All Ruby Podcasts By Devchat.tv

Ross Kaffenberger is a software engineer at Stitch Fix and has been developing web applications for the past 12 years, mostly in Ruby and JavaScript. Today he and the panel are discussing how to survive Webpack. When many folks first encounter Webpack, they feel confused, overwhelmed, and don’t know how to get it to do what you want it to. In the latest version they tried to introduce some more sane default settings, but it is still a major change in technology. Ross talks about how his company transitioned Rails 5 to Rails 6 with the new Webpacker. His company chose to take an iterative approach and slowly migrated to Webpacker. His app was very JS heavy with a large number of libraries, many of which were not very Webpack friendly. They chose to separate out the vendor libraries into a separate bundle, that way they could contain each deploy. They still had to add some configuration, especially to make things available on global scope.As they started moving jQuery plugins over, sometimes the functionality w

John Epperson has been doing ruby for 12 years and is a friend of Andrew Mason. He got into Docker a couple years ago and felt like something was missing, so he wrote Shiplane. He liked Docker because it was a promise that he could delegate a lot of the manual devops work to something else, and that something else was able to automate all of it. What he noticed was if you have a Docker thing in development and want to transfer it into production, there was no clear path to get a Docker item from development to production. The process wasn’t truly automated, so he created ShipLane in an attempt to automate it.ShipLane solves this problem by assuming that you have a box out there, whether it’s a VM or an actual physical box, and you have SSH access to it. It logs in, it makes sure you have Docker installed, and gives you the ability to actually take your development docker compose, and convert it to a productionized version. It also hooks in to Capistrano and replaces that with ShipLane commands. Right now Ship

Mike Schutte is a fronted developer at TED conferences and was trained in code school at Turing in Colorado. He likes the idea of code as a communication tool, and in 2018 he gave a talk at RailsConf called Stop Testing. Start Storytelling. Today the panel is discussing what Mike means by storytelling in testing. In order to combat the hesitancy to start testing, Mike believes that changing your mindset to think away from the implementation details while deploying these tests can help them be more efficient. In short, if the test isn’t readable by a non-developer, then it’s not telling a story, it’s just writing code. The test is almost the first point of contact away from the source code, so if that’s unwieldy in a test it will be hard to use elsewhere in the application. We have an intuition for stories, so use tests in order to communicate the intent of what the application should do under certain conditions. If it’s hard to set that up in a succinct way then maybe it should be written differently.This vie

Todd Kaufman is one of the cofounders of Test Double, a software development consultancy that was started 8 years ago. Todd talks about how he got started with Test Double and how it grew. He and Justin started Test Double because he felt that a lot of consultancies didn’t align with what they thought was important. Most consultancies then didn’t focus on good software development practices, and instead focused solely on the process. They decided that they would put the developers first and foremost so they could solve hard problems.Charles talks about his experience with a consultancy, where he was fired after his project finished, and asks how Test Double does things differently. Todd talks about the importance of financial stability in a consultancy, and one way that Test Double accomplishes this is by being a completely remote company to cut out the cost of having an office,Todd shares their approach to the projects they take on. Their contracts are open ended and they tend to work with clients for a long

Episode Summary   Today’s guest Elia Schito has been a Ruby developer for 12+ years and works for Nebulab. During his career he looked for Ruby to JavaScript translators and found Opal. The panel discusses where Opal belongs within an app and when the compilation into JavaScript occurs. The main reason a person would want to use Opal is to avoid writing in JavaScript. Elia talks about the benefits of using Opal. One is that productivity is better in a language like Ruby. Also, if you’re working on a project that needs to get done quickly, it makes sense to use Opal so that your speed is not hindered. Elia talks about testing Opal with things like WebPacker and Hyperstack, and explains what Hyperstack is.  Opal recently released a newer, bigger version, and Elia talks about the features of the new release. He details what kind of JavaScript it produces and how to hook it into your CICD, how to run it locally, and overall how to use the compiler.  He talks about how to debug in Opal. He notes that during

Episode SummaryAdam Cuppy is the cofounder and current chief operating officer at Zeal, web and mobile app consultancy. Today the panel is discussing the talk he gave at Rails Conf called Mechanically Confident. Adam has a hypothesis that confidence is not the result of belief alone but ingrained routine. The more routine, the more pattern, the more rehearsal applied to a given thing, the more confident you are with that thingThe history behind Adam’s theory stems from his background in theater and performing arts. The concept of rehearsal is commonplace in the performing arts, but not other industries. He talks about where rehearsal comes in for programmers and how he has noticed the patterns of senior developers. The panelists talk about where they see routine and rehearsal come into play with their workThe panelists wonder how do you avoid a stopgap from a slight change, and Adam relates it to some of the most rehearsed actors, improv actors. It’s important to rehearse everything you can, building a routin

