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PODCAST

The Bike Shed

On The Bike Shed, hosts Joël Quenneville, Sally Hall, and Aji Slater 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

37:23

498: Season 2 Recap

The Bike Shed ·

2026/03/17

Our hosts come together to wrap up season 2 and share some of their highlights along the way.Our trio expand and recap on some key topics covered over the last few months, Sally and Joël provide updates on their work with typescripts and LLMs, and Aji accidentally stumbles into an idea for a new keynote topic. — Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot’s own Joël Quenneville, Sally Hall and Aji Slater. If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page, or

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41:46

497: Diagrams we love

The Bike Shed ·

2026/03/10

Aji and Joël get into a flow as they discuss the different diagrams that help guide their thought processes when working.Together they compare their go to diagrams and why they find them so useful, the different analysis tools a diagram can offer and the alternative perspective on your work it provides, as well as how using diagrams can help communicate your mental models more effectively with your colleagues. — Be sure to check out these resources on diagrams and conditionals for

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43:37

496: Test suite performance

The Bike Shed ·

2026/03/03

Joël and Sally cover all the bases as they look at improving their test suite performances times. Our hosts lay out some spicy takes on various different test suites, comparing the key differences across the different forms of testing, where you might encounter pitfalls in each method, and how to make the most of each test. — Interested in exploring different test suites to see if they could improve your projects? Check out these articles on everything our hosts discussed today, as well

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34:13

495: A shortcut to years of experience

The Bike Shed ·

2026/02/24

Sally and Aji flick through thoughtbot’s guide to best practices in a bid to brush up on their coding habits. Our hosts discuss key ideas from the guides that stand out to them the most, why they’re considered to be good practice, as well as reviewing the cons of complex writing and the benefits of simple coding. — Be sure to check out Sally’s new repo Michel if you’re looking to create an appointment database, and check out the thoughtbot guides for more general coding advice. If

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40:41

494: Primitive Obsession

The Bike Shed ·

2026/02/17

Joël and Sally examine the simpler components of programming and why using basic data structures may not always be the best approach to solving a problem. Our hosts cover all the telltale signs and symptoms of primitive obsession, what it is, it’s drawbacks and limitations, and how to avoid it creeping into your own work. — Want to learn more about primitive obsession and readability in programming? Check out these links for some wider reading, including a talk from Joël! - Design

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41:30

493: Suspenders with Steve Polito

The Bike Shed ·

2026/02/10

Joël talks with guest thoughtbotter Steve Polito about his recent work rewriting Suspenders, an old thoughtbot gem from the 2000s. Steve discusses his role on the rewrite and the steps he took in optimising it for modern rails, Joël dives into some of the new features found in the gem, before discussing with Steve the use cases for Suspenders and why you might choose it over other rails starter apps. — Want to learn more about our gem Suspenders? Check out some of these links to get

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32:52

492: Defining value within your team

The Bike Shed ·

2026/02/03

Sally and Aji assess some common metrics for success when working a project and how they may not always provide the clearest picture of how things are going. Together they discuss how to communicate effectively with stakeholders who are less technical to fully appreciate certain decisions and choices being made on a project, as well as the different metrics you can use to better reflect success and setbacks on a project. — Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot’s own Sally

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40:16

491: Influences that shaped our thinking

The Bike Shed ·

2026/01/27

Joël and Aji reference their personal bibliographies as they compare the different influences that have shaped their programmer world view. Our hosts discuss their most influential programming material, from books, talks and video, and how it’s impacted the way they write code, Joël hones in on the importance of confidence and dealing with uncertainty of objects in a project, while Aji dips into his knowledge of RailConf talks to find his biggest inspiration. — Take a leaf out of our

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41:04

490: Large Language Misadventure

The Bike Shed ·

2026/01/20

Our hosts discuss the pros of AI and where they find the tool genuinely useful, it’s limitations, downsides and where it’s causing harm, the differences between bad AI code and human code, before asking the question of where this AI boom could be leading us. — To get more of an insight into today’s episode consider watching Sandi Metz's RubyConf talk to learn more about red-lighting, or read the article Aji mentioned about running out of ideas. Thanks to our sponsor for this episode

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39:13

489: What makes a codebase welcoming

The Bike Shed ·

2026/01/13

Joël and Sally tidy up the place as they discuss the different ways a new codebase and team can feel welcoming to them. Together they break down the things that help them ingrate into a new project more easily, explain why the lore of a project can be sacred to some, what you can do in the present to make things easier for a developer down the road, and why communication is crucial for keeping everyone on the same page even long after you’ve moved on. — Check out these resources for a deeper dive

