This episode is a little off the Rails, but it was still fun catching up with our co-host, Nick Schwaderer.Door Elise Shaffer

In the last few years, there’s been more awareness about ADHD in adults. We’ve learned that it’s more than hyperactivity and it’s not a deficit of attention. Many working in tech have ADHD and because we have a world built for neurotypicals, there can be unique challenges for those working in tech with ADHD. Today, Chris Ferdinandi joins the show t…

We all love Ruby on Rails. You may remember that my first episode on this show was about whether Rails was still relevant. In the last few years, there’s been so many exciting things coming to Ruby and Rails. I have felt that excitement in the community. I’ve felt it at conferences and in my conversations with many of you. Today, Irina Nazarova joi…

Nick and I recorded an episode at Rails World with Robby Russell. This is a test of new format we're running where we discuss Rails News. Robby joins us to talk about the Rails Developer Survey that ran this summer. WE also chat about all the new things announced at Rails World. Sponsors Thanks to Buzzsprout for sponsoring our Rails World coverage …

Ruby Central has been a foundational part of the Ruby community since 2003. They organize Ruby Conf and Rails Conf and maintain critical Ruby infrastructure like rubygems.org. With Ruby Conf Chicago just around the corner and new initiatives at Ruby Central, we thought it would be a good time to catch up with our friends at Ruby Central. Marty Haug…

Large language models are everywhere now. They’re changing the way we work, from tools code completion tools like Copilot, to audio generation apps like Suno.ai. Apple recently announced huge updates with generative AI for all of their platforms. Adobe, Canva, and Google have all added AI to their products. It seems like every vendor is building th…

Our illustrious cohost Nick is back from parental leave! We talk about life as a parent and coder, committing to Ruby on Rails, being coworkers and finding time for hobbies. I'm looking forward to recording with Nick again.Door Elise Shaffer

A recent focus of many in the community has been expanding the community. We all love Rails and want to create the best community possible. Part of this focus has to include early career devs. We need to expose them to Rails and mentor them into the senior developers and tech leaders we need in the future. Adam Cuppy joins the show today to teach h…

EuRuKo (European Ruby Konferenz) is the largest and longest running annual Ruby conference in Europe, since 2003, that brings you all the good news about Ruby and its friends. Every year it takes place in a different European city, the location being chosen by participants. Today's guest is Muhamed Isabegovic, who has taken over organizing Euruko t…

In our last episode, we talked about Web Accessibility. But, did you know that there are accessibility concerns on the backend and in our interactions with our teams. Hilary Stohs-Krause joins the show to tell us more about how we can be more accommodating to our teams. Show Notes Simple writing "Disability Impacts All of Us" (CDC) - https://www.cd…

Joel is a staff software engineer at GitHub, working on user interface architecture and strategy. For the last several years, he has been part of the team working to improve the accessibility of GitHub.com. He also leads development of the ViewComponent framework. Today, he joins the show to teach us about Web Accessibility Show Notes Joel's RailsC…

While at Rails Conf, I caught up with several attendees and organizers to discuss their experiences. These quick interviews have been collected for this episode. Our Guests: Trevor John https://github.com/trevorrjohn Joshua Paine https://github.com/midnightmonster/activerecord-summarize David Hill https://github.com/Esmale Alex Mitchell @a_mitch on…

At Rails Conf 2024, I gathered several of our favorite ruby podcasters for a giant crossover episode! In this episode we have: Drew Bragg from Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It - https://podcast.drbragg.dev/ Julie J from Ruby For All - https://www.rubyforall.com/ Jason Swett from Code with Jason - https://www.codewithjason.com/ Joël Quennevill…

Over the last year, the Rails Foundation has been hard at work on several initiatives. After a successful Rails World last year, they’ve been working on the program for this year’s Rails World in Toronto. The Rails Foundation has also been working on several other initiatives that are very important to our community. Amanda Perino, Executive Direct…

I am very excited for today’s episode! Twitch is a livestreaming service where users can stream themselves to the internet. Twitch is known for video game streaming. But, people stream all kinds of things, including software development. Today's guest is Rachael Wright-Munn who livestreams Rails development on Twitch Show Notes Rachael’s Twitch: ht…

There are so many Ruby events happening recently, that it can be hard to know which one to go to. Today we’re going to talk about a rather unique event in the Ruby community. What if you could go to an event that was just the Hallway Track? And that event happened at a summer camp? Show Notes Rails Camp West Website - https://west.railscamp.us Big …

Rails 7 and Hotwire have completely revolutionized server side Rails apps. Developers can now get much more reactivity with way less javascript, less tooling, and simpler deployments. You’ve probably heard a lot about Rails 7.1 and Hotwire. Maybe you’re even using it in production? Ayush Newatia joins the show to talk about his new book, The Rails …

