455: Noisy Animals Kata with Fritz Meissner

Joël talks with fellow thoughtboter Fritz Meissner about the thinking process behind his latest kata project and the vast world of coding problems. Fritz explains why he developed the noisy animals kata and how it helped to better understand and streamline his code, the best ways to break down conditionals and how to clean them up efficiently within your workflow, as well as knowing where the limits of improvement are in each project you work on. — Refine your conditional logic technique with a copy of 99 Bottles of OOP (https://sandimetz.com/99bottles) and then test your skills with Fritz’s Noisy Animals Kata (https://github.com/thoughtbot/noisy-animals-kata). Compare notes with Joël (https://github.com/JoelQ/noisy-animals-kata) and Fritz (https://github.com/thoughtbot/noisy-animals-kata/blob/fm-refactored-v3/noisy_animal.rb) to see how you stack up once you’re done! Listen to Joël’s RailsConf talk The Math Every Programmer Needs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzYYT40T8G8) or check out some previous episodes for a refresher on some of the logic and math topics discussed in this show - Ep 398 (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/398) - Ep 353 (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/353) - Ep 418 (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/418) - Ep 428 (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/428) If you’d like to contact Fritz about his Kata or anything else programming related he can be found via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/fritz-meissner-057a4a6/) Your host for this episode has been thoughtbot’s own Joël Quenneville (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-quenneville-96b18b58/). If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page (https://github.com/sponsors/thoughtbot), or check out our website (https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com). Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: [e-mail] This has been a thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/) podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtbot/streams) - LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) - Mastodon (https://thoughtbot.social/@thoughtbot) - Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thoughtbot/) © 2025 thoughtbot, inc.