158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson)

FromThe Bike Shed

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158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson)

FromThe Bike Shed

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Length:

47 minutes

Released:

Jun 15, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

We're joined by Aaron Patterson for puns. Aaron also updates us on compacting GC for Ruby and Ruby 2.6's JIT compiler before telling us how he really feels about functional programming.

Released:

Jun 15, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

On The Bike Shed, hosts Chris Toomey and Steph Viccari discuss their development experience and challenges with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and whatever else is drawing their attention, admiration, or ire this week.

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7: At the Car Wash: Derek and Sean talk trade schools, sneaky bugs, bad method names, before_filters, and the Superbowl. by The Bike Shed
49 min listen
10: I Don't Get Functional Programming: Pat Brisbin joins Derek to discuss the many advantages of Haskell programming. by The Bike Shed
41 min listen
3: Flipping the Script: Sean and Derek take a fresh look at the tradeoffs in writing CoffeeScript and whether we should be using an ES6 transpiler instead. by The Bike Shed
26 min listen
13: Begrudging Applause (Aaron Patterson): Live from RailsConf, Aaron Patterson joins the show to talk about Rails 5, Rack 2, Contributing to Open Source, and cats. We also field audience questions. by The Bike Shed
53 min listen
1: Sandi & Derek's Rules: Sean and Derek discuss lessons learned from following Sandi Metz' rules on a project and the overall impact of rules on code. by The Bike Shed
28 min listen
17: Railing About Performance (Sam Saffron): We chat with Sam Saffron about performance, benchmarking, and database migration strategies. by The Bike Shed
47 min listen
9: Monorails, For the Kids: Sean and Derek discuss Monoliths, Service Oriented Architecture, and the new Adapter Specific Type Registry in Rails 5. by The Bike Shed
35 min listen
24: You Look Good in a Lab Coat (Richard Schneeman): Richard Schneeman joins The Bike Shed to discuss ruby memory use, horizontal scaling, and tackling open source issues big and small. This episode of The Bike Shed is sponsored by Code School. Entertaining online learning for existing and aspiring develop by The Bike Shed
41 min listen
21: The "Best" Canada (Godfrey Chan): Rails Core Team member Godfrey Chan joins the show to demystify rails bug hunting and contributing. by The Bike Shed
24 min listen
6: Shh! Library Under Maintenance: Sean and Derek discuss thoughtful deprecations, backwards compatibility, and other joys of library maintenance. by The Bike Shed
42 min listen
11: Form-ing Opinions: Sean and Derek talk about the state of Android tooling, refactoring journeys, and an approach to rails form objects. by The Bike Shed
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5: Rails is Not Your Architecture: Derek and Sean discuss various ways of taking the Rails out of your Ruby on Rails application, what folder to put your files in, and the difficulties and rewards of learning new programming languages. by The Bike Shed
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47: Star Wars Oranges: Ruby 2.3 is out! What are we looking forward to trying and what do we think of &. and try? Stick around after the credits for spoiler-filled discussion of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by The Bike Shed
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29: Django Unchained (Mike Burns): Sean is joined by Mike Burns to discuss what Ruby and Rails can learn from Python and Django. by The Bike Shed
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8: Attributes API, Relation#or, Paid Open Source: Derek and Sean discuss what the Attributes API enables, the addition of Relation#or and paid open source. by The Bike Shed
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4: Put Everything on the Front End: Derek and Sean discuss hunting Rails performance regressions and techniques for improving performance in your web applications. by The Bike Shed
38 min listen
2: Rails 4.2: Derek and Sean discuss Sean's commit access to Rails, what's coming in Rails 4.2, and how to go about making Rails code better. by The Bike Shed
36 min listen
19: The Oncoming Storm (Sam Phippen): Derek and Sean are joined by Sam Phippen from the RSpec core team to discuss RSpec mocks, testing strategies, and minitest. by The Bike Shed
29 min listen
12: A Poor Man's binding.pry: Derek and Sean talk about naming, debugging, and the anxiety of conference talks. by The Bike Shed
32 min listen
14: An Acceptable Level of Hassle (David Heinemeier Hansson): This week, we're joined by DHH and discuss microservices, monoliths, shared abstractions, and the fate of Action Cable. by The Bike Shed
55 min listen
16: Wizards Are Hard to Kill: Grab Bag! Derek and Sean talk about math, augmented reality, RailsConf wrap up, Minimum Viable Products, Accessibility... by The Bike Shed
37 min listen
18: This Podcast is Rigged (But Not Animated): Sean and Derek discuss rails asset dependencies before diving into an overview of animation techniques and C extensions. by The Bike Shed
39 min listen
15: Might As Well Be About Trains (Sarah Mei): Sean, Derek, and Sarah Mei talk about conference speaking, refactoring, and OO vs FP problems. by The Bike Shed
31 min listen
50: Open Mic: It's Open Mic day at The Bike Shed. We hear from other thoughtbot designers and developers about what they're excited to be spending their investment time on lately. by The Bike Shed
29 min listen
23: Why Did They Call it Rust?!: Sean gives Derek a tour of Rust, a new systems language from Mozilla. This episode of The Bike Shed is sponsored by Code School. Entertaining online learning for existing and aspiring developers. Leave a review on our iTunes page to be entered to win a f by The Bike Shed
43 min listen
30: Just Go to Slash Wibble: Derek and Sean discuss hypothetical changes to Rails routing before turning their attention toward hunting memory bloat and the proposal that strings be frozen by default in Ruby 3. by The Bike Shed
46 min listen
26: My Cache is in the Cloud: This week, Sean and Derek discuss performance and inheriting code. In a stroke of complete madness, Derek decides that turbolinks isn't that bad. by The Bike Shed
34 min listen
45: I Think I'd Prefer An Error to Nonsense: Derek shipped Scenic 1.0, which spurs a conversation about semantic versioning and the value of the 1.0 milestone. We discuss what the bar for breaking changes in a library should be and look at some specific changes on tap for Scenic and whether they wil by The Bike Shed
48 min listen
40: ActiveRecord Deprecated Persistence: The ActiveRecord update API is a mess of methods that confuse even ActiveRecord’s maintainer. What are the problems and is there any hope for a solution? by The Bike Shed
34 min listen
28: Minisode 0.1.1: Did you know Rails has no integration test suite? What could go wrong? by The Bike Shed
9 min listen

