his latest kata project and the vast world of coding problems. Fritz explains why he developed the noisy animals kata and how it helped to better understand and streamline his code, the best ways to break down conditionals and how to clean them up efficiently within your workflow, as well as knowing where the limits of improvement are in each project you work on. — Refine your conditional logic technique with a

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37:46

454: Workshop design with Aji Slater

The Bike Shed ·

2025/02/04

Joël is joined by fellow thoughtboter Aji Slater as they discuss their previous experiences in designing content for workshops.Learn how to best structure your workshop for an audience, the benefits of a workshop over a talk and vice versa, as well as how to tackle the different hurdles your audience might face when working through your presentation. — Try your hand at Joël’s recommendation of visualising your Git Branching (https://learngitbranching.js.org/). You can watch Ali’s Enigma Machine

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31:30

453: The Bike Shed Wrapped 2024

The Bike Shed ·

2024/12/31

Happy New Year from The Bike Shed!Tune in to the one wrapped edition that really matters this holiday season, The Bike Shed Wrapped! Recap the year with Joël and Stephanie as they reminisce over their favourite moments of 2024. The pair discuss ways they’ve stepped outside their comfort zone to gain a different perspective on their work, the growth they’ve each achieved as a result, and their ambitions for 2025 and beyond. Discover Joël and Stephanie’s favourite episodes from the year as well as

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28:47

452: Hotwire Essentials with Steve Polito

The Bike Shed ·

2024/12/24

Stephanie is joined by follow thoughtbot-er Steve Polito as they discuss his latest GitHub resource, Botcasts (https://github.com/thoughtbot/botcasts). Find out why Steve was so keen to make the app, what he learnt about Hotwire in the process and why he thinks you should stop listening to the show in your current pod-catcher and pick it up in Botcasts instead! -- Try building Botcasts for yourself over on Github (https://github.com/thoughtbot/botcasts)! Your host for this episode has been

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29:25

451: Making Time for and Managing Focus

The Bike Shed ·

2024/12/17

It’s officially the holidays at the Bike Shed! Defrag your hard drives and take a break with Joël and Stephanie as they breakdown different ways to manage your focus during the day. The pair discuss separating coding time from thinking time when working, the pros and cons of blocking out time for different tasks and clever ways to move seamlessly from one project to the next without losing momentum. Joël has some more timezone facts to share, while Stephanie reveals her worst enemy when it comes

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39:57

450: Javascript-Driven Development?

The Bike Shed ·

2024/12/10

Joël and Stephanie go back to fundamentals as they pick apart some recent conversations they’ve been having around the office. Together they discuss the advantages of GraphQL over a REST API, how they utilise JSONB over a regular column or table, and the use-cases for and against a frontend framework like React. But what’s the theme that ties all these conversations together? — The article mentioned in this episode was Why I’m over GraphQL

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37:41

449: Evergreen skills for new-ish developers

The Bike Shed ·

2024/12/03

One of the most challenging things about starting out as a developer is how much you need to master all at once. And with so much to learn, it can be difficult for experts to guide fresh developers and advise them on where to focus first. Luckily, some skills will always be useful, no matter what language you’re coding in. In today’s episode, Stephanie and Joël tackle this topic by unpacking several key evergreen skills that will always be valuable, from reading error messages to deciphering a stack

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33:42

448: Other Uses for Tests

The Bike Shed ·

2024/11/26

How can tests serve beyond just catching bugs in code? In this episode, Stephanie and Joël dive into the various roles that tests can play in a developer's toolkit. Covering all the fundamentals, from aiding knowledge transfer and documentation to ensuring accountability in code reviews, they explore the unexpected ways that tests support developer workflows. They also explain the balance between writing detailed tests for documentation and managing complex code, and how effective testing practices

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37:39

447: How to (not) implement impersonation

The Bike Shed ·

2024/11/19

For developers, impersonation can be a powerful tool, but with great power comes great responsibility. In today’s episode, hosts Stephanie and Joël explore the complexities of implementing impersonation features in software development, giving you the ability to take over someone’s account and act as the user. They delve into the pros and cons of impersonation, from how it can help with debugging and customer support to its prime drawbacks regarding security and auditing issues. Discover why the

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35:31

446: All about rewrites

The Bike Shed ·

2024/11/12

When is it time for a rewrite? How do you justify it? If you’re tasked with one, how do you approach it? In today’s episode of The Bike Shed, we dive into the tough question of software rewrites, sharing firsthand experiences that reveal why these projects are often more complicated and risky than they first appear. We unpack critical factors that make or break a rewrite, from balancing developer satisfaction with business value to managing stakeholder expectations when costs and timelines stretch

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40:06

445: Working Iteratively

The Bike Shed ·

2024/10/29

Does having smaller, more frequent iterations help to ease your cognitive load? During this episode, we discuss the benefits and challenges of working iteratively and whether or not it can prevent costly errors. You’ll hear about juggling individual pieces effectively, factors that incentivize and de-incentivize working iteratively, and how Joël gauges whether or not a project should be broken up into smaller tasks. It can be hard to adopt small iterations, and this conversation also touches on the

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34:58

444: From Solutions To Patterns

The Bike Shed ·

2024/10/15

What’s the difference between solving problems and recognizing patterns, and why does it matter for developers? In this episode, Stephanie and Joël discuss transitioning from collecting solutions to identifying patterns applicable to broader contexts in software development. They explore the role of heuristics, common misconceptions among junior and intermediate developers, and strategies for leveling up from a solution-focused mindset to thinking in patterns. They also discuss their experiences of

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32:23

443: Rails World and Open Source with Stefanni Brasil

The Bike Shed ·

2024/10/08

Learning from other developers is an important ingredient to your success. During this episode, Joël Quenneville is joined by Stefanni Brasil, Senior Developer at Thoughtbot, and core maintainer of faker-ruby. To open our conversation, she shares the details of her experience at the Rails World conference in Toronto and the projects she enjoyed seeing most. Next, we explore the challenge of Mac versus Windows and how these programs interact with Ruby on Rails and dive into Stefanni’s involvement in

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482 results

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