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Sustain Our SoftwareAdventures in BlockchainPanelDavid KimuraAndrew MasonNate HopkinsCharles Max WoodWith Special Guest: David Heinemeier HanssonEpisode SummaryToday’s guest is David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co founder and CTO at Basecamp. This episode is focused on the release of Rails 6. David talks about the process of getting from Rails 5 to Rails 6 and some of the new features and frameworks in Rails 6. David describes some of the new features as ‘magical, which some people don’t like. He believes that the ‘magical’ element is a good thing because it reduces the learning curve for newcomers, so you can less time studying and more time being productive. This is important because it allows people from other platforms to jump on. Rails 6 will provide users with more frameworks so that they do not have to build all of their own solutions to common problems. David delves into how Ruby goes against the grain by providing tools and ho

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit DatadogReact Native RadioPanelDavid KimuraAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Paul TarjanEpisode SummaryPaul Tarjan works for Stripe specializing in developer productivity. In the past, he has owned his own company and worked for Facebook. In today’s episode, the panel is talking about Sorbet, a gradual type checker for Ruby that Paul built. Paul talks about how Sorbet fits in the Ruby community and how it works. The two parts of Sorbet are the runtime type check and the static typecheck. Paul talks about how introducing Sorbet at Stripe has changed the way they approach coding. He talks about some of the performance impacts of adding Sorbet, how it differs from other type checkers, and how it was received in the Ruby community. Paul delves into how developers are notified if Sorbet fails a type check while checking a class. The panel discusses ways to convince reluctant team members that introducing a type checker like Sorbet will improve their code, and Paul tal

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit DatadogPanelDavid KimuraAndrew MasonCharles Max WoodWith Special Guests: Julian FahrerEpisode Summary Julian Fahrer has been a guest on Devchat shows before and recently did a workshop at RailsConf about Docker. He specializes in teaching people about Docker and has his own course, LearnDocker.online. Julian begins by giving suggestions for those considering Dockerizing their Rails applications. He talks about why Docker is a good choice to be used in a local development environment and gives some advice for those who might have trouble running Docker in development. He talks about where Docker fits within the development or production environment. He talks about synchronizing code between development and production and running tests. He advises listeners on how to get started with Docker. He talks about using a Docker registry to build and push images. They discuss how to deal with things once you move to production and how to use containers when considering

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit DatadogPanelDavid KimuraAndrew MasonNate HopkinsWith Special Guests: Taylor JonesEpisode SummaryTaylor Jones works remotely for Heroku in technical support. He talks about some of the most common issues he helps customers with and what issues he saw when Webpacker was introduced. The panel talks about their experience using Webpacker and how it has influenced their usage of React and Ruby. They talk about the importance of creating maintainable applications and the possible effects of using primarily new technology versus tried and true methods. It is important to keep architecture consistent, so that if you have to debug something old, you still know your way around. They discuss the forward progress in the Rails community and how the need for a JavaScript framework has decreased. They discuss improvements in adding elements from other languages into your code, especially since Webpacker added a way to manage JavaScript assets to the community. They discuss t

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit DatadogPanelDavid KimuraNate HopkinsAndrew MasonEpisode SummaryToday the panel is talking about documentation. They begin by discussing what documentation is, where it fits within an application, and if the code documents itself. They agree that documentation starts in the comments to explain what you’re doing, but if that’s your exclusive method, then a refactor is in order. They talk about where to start with documentation and different ways they’ve done it. The panel talks about the importance of documentation, especially for people just joining a team. In addition to documenting the project itself, it is important to document what different libraries do and how to interact with them. They discuss where to put this kind of documentation. They talk about documenting patterns, best practices, and procedures in addition to the ‘how to’ of a project. The conversation turns to style guidelines, what they are, and how to keep them up to date. They talk about what

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments: Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues PanelCharles Max WoodAndrew MasonWith Special Guests: David A. Black and Joseph Leo IIIEpisode SummaryDavid A. Black has been a Ruby user for 19 years and has been writing books about Ruby for the last 14 years. Joseph spent 12 years in software and started the company Def Method Inc. Together, they co-authored the book The Well-Grounded Rubyist, which will soon have its third edition released. They give some of the history behind The Well-Grounded Rubyist. Joseph talks about his experience being brought into the project. David and Joseph talk about how The Well-Grounded Rubyist is different from other books on Ruby. This book is helpful because a lot of people begin by understanding Ruby more than Rails, and this book talks about ways to think about Ruby and understand how it’s structure. Joseph and David talk about how The Well-Grounded R

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments: Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues PanelCharles Max WoodAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Daniel PritchettEpisode Summary Daniel Pritchett started doing Ruby in 2012. Lately he has been working on publishing a book on building Chatbots in Ruby using a framework called Lita and does infrastructure for a startup called Gremlin. Gremlin reaches out to servers and tries to find weak spots so that you can be proactive about solving these problems and be better prepared when fires do start. Daniel’s real purpose in joining the show today was to talk about his book Build Chatbot Interactions. Daniel talks about what he defines as a chatbot. His book teaches you how to program a chatbot with a dozen or so different chatbot skills. Daniel talks about his first community chatbot, @elvis on #memtech IRC, which picked up immediate contributions from local developers. Daniel istructs liste