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30:47

488: The Playful Portland Programming Paradigm

The Bike Shed ·

2026/01/06

Aji and Joël talk all things hackerthons and why taking the time to have a little having fun with your work every now and then is important for developers.Our hosts reflect on their shared experience at a previous RailsConf where they entered a mini hackerthon, why playing around in a creative sandbox is crucial to honing your skills as a dev, and how programming on the fly can teach you a lot about your own strengths and weaknesses. — Read more about Joël’s entry in Rails Rumble

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37:28

487: ActiveModel custom attributes

The Bike Shed ·

2025/12/30

Joël contributes some thoughts on working with custom attributes as he follows up on last week’s discussion about ActiveModels with Sally.Joël breaks down how he transforms various strings and objects when working with ActiveModels to simplify more advance workloads, as Sally queries their different use cases and how best to utilise them for her own workflow. — Catch up on Sally and Aji’s episode from last week on ActiveModels before diving into this discussion

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27:11

486: ActiveModel Everywhere

The Bike Shed ·

2025/12/23

Aji and Sally join forces to discuss the different ways they utilise active models in their workflows. Aji describes a new system for working with active models they’ve been using recently, Sally recalls a project where active models could have saved her a lot of time, before putting their heads together to think of new creative ways to utilise rails’ tools toolset to build other active models. — Discover more of The Magic of Rails through Eileen Uchitelle’s Keynote

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40:49

485: HTTP Basic Auth

The Bike Shed ·

2025/12/16

Joël and Aji kick oﬀ a new season by discussing the best use cases for HTTP basic auth and talking all things security.The pair ask when and why you would use basic auth over standard HTTPS, it’s pros, cons and vulnerabilities over other forms of security, and provide some advice to help decide on what form of security you could implement on your site. — Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free

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36:15

484: The Season 1 Recap

The Bike Shed ·

2025/11/25

Our Bike Shed trio check back in with one another to follow up on some topics that caught their attention over the course of season 1. Sally covers her time working with React over the last few months and the challenges it still presents to her workflow, Joël goes back over typescripts and the benefits he’s found when debugging, and the cast reflect on the first season as a whole, what they liked, what went well and what they’d like to improve on for season 2. — You can read up on some of the

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38:57

483: Comparing notes on note-taking

The Bike Shed ·

2025/11/19

Joël and Sally compare various note taking styles as they set out to find which ones work best for them. The pair break down the different ways of formatting their notes and what they’re used for, Sally explains her struggles with note taking in general and the work arounds she’s found to achieve similar results instead, and Joël provides a small update on his book as he examines the different use cases for all his notes. — Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way

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43:51

482: Labels for our job

The Bike Shed ·

2025/11/11

Joël and Sally analyse their job titles as they try to figure out exactly which borrowed labels best define their work at thoughtbot. Together they break down the components of commonly used titles such as engineer, architect and consultant to see which element reflects their work best, how they would describe their roles at thoughtbot, which industries they’d draw from if they came up with their own titles, and what does Lil Wayne have to do with all this? — For a deeper dive into today’s episode

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43:22

481: Dev Horror Stories

The Bike Shed ·

2025/11/04

Joël and Sally grab a flashlight to share some scary dev stories with each other to celebrate spooky season. Sally tales the tale of the missing production database, Joël flees from some corrupted data, and each recall instances of haunted code and heart stopping moments from projects gone wrong. — Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free gift!), and Scout Monitoring (https://www.scoutapm.com/). If

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33:03

480: The President's Doctor with Jared Turner

The Bike Shed ·

2025/10/28

Aji gets his priorities straight as he talks with fellow thoughtboter Jared Turner about his recent article titled The President’s Doctor (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/the-presidents-doctor). Jared breaks down the thought process behind the president’s doctor and the wasted time we accrue when working on a project, where we can minimise pauses and delays in our workflows, and why watching cat videos while you wait may actually be the most productive thing you can do! — Thanks to our sponsors for

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33:42

479: Hardly Strictly Remotely In-Person

The Bike Shed ·

2025/10/21

Aji and Sally set out to crack the problems surrounding remote working as they share their thoughts on the various aspect of working from home. Together they discuss their time at the recent thoughtbot summit in Amsterdam, how they felt about working in-person again, what they took away from the experience, the best remote solutions they’ve found to recreate that in-person feeling (https://www.gather.town/), and what friction points about remote working still linger for them both. — Thanks to our

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498 results

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