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425: Modeling Associations in Rails: Stephanie shares an intriguing discovery about the origins of design patterns in software, tracing them back to architect Christopher Alexander's ideas in architecture. Joël is an official member of the Boston bike share system, and he loves it. He even got a notification on the app this week: "Congratulations. You have now visited 10% of all docking stations in the Boston metro area." #AchievementUnlocked, Joël! Joël and Stephanie transition into a broader discussion on data modeling within software systems, particularly how entities like companies, employees, and devices interconnect within a database. They debate the semantics of database relationships and the practical implications of various database design decisions, providing insights into the complexities of backend development. by The Bike Shed
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424: The Spectrum of Automated Processes for Your Dev Team: Joël shares his experience with the dry-rb suite of gems, focusing on how he's been using contracts to validate input data. Stephanie relates to Joël's insights with her preparation for RailsConf, discussing her methods for presenting code in slides and weighing the aesthetics and functionality of different tools like VS Code and Carbon.sh. She also encounters a CI test failure that prompts her to consider the implications of enforcing specific coding standards through CI processes. The conversation turns into a discussion on managing coding standards and tools effectively, ensuring that automated systems help rather than hinder development. Joël and Stephanie ponder the balance between enforcing strict coding standards through CI and allowing developers the flexibility to bypass specific rules when necessary, ensuring tools provide valuable feedback without becoming obstructions. by The Bike Shed
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423: Cognitive Strategies for Coders: Stephanie is back with a book recommendation: "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows. This book has helped to bolster her understanding of complex systems in environmental, organizational, and software contexts, particularly through user interactions and system changes. Joël describes his transformative experience watching last week's total solar eclipse. Together, they explore how systems thinking influences software development and team dynamics by delving into practical applications in writing and reading code, suggesting that understanding complex systems can aid developers in navigating and optimizing codebases and team interactions. by The Bike Shed
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422: Listener Topics Grab Bag: Joël conducted a thoughtbot mini-workshop on query plans, which Stephanie found highly effective due to its interactive format. They then discuss the broader value of interactive workshops over traditional talks for deeper learning. Addressing listener questions, Stephanie and Joël explore the strategic use of if and else in programming for clearer code, the importance of thorough documentation in identifying bugs, and the use of Postgres' EXPLAIN ANALYZE, highlighting the need for environment-specific considerations in query optimization. by The Bike Shed
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421: The Idealistic vs. Pragmatic Programmer: Stephanie revisits the concept of "spiking"—a phase of exploration to determine the feasibility of a technical implementation or to address unknowns in feature requests—sharing her recent experiences with a legacy Rails application. Joël brings a different perspective by discussing his involvement with a client project that heavily utilizes the dry-rb suite of gems, highlighting the learning curve associated with adapting to new patterns and libraries. Joël used to be much more idealistic and has moved to be more pragmatic. Stephanie has moved the other way. So together, Stephanie and Joël engage in a philosophical discussion on being an idealistic versus a pragmatic programmer. They explore the concept of programming as a blend of science and art, where technical decisions are not only about solving problems but also about expressing ideas and building shared understandings within a team. by The Bike Shed
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420: Test Database Woes: Joël shares his recent project challenge with Tailwind CSS, where classes weren't generating as expected due to the dynamic nature of Tailwind's CSS generation and pruning. Stephanie introduces a personal productivity tool, a "thinking cap," to signal her thought process during meetings, which also serves as a physical boundary to separate work from personal life. The conversation shifts to testing methodologies within Rails applications, leading to an exploration of testing philosophies, including developers' assumptions about database cleanliness and their impact on writing tests. by The Bike Shed
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419: What's New in Your World? (Extended Edition): Stephanie introduces her ideal setup for enjoying coffee on a bike ride. Joël describes his afternoon tea ritual. Exciting news from the hosts: both have been accepted to speak at RailsConf! Stephanie's presentation, titled "So, Writing Tests Feels Painful. What now?" aims to tackle the issues developers encounter with testing while offering actionable advice to ease these pains. Joël's session will focus on utilizing Turbo to create a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet, combining his passion for gaming with technical expertise. Their conversation shifts to artificial intelligence and its potential in code refactoring and other applications, such as enhancing the code review process and solving complex software development problems. Joël shares his venture into combinatorics, illustrating how this mathematical approach helped him efficiently refactor a database query by systematically exploring and testing all potential combinations o by The Bike Shed