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments: Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues RedisGreenPanelCharles Max WoodNate HopkinsAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Kir ShatrovEpisode SummaryToday’s guest Kir Shatrov is a production engineer on Shopify based in London, UK. Today, he and the panel are discussing capacity planning. Kir believes that capacity planning becomes a priority when your company starts losing money and your customers are suffering. When someone does get to the point of scaling their app, it’s important to look at the limitations of the hosting service. It is also important to remember that scaling is not a job that ever completes.Kir talks about his experience and time with Shopify and what types of changes have happened in the four years he’s been with the company. Kir explains that when Shopify was founded about 12 years ago, they were some of the first contributors to Rails, and Rails was just a zip fil

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues RedisGreenPanelCharles Max WoodDave KimuraAndrew MasonEpisode SummaryToday’s topic is the Stimulus library. Stimulus is actually a JavaScript framework and library, but it’s also built by Basecamp, so it works really well in Rails. There is a demand for rich client side interactions, and Stimulus fills in some of the gaps. The panelists talk about some of their experiences with Stimulus versus jQuery. They talk about different use cases for Stimulus, how it works, and how it can help your project. One of the main draws of Stimulus is that the amount of code needed to implement a feature with Stimulus is very small comparatively. Also, frameworks like React weren’t created for Rails, and so adding React to a Rails application can be quite painful. Stimulus follows the Rails philosophy to keep things simple and unobtrusive, so if you ever foun

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Triplebyte offers $1000 signing bonus RedisGreenPanelCharles Max WoodDave KimuraAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Steve PeakEpisode Summary Today’s guest Steve Peak has been an entrepreneur and developer for a decade specializing in building tools. He built the company Codecov, one of the top performers in the github ecosystem. His next project is Storyscript, first and only top level programming language that focuses on business logic. The panel begins by discussing what a microservice is and what makes a good one. One of the difficulties with microservices that there is no standardization, and that’s where microservice.guide can help.  The panel talks about some of the issues of having too many microservices and Steve offers Possible solutions. Steve delves into some of the abilities of Story Script in stringing together multiple services in different languages and how it can simplify things. They talk about if it’s possible to have too many microservices and

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Triplebyte offers $1000 signing bonus RedisGreenPanelCharles Max WoodDavid KimuraNate HopkinsAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Olivier LacanEpisode SummaryOlivier Lacan joins the panel again. He currently works for Pluralsight. Today they are talking about the spectrum of creating a Rails app, or any app, from the birth of the idea to the death of the project. They stress the importance of planning for updates. Olivier talks about his experience in maintaining Code School, which has now been incorporated into Pluralsight. David also shares his experience with the life and death of a project. They talk about technical debt and the trouble that it can create, and the importance of making your Rails application maintainable. Olivier talks about his experience when Code School was acquired by Pluralsight. The panel discusses the inevitability of the end of an application and different ways of managing company integration. They talk about ways to plan for shutting do

SponsorsSentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small planTriplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonusRedisGreenCacheflyPanelCharles Max WoodEpisode SummaryCharles talks about his journey as a podcaster and his mission with Devchat.tv. Devchat.tv  is designed to home podcasts that speak to all developer communities. Charles also plans Devchat.tv to host shows for technologies that are on the verge of a breakthrough and will be a lot more widely available in the near future such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). There are new shows being added continuously to reach out to new communities, some examples of which are: a Data Science show, a DevOps show and an Open Source show.As a kid, Charles would record his own shows on a tape recorder. He was always interested in technology. While studying Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University, he worked in the University's Operations Center. Upon graduation, he started working

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 credit Triplebyte offers $1000 signing bonus Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues PanelCharles Max WoodDavid KimuraDavid RichardsAndrew MasonWith Special Guest: Leonardo TegonEpisode Summary Leonardo Tegon is a software developer at Plataformatec, the company that created Devise. Leonardo talks about how he ended up at Plataformatec and shares a little bit about the talk he gave about alternative authentication methods. He talks about the difference between Devise and Warden. Some of the panelists have had some issues with cache warming in Warden, and  Leonardo shares ways to get around it. They talk about authentication strategies used in Warden and Devise and different strategies that tap into hardware.  Leonardo talks about some of the features coming to Devise, although their primary focus is on maintenance. He talks about the work that goes into such a long-standing project, espe

SponsorsSentry use code “devchat” for $100 creditTriplebyte offers $1000 signing bonusCloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments Try Cloud 66 Rails for FREE & get $66 free credits with promo code RubyRogues PanelCharles Max WoodDave KimuraAndrew MasonNate Hopkins With Special Guest: Pete HolidayEpisode SummarySpecial Guest Pete Holiday is the director of engineering at a company called Samsara and specializes interviewing software engineers. The panel begins by talking about some of the trends they see in tech interviews, specifically the move towards code-heavy interviews. Pete does not think take home tests accurately simulate a work environment, and shares his preferred technique. The panel discusses the most important things to look for in an interview, such as how good of a fit they will be with the company culture. They discuss the importance of hiring junior developers, some of the ethics of internships and compensating for take home projects.They turn the conversation to interview questions and what s