Episode Archive

535 episodes of The Ruby on Rails Podcast since the first episode, which aired on January 6th, 2009.

  • Episode 487: Building the Rails World Application with Shami Tomita and Eric Halverson

    September 13th, 2023  |  27 mins 11 secs

    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.

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    Episode 486: High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails with Andrew Atkinson

    September 6th, 2023  |  31 mins 29 secs

    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.

  • Episode 485: A Ticket Giveaway and Kamal / Kemal (Brittany + Nick)

    August 30th, 2023  |  33 mins 2 secs

    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!

  • Episode 484: Level Up in Learning with Ariel Fogel

    August 23rd, 2023  |  25 mins 41 secs

    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.

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    Episode 483: Minimum Viable Answer (Brittany + Jemma)

    August 16th, 2023  |  22 mins 18 secs

    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 fitness.

  • Episode 482: Everything is Awe(ful)some! (Brittany + Brian)

    August 9th, 2023  |  30 mins 9 secs

    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 employers over the hump.

  • Episode 481: Advice on Sunsetting a Rails Application with Robby Russell

    August 2nd, 2023  |  33 mins 51 secs

    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 codebase.

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    Episode 480: Gnarly Rails with Nick Maloney

    July 26th, 2023  |  28 mins 4 secs

    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.

  • Episode 479: Create What You Want to Exist: Brighton Ruby (Brittany + Nick + Andy)

    July 19th, 2023  |  35 mins 7 secs

    Brittany and Nick sync up after Nick's one-night-only talk at Brighton Ruby 2023. It wouldn't be a recap without the conference organizer so they were lucky to find Andy Croll free to fill them in on why he continues to run the event and his thoughts on the uptick on conference attendance.

  • Episode 478: The Rails SaaS Conference Recap with Andrew Culver

    July 12th, 2023  |  36 mins 49 secs

    Andrew Culver is a long-time Rails developer and creator of Bullet Train, a SaaS framework for Rails, and the organizer of The Rails SaaS Conference in Los Angeles, California and Athens, Greece. Brittany was excited to have him on the show to talk about his hacker origins, his latest event in Athens, and to discuss why Rails World sold out in 45 minutes.

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    Episode 477: YARP has been merged!! (Brittany + Jemma + Kevin)

    July 5th, 2023  |  33 mins 8 secs

    Mere minutes before this episode was recorded, YARP was merged! Kevin Newton joins Brittany and Jemma this week to share the exciting news. The trio discuss the follow up steps for YARP, whether a marketing push for adoption will be needed and how Kevin and Jemma partnered on the initiative.

  • Episode 476: Career Ladders with Megan Marquardt-Ray

    June 28th, 2023  |  33 mins 24 secs

    Megan Marquardt-Ray is an Engineering Manager from Included Health. She leads a team of software engineers who build out mobile and web experiences that help people get to high quality healthcare. Before Included Health, she worked at an education startup, bloc, where she first stepped into a managing role. She and Brittany talk about what it means to be a part of a software community, how to draft career ladders, hiring and how to ensure your engineers are progressing.

  • Episode 475: The Return of Rocky Mountain Ruby with Spike Ilacqua

    June 21st, 2023  |  28 mins 59 secs

    Rocky Mountain Ruby is baaaaaack! Conference organizer, Spike Ilacqua, joined Brittany to discuss why he was bringing the conference back to life in Boulder, CO on October 5th and 6th, 2023. They talk about the advice he has gotten, the open CFP and funding the conference. The wrap up talking about how Spike finds AI kinda cool and kinda scary.

  • Episode 474: Ship to Learn (GitHub and AI) with Kyle Daigle

    June 14th, 2023  |  43 mins 39 secs

    Former host of this podcast, Kyle Daigle is the Chief Operating Officer at GitHub. Kyle joined GitHub in 2013 and built and scaled the Ecosystem Engineering teams and worked on the acquisitions of Semmle, npm, and others. He now oversees culture, operations, and communications for the business. He fills Brittany in on all of the exciting initiatives happening at GitHub: GitHub Accelerator, GitHub Fund, GitHub Sponsors and their new research on developer workflow and productivity with AI.

  • Episode 473: Personal Branding & Strongly Held BBQ Opinions with Cody Norman

    June 7th, 2023  |  32 mins 3 secs

    Making his podcast debut, Cody Norman is a former Loan Officer and current Independent Ruby on Rails consultant. He enjoys mentoring, working with early career developers and is an Engineering Mentor at The Agency of Learning. He joins Brittany to discuss personal branding, the importance of showing up every day and how he approaches mentoring early career developers.

  • Episode 472: All I Wanted Was An Environment Variable (thoughtbot) with Victoria Guido and Joe Ferris

    May 31st, 2023  |  30 mins 2 secs

    Victoria Guido, Managing Director of Business Development and DevOps Strategy, and Joe Ferris, CTO, of thoughtbot stop by to talk about Victoria's recent trip to Ruby Kaigi, thoughtbot's contributions to the Ruby / Rails communities, goals for their podcasts, Platform Engineering for Ruby on Rails engineers and the thoughtbot Incubator program.