x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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.

technology tech news

All Episodes

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

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

en

37:47

478: ADHD at work

The Bike Shed ·

2025/10/14

Aji and Sally sit down to discuss their struggles with ADHD and the systems they have in place to stay focused at work. They each share the note taking systems (https://www.goodnotes.com/blog/zettelkasten-method) and tools they use to navigate a normal working day, how they came to fully understand and manage their ADHD, and Sally reminds us all why it’s very important to use a slash in your Slack reminders. — This episode of the Bike Shed has been sponsored by Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way

en

44:25

477: Change Management

The Bike Shed ·

2025/10/07

Time to plan an upgrade as Joël and Aji talk about the hurdles involved with various change management in their projects. The pair lay out some different approaches to protecting your data when planning a migration, the risks of code and data changes, the elements that will and won’t be affect in the process, and Joël gives his experience on a tough migration project and what he learnt from it. — If you’ve not used Merge before you can learn more about it here

en

36:39

476: Green Flags for Code

The Bike Shed ·

2025/09/30

Joël and Sally sit down to discuss their green and red flags when it comes to PR review.Joël breaks down the different ways humans review code vs AI, how they both break down large projects into smaller digestible PRs and clarifying your reasoning for certain decisions, as well as discussing the most common red flags they’ve encountered when looking over code. — Take a break from coding to brush up on your Roman History

en

38:11

475: Invisible Mentorship

The Bike Shed ·

2025/09/23

Sally and Aji discuss their experiences with invisible mentorship when it comes to code review. Together they question when is the right time to have conversations with your team in a bid to chase improvement, the importance of understanding your co-workers perspectives, as well as the best ways to initiate a mentoring moment. — Check out some of the things mentioned in this episode - The Coding Train (https://thecodingtrain.com) - Sarah Mel’s Livable Code

en

41:08

474: Board games and programming

The Bike Shed ·

2025/09/16

It’s board game night at the Bike Shed as Joël and Aji crack out the game pieces to assess how their work as programmers influences strategy when playing some of their favourite games. As they make their way round the board they discuss the cycle of setbacks and iteration, finding the optimal solution to a puzzle, as well as the key skills that best links their programming work to board games. — Check out the upcoming conferences mentioned in this episode - XO Ruby (https://www.xoruby.com/)and

en

44:12

473: Mental models for browsers

The Bike Shed ·

2025/09/09

Joël prepares to write his new book by asking Sally some fundamental questions about Web browsers. Together they look to answer the deceptively simple question of what is a browser, examining what they are at their core, what they’re capable of beyond basic functions, the nuances of programming for the web across different systems and devices on the front and back end (https://radanskoric.com/articles/hotwire-or-frontend-framework), as well as unpacking the surprising benefits of different forms of

en

41:26

472: What is the skill in software development?

The Bike Shed ·

2025/09/02

Sally and Joël kick off a new season of the Bike Shed by asking the question, what exactly is it that we as developers even do around here? Together they discuss their roles as developers, how their workflows and skills have changed over time, the value of context and experience when evaluating different solutions to a problem, why so much of their work revolves around googling error codes, (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/indiana-jones-and-the-crypt-of-cryptic-error-messages) and giving some advice to

en

42:12

471: New Hosts Join the Show

The Bike Shed ·

2025/08/26

Joël is joined by some familiar faces in today’s episode of the Bike Shed to help reveal some exciting changes to the show as he asks his new co-hosts, what’s new in your world? — 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/). Joining Joël Quenneville (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-quenneville-96b18b58/) as your new co-hosts are Aji Slater

en

40:07

470: All about queues with Adam McCrea

The Bike Shed ·

2025/08/19

Joël talks with Adam McCrea, founder of Judoscale (https://judoscale.com/), about the best ways to manage your queues and autoscaling. Adam discusses some tough lessons he learnt recently during a technical outage at Judoscale (https://judoscale.com/blog/upscaling-broken-post-mortem), what exactly autoscaling is and how it works, the best signals to assess when working with an autoscaler, and provides some simple tips to better organise your own queues. — You can connect with Adam via LinkedIn

en

489 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs