The Bike Shed
On The Bike Shed, hosts Joël Quenneville and Stephanie Minn discuss development experiences and challenges at thoughtbot with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and whatever else is drawing their attention, admiration, or ire this week.
Episodes
September 9, 2025 • 44 mins
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...
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September 2, 2025 • 41 mins
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-jon...
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August 26, 2025 • 42 mins
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?
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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/joe...
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August 19, 2025 • 40 mins
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 or...
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August 12, 2025 • 38 mins
Joël and fellow thoughtbotter Jimmy Thigpen assess their AI workflows and question whether LLM partners really are as helpful as they claim to be.
Joël points out the blindspots AI can have when processing certain requests, they each share the ways they utilise AI into their workflow and pros and cons of doing so, as well as looking at some of the areas of improvement they would each like to see made to various AI agents in the fu...
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July 22, 2025 • 41 mins
Joël sits down with Tess Griffin as they take a moment to recap the very last RailsConf together.
The pair discuss their favourite moments from final conference, how their love of D&D has crossed over to shape their experiences attending RailsConf, and the future of the show as a whole.
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Thanks to our sponsors for this episode Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed) (check the link for your free gif...
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July 1, 2025 • 41 mins
Joël continues his preparations for the last RailsConf as he talks with Matheus about how to make the most of your time at the conference.
Hear their tips to connect and communicate with other attendees, the different ways to take notes at the various talks you can attend, what to do when your discussions have a lull, as well as how to draw inspiration from others talks and using it to your advantage.
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Don’t miss out on the fin...
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June 24, 2025 • 43 mins
As the final RailsConf draws near Joël and Aji Slater sit down to discuss its varied and interesting history of keynote presentations.
The pair reminisce on their previous trips and talks at RailsConf, share some tips on creating the perfect keynote, as well as discussing the strong community that’s rallied behind RailsConf for so many years and how to best connect with others at similar cons as an audience member.
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Don’t miss o...
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May 27, 2025 • 37 mins
Elaina Natario returns to talk with Joël about what makes good quality product design and the priorities that shape development.
The pair discuss the importance of certain elements such as security and accessibility, maintaining certain standards throughout development, as well as judging the practical applications of prototypes within a project and the broad role they play.
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The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Auto...
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May 20, 2025 • 42 mins
Joël and Rémy draw inspiration from the stars as they discuss Rémy’s new open source Ruby gem, Astonoby (https://github.com/rhannequin/astronoby).
Rémy reveals the challenges he faced in taking on this project, the scientific translation work that went into making it accessible for everyone, as well as the key lessons he learnt from modelling the cosmos.
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The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way ...
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May 13, 2025 • 36 mins
Joël strikes up a dialogue with fellow thoughtboter Elaina Natario about the various use cases of modals.
Together they discuss their pros and cons, the dos and don’ts, their functionality and accessibility to the end user as well as the subtle differences you'll notice when compared to dialogs.
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The Sponsor for this episode has been Judoscale - Autoscale the Right Way (https://judoscale.com/bikeshed). Check out the link for your...
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May 6, 2025 • 42 mins
Joël and Steve sit down to discuss the ins and outs of decomposition within their respective workflows and how they use it to their advantage when working on certain projects.
Together they look at working with vertical slices over other decomposition methods, when and how to break down code as efficiently as possible, and Joël lays out his three key principles that help him write code dubbed “The Triangle of Separation”.
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The Sp...
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April 29, 2025 • 42 mins
Joël talks with fellow thoughtboter Sara about the different ways developers can help one another across the various stages of an app’s lifecycle.
They highlight the importance of utilising notes early on to clarify your work for others who may need it later down the line, how tooling can aid with this at all stages of development, and what lessons can be learnt from coding decisions made by someone else.
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The Sponsor for this ep...
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April 22, 2025 • 36 mins
Start taking notes in this episode as Joël and Valerie discuss the different ways in which they structure their note taking systems to improve their workflows.
Together they cover the best ways to get started with serious note taking, how to best map out your thoughts so they make the most sense when you come back round to them, as well as examining the different use cases they have for them both over the course of a working day. ...
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April 15, 2025 • 42 mins
Joël and thoughtbot colleague Sally Hall set out to find an answer to the question, what exactly are the differences between paper data structures and digitals ones?
They compare the different ways humans store and access data, from rolodexs to the dewey decimal system, browsing a system vs searching it, and how the digital age has changed the way we assess and look at data stored in those systems.
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Change your organisational work...
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April 8, 2025 • 42 mins
Joël and fellow thoughtboter Aji Slater examine the unfamiliar world of Typescript (https://www.typescriptlang.org/) and various ways of working within it’s system.
They lay out the pros and cons of Typescript over other environments such as Ruby and Elm and discuss their experience of adopting LLM partners to assist in their workflows. Using ChatGPT and Claude to verify code and trim down syntax, all while trying to appease the t...
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March 18, 2025 • 46 mins
Joël enlists the help of thoughtbot colleague Sally Hall as they dive into the complex world of time zones, daylight savings, measurements and coding.
Together they discuss their struggles with daylight savings throwing off their recent project reporting, the constant struggles of writing for different time zones and why writing your own code is never worth the hassle, and the similar battle of writing for different units of measur...
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February 25, 2025 • 37 mins
Joël turns to fellow thoughtboter Jimmy Thigpen as he looks to expand his knowledge about the wide world of Typescripts.
Together they discuss the differences between Typescript and other common systems such as Elm and Javascript, how to best handle their edge cases and error flags, as well as the benefits of using Zod as your typescript library.
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Just starting out in Typescript? Try enabling Strict Mode! (https://www.typescriptl...
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February 18, 2025 • 46 mins
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 proje...
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February 4, 2025 • 37 mins
Joël is joined by fellow thoughtboter Aji Slater as they discuss their previous experiences in designing content for workshops.
Learn how to best structure your workshop for an audience, the benefits of a workshop over a talk and vice versa, as well as how to tackle the different hurdles your audience might face when working through your presentation.
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Try your hand at Joël’s recommendation of visualising your Git Branching (https...
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