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418: Mental Models For Reduce Functions: 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. They 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 by The Bike Shed
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417: Module Docs: Stephanie shares about her vacation at Disney World, particularly emphasizing the technological advancements in the park's mobile app that made her visit remarkably frictionless. Joël had a conversation about a topic he loves: units of measure, and he got to go deep into the idea of dimensional analysis with someone this week. Together, Joël and Stephanie talk about module documentation within software development. Joël shares his recent experience writing module docs for a Ruby project using the YARD documentation system. He highlights the time-consuming nature of crafting good documentation for each public method in a class, emphasizing that while it's a demanding task, it significantly benefits those who will use the code in the future. They explore the attributes of good documentation, including providing code examples, explaining expected usage, suggesting alternatives, discussing edge cases, linking to external resources, and detailing inputs, outputs, and pote by The Bike Shed
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416: Multi-Dimensional Numbers: Joël discusses the challenges he encountered while optimizing slow SQL queries in a non-Rails application. Stephanie shares her experience with canary deploys in a Rails upgrade. Together, Stephanie and Joël address a listener's question about replacing the wkhtml2pdf tool, which is no longer maintained. The episode's main topic revolves around the concept of multidimensional numbers and their applications in software development. Joël introduces the idea of treating objects containing multiple numbers as single entities, using the example of 2D points in space to illustrate how custom classes can define mathematical operations like addition and subtraction for complex data types. They explore how this approach can simplify operations on data structures, such as inventories of T-shirt sizes, by treating them as mathematical objects. by The Bike Shed
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415: Codebase Calibration: Stephanie has a delightful and cute Ruby thing to share: Honeybadger, the error monitoring service, has created exceptionalcreatures.com, where they've illustrated and characterized various common Ruby errors into little monsters, and they're adorable. Meanwhile, Joël encourages folks to submit proposals for RailsConf. Together, Stephanie and Joël delve into the nuances of adapting to and working within new codebases, akin to aligning with a shared mental model or vision. They ponder several vital questions that every developer faces when encountering a new project: the balance between exploring a codebase to understand its structure and diving straight into tasks, the decision-making process behind adopting new patterns versus adhering to established ones, and the strategies teams can employ to assist developers who are familiarizing themselves with a new environment. by The Bike Shed
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414: Spike Tasks: Joël shares his recent experience with Turbo, a JavaScript framework that simplifies adding interactivity to websites without extensive JavaScript coding. Stephanie gives an update on her quest to work from her office more, and the birds have arrived—most notably, chickadees. Stephanie and Joël address a listener question from Edward about the concept of a "spike" in software development. They discuss the nature of spikes, emphasizing that they are typically throwaway work aimed at learning and de-risking rather than producing final code, and explore how spikes can lead to better decision-making and prioritization in software development, especially in complex codebases. by The Bike Shed
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413: Developer Tales of Package Management: Stephanie shares her task of retiring a small, internally-used link-shortening app. She describes the process as both celebratory and a bit mournful. Meanwhile, Joël discusses his deep dive into ActiveRecord, particularly in the context of debugging. He explores the complexities of ActiveRecord querying schemas and the additional latency this introduces. Together, the hosts discuss the nuances of package management systems and their implications for developers. They touch upon the differences between system packages and language packages, sharing personal experiences with tools like Homebrew, RubyGems, and Docker. by The Bike Shed
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410: All About Documentation: Joël shares his experiences with handling JSON in a Postgres database. He talks about his challenges with ActiveRecord and JSONB columns, particularly the unexpected behavior of storing and retrieving JSON data. Stephanie shares her recent discovery of bookmarklets and highlights a bookmarklet named "Check This Out," which streamlines searching for books on Libby, an ebook and audiobook lending app. The conversation shifts to using constants in code as a form of documentation. Stephanie and Joël discuss how constants might not always accurately reflect current system behavior or logic, leading to potential misunderstandings and the importance of maintaining accurate documentation. by The Bike Shed
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158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson)

158: This is How I Ruin Meetings (Aaron Patterson)

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from The Bike Shed