RailsConf is coming up fast! The program committee has released the schedule and keynote speakers. Ufuk Kayserilioglu joins the show to talk about the program and Ruby Central Show Notes Kevin's blog post about RailsConf https://kevinjmurphy.com/posts/tracks-not-at-railsconf-2024/ RailsConf website & registration https://railsconf.org/ If you have …

You may have heard about WebAssembly. It’s an open standard that aims to help developers create high performance applications on the web. It’s a portable binary execution format traditionally used on the front end, but there are also other ways to use it. I am completely new to WebAssembly, so today we have a guest to talk about it with us. Show No…

Burnout is a common occurrence in the tech industry. And the recent onslaught of layoffs have left many stressed about their job search, or overworked from the increased demands of the smaller teams. I know some of my listeners have experienced burnout. I myself have had a recent experience with burnout that took months to recover from. Dr. Katy Co…

Recently, Ruby Central named a new executive director, Adarsh Pandit. Ruby Central has been a force in the Ruby community for years, organizing conferences and contributing to the community. The recent changes in governance have led t some exciting things on the horizon. Adarsh joined the show to talk about what's going to happen with Ruby Central …

Over the years, the performance of Ruby has improved quite a bit. One of the big recent performance improvements came from the development of YJIT inside Shopify. YJIT is a just-in-time compiler for Ruby written in Rust. Dr. Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert joined the show to talk about YJIT Show Notes YJIT Website Maxime on X https://twitter.com/Love2Cod…

If you start a new Rails project today, you’re probably going to pick Postgres for your database. And if you have a ten year old Rails app, you might be using MySQL. But Rails ships with support for SQLite, a lightweight SQL database. Can that lightweight database be used to make production-ready software? Stephen Margheim joins the show to help us…

Fito and Alan are frequent RubyConf and RailsConf speakers on topics ranging from software complexity to resolving flaky specs. They joined the how to discuss strategies for dealing with unreliable tests and complex code. Show Notes Cisco Meraki: Careers (https://meraki.com/careers) Alan Ridlehoover’s LinkedIn (https://linkedin.com/in/aridlehoover)…

RailsConf is coming up fast and I can’t wait to see you all there! The CFP is open and the program committee is accepting proposals for talks for the conference. Andy Croll joined the show to talk with us about the CFP process and how you can present at RailsConf ** Show Notes** Rails Conf Detroit - https://railsconf.org/ RailsConf CFP - https://se…

Kaja is the Slack Administrator for WNB.rb, a group of women and non-binary rubyists. She joined the show to talk about becoming the Slack Administrator. She fills us in on what the job entails, how she became the slack administrator, and some of the big things she learned from contributing to WNB.rb Show Notes Twitter: @alizenero Mastodon: @kajano…

What do we owe to each other? Over the last several years, the tech industry has had a reckoning about ethics within our industry. Katya Dreyer-Oren gave a excellent talk and workshop at RubyConf in San Diego about how to ethically build software. She joined the show to share her thoughts and ideas from her experience as a student of philosophy. We…

Our cohost Jemma Issroff joined me to talk about my tenure as host so far, Jemma's work on Prism, fostering communities, building habits, how to be lucky, and we reveal our New Year's Resolutions! What are your New Years Resolutions? If you'd like to share them, send an email to comments@therubyonrailspodcast.com. You can send text or record a shor…

I joined Julie and Andrew from Ruby For All to talk about Test Driven Development, attending conferences, and using TDD as a thinking tool.. This episode was recorded at RubyConf in San Diego. Show Notes [Ruby For All] - https://www.rubyforall.com/ Sponsors Honeybadger As an Engineering Manager or an engineer, too much of your time gets sucked up w…

Can you believe its been 500 Episodes? What a wild ride. It's been so much fun to take over the show and to get to be a part of this history. Our co-host Nick Schwaderer sat down with me to talk about the history of the show, what it's been like taking over, and some ideas for things we might experiment with in the future. I hope you enjoy it. Have…

Drew Bragg is the host of Code And The Coding Coders Who Code It. We caught up to bring this special collaboration. Show Notes Code And The Coding Coders Who Code It - https://podcast.drbragg.dev/ Sponsors Honeybadger As an Engineering Manager or an engineer, too much of your time gets sucked up with downtime issues, troubleshooting, and error trac…

I joined Chris and Jason on Remote Ruby to talk about podcasting, the beauty of the Ruby language, Ruby outside of Rails, and why you should probably be using a state machine. It was so fun getting to talk with them and I hope you enjoy this conversation. And, be sure to subscribe to Remote Ruby! Show Notes Remote Ruby - https://www.remoteruby.com/…

Rachel is a core contributor to The Odin Project, an open source education project that helps people learn Ruby and Javascript. She joined me on the show to talk about the project, how she became involved, and her role with the team. Show Notes The Odin Project - https://www.theodinproject.com/ Rachel's Github - https://github.com/rlmoser99 Sponsor…

