The Bike Shed

23:26

509: Bringing Back Rails Generators with Rachel...

The Bike Shed ·

2026/10/06

Joël takes Bike Shed out onto the conference floor at RailsWorld as he interviews programer and streamer Rachael Wright-Munn, aka ChaelCodes.Rachael talks about her efforts to index all ruby events around the world with RubyEvents.org, how she augments her workflows with years old generators rather than LLMs, the rising cost of tokens and why AI may not always be your best solution to a problem. — Keep up to date with all things Ruby conferences, past and future, with Rachael’s index at

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42:31

508: The Wonders of Static Analysis

The Bike Shed ·

2026/09/29

In this week’s episode of The Bike Shed, Aji and Joël dive into the distrust around the phrase ‘programmer discipline’, why you cannot just rely on willpower, and how Static Analysis tools can help with not crossing boundaries.From competing priorities and team member changeovers to documentation not being read, things can still fall through the cracks, so having a tool that can check the ones and zeroes that you send into GitHub. So what makes Static Analysis so different to other forms

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44:34

507: Stacked Vertical Slices

The Bike Shed ·

2026/09/15

The Bike Shed is BACK! Aji and Joel kick off this week’s episode with a fantastic combination of component bugs and how much headspace they take up, historic heraldry vs ChatGPT’S anchoring bias, before diving into the latest big development of the Dev world, Github’s release of stacked PR’s.— Read more about Joël’s adventure in Europe with ChatGPT, and how to structuring conditionals when working with multi-step forms. Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot’s own Joël

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38:42

506: The Muppet Software Team

The Bike Shed ·

2026/07/14

It’s time to play the music, it’s time to… get Aji and Sally together again. This week’s episode is a radical one, and a listener suggestion no less; let’s Muppet-cast a software development team!Who would you hire as the content designer? Which of the Muppets would do their best work as the QA? And the most important question of all - which role would be played by the human?! — Your hosts for this episode have been thoughtbot’s own Sally Hall and Aji Slater. Don't forget you can now

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34:11

505: What is a “principal” or “staff” engineer?

The Bike Shed ·

2026/07/07

Sally and Joël join forces to discuss the different ways to interpret the role of a ‘principle’ or ‘staff’ engineer, and the handwaving around what those titles mean in terms of the gradation. Whilst Joël dives into career progression within the industry, what a staff engineer does and the different archetypes within it, Sally talks about the importance of having principle engineers in the room during AI discussions, and her previous positive experiences working with principle

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32:19

504: AI Ethics (with guests!)

The Bike Shed ·

2026/06/30

Aji is joined by thoughtbot’s own Tess Griffin and Jimmy Thigpen, two members of the recently established AI Ethics Taskforce, to talk about what kind of conversations are going on in the company around AI. With AI becoming an omnipresent entity in the industry, Tess and Jimmy take a deep dive into how and why the taskforce got started, figuring out what thoughtbot’s stance is around AI in terms of ethics and workflows, and how it relates to their clients. — As mentioned in the

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41:12

503: Seeing the Graph for the Trees

The Bike Shed ·

2026/06/23

Aji and Joël join forces to discuss graph and tree structures, and their connection to the emergent properties, attributes and qualities you can find from a largely connected group of data. Joël dives into their recent graphs and tree work through a contracting system, whilst Aji looks back at when he previously tried to serialise a graph or tree to a database. — Watch Joël’s Blue Ridge Ruby talk here, or Matheus’ Ruby Internal talk from last year here. There’s still time to secure your

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40:55

502: Apps That Make Our Work Go

The Bike Shed ·

2026/06/16

Aji and Sally are back together again, this time to discuss the different apps they use to make their workflows and To Do lists easier and quicker to achieve.Sally dives into the Notion calendar system which she uses to coordinate her many Google calendars, Aji looks back on using Jira to co-ordinate their international move, before they both reminisce about the benefits of using Alfred as people with ADHD. — There’s still time to secure your place at thoughtbot’s upcoming UK meet ups

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34:27

501: What makes for good technical writing?

The Bike Shed ·

2026/06/02

Sally and Joël get technical as they lay out their thoughts on blog posts. Our hosts pick apart what makes a good technical blog post, why consistent terms are more important than you might think when communicating with your audience, and how to improve your own writing to ensure your reader remains engaged. — There’s still time to secure your place at thoughtbot’s upcoming UK meet ups over the next month. London Tech Leader Meetup - Tuesday June 23rd Brighton Tech Leader Meetup -

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58:21

500: Celebrating with past hosts

The Bike Shed ·

2026/05/26

The Bike Shed celebrates its 500th episode with hosts new and old as they reflect on the show’s history and ask, what’s new in your world? Our past hosts look back at their time on the show, their favourite moments while hosting, what they took away from producing the Bike Shed, and what they might do today if they were still in the hosting chair. — Your hosts for this special episode of The Bike Shed have been Joël Quenneville, Sally Hall and Aji Slater. Joining them have been our

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48:43

499: BikeTube ShedTacular!

The Bike Shed ·

2026/04/28

Take a trip through Joël and Aji’s YouTube recommended list as they go over the media that has inspired their work the most over the course of their careers. Our hosts highlight different creators that feature regularly in their YouTube rotation, the long standing channels that have had the most impact on them, the video essays that inspire their work, as well as a small detour Into the world of history videos. — Here’s a handful of Joël and Ali’s personal recommendations: VSauce -

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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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