I attended Ruby Conf and took the opportunity to chat with some attendees about their experience at the conference. This was a super fun experiment and getting to hear from new voices in the community was such a treat. I hope you enjoy it! Sponsors Honeybadger As an Engineering Manager or an engineer, too much of your time gets sucked up with downt…

Marc has been building software for more than two decades, with a particular focus on the medical industry. He’s currently working with Doximity to create tools that make doctors’ lives easier. As an Engineering Manager, one of his primary focuses over the last couple years has been to figure out how to reduce unnecessary code coupling and make the…

Nick was at Rails World earlier this month and took the chance to chat with Rafael França about his work on the Rails Core team and releasing a new version of Rails. Sponsored By: Buzzsprout If you are looking to start a podcast, there's never been a better time. Especially in the Ruby world. If you wanna join that world, use Buzzsprout. They provi…

Nick was at Rails World earlier this month and took the chance to chat with Andrew Mason about podcasting, engaging with the Ruby community, how interest rates impact the tech industry, Turbo , and some of the new things announced at Rails World. Sponsored By: Buzzsprout If you are looking to start a podcast, there's never been a better time. Espec…

Vladimir is a backend engineer from Mars, or Evil Martians, a consultancy specialized in product development for startups and developer tools. Vladimir is known for his work on many open-source projects in the Ruby on Rails world, such as AnyCable, Action Policy, TestProf and many more. He recently published the book Layered Design for Ruby on Rail…

Bekki Freeman has been working with Ruby and Rails for 8 years. Recently, she helped organize the Rocky Mountain Ruby conference. She joins Elise this week to reflect on the conference, talk about what it was like organizing, and make some karaoke plans with Elise Show Notes Bekki's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bekki-freeman/ Tech Friend's…

Olly Headey joined the show to talk with Elise about his recent blog post concerning the future of Ruby on Rails as a career. We discuss his post, some survey data, and talk about software developers might want to think about this question. Show Notes: Ruby on Rails as a career choice in 2023 Olly Headey Olly's Twitter Sponsored By: Honeybadger If …

Elise Shaffer is a trans woman and Staff Software Engineer who loves Ruby and Ruby on Rails. She is also the new host of this podcast! Brittany announces her retirement from the show after a five year run as the host. In this special episode, the pair discuss Brittany's favorite moments from her run, get to know Elise and discuss any upcoming chang…

Special co-host Kevin Murphy joined Brittany this week to interview Allison McMillan and Chelsea Kaufman, co-chairs of the upcoming Rubyconf 2023 happening in San Diego. The quartet discussed lessons learned from Railsconf 2023, the approach to thinking about and planning this year's Rubyconf and what is new and different at the event. Show Notes: …

Rails World needed a website! Did you want to be on the small team that helps build it? Shami Tomita and Eric Halverson certainly did and so they came on to the show to talk about their experience and the tech stack behind the conferencing app. Backed by Daniel Rassiner and Cody Norman, the crew talked about supporting Juniors and conference tips. …

If you love taking about databases, this is the episode for you. Ahead of the launch of his new book, High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails, Andrew Atkinson joined the show with special guest co-host, Pat Bair, to talk about why he wrote a book, why he focused on PostgreSQL and his favorite feature from the upcoming 7.1 release. Show Notes: Landing…

Nick is heading to Rails World to represent the show and he has a ticket to giveaway to a lucky listener! The pair talk about doing hard things first, the renaming of MRSK to Kamal and then a random deep dive on our show's archives. Check out the show notes for giveaway details! Show Notes: The Ruby on Rails Podcast RailsWorld Ticket Contest | Comp…

Ariel Fogel is a software engineer with an enduring soft spot in his heart for Ruby and Rails. Since graduating from Dev Bootcamp, he has found himself driven by finding ways to improve the quality of education for coders and non-coders alike. Brittany and Ariel discuss how engineers can level up in how they learn. Show Notes: Ariel's Personal Site…

After celebrating Jemma's newly established status as a Ruby core member, Brittany and Jemma discuss what is happening with Brittany at work, including taking some customer calls. The two hosts also talk about the important skill of being able to know your audience and how to communicate to non-technical stakeholders. They wrap up discussing AI fit…

Even though not a ton has changed in the last 4 months since Brittany and Brian last recorded the State of Rails Hiring, this hiring market is both awful and awesome depending on who you talk to. The duo dig into AI generated cover letters, the good and bad symptoms of what is happening in the economy and specific tactics to help get engineers and …

There comes a time in almost every software application when it reaches the end of its lifecycle. Robby Russell, CEO of Planet Argon, joins the show to guide Brittany on the steps to take to decommission a Ruby on Rails application. The pair also touch on the idea of how small dev teams would benefit from periodically bringing in "guests" to their …

Nick Maloney is co-founder of The Gnar Company, a full service product consulting shop. Nick and Brittany discuss Gnar's project for the State of Massachusetts to build out an automated background check system. Nick shares why Rails is their default stack and why he is particularly impressed with the direction of the front-end happening in Rails 7.…