The Bike Shed

About the show

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.

The Bike Shed on social media

Episodes

  • 475: Invisible Mentorship

    September 23rd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  38 mins 11 secs
    co-workers, code review, mentorship, programming

    Sally and Aji discuss their experiences with invisible mentorship when it comes to code review.

  • 474: Board games and programming

    September 16th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  41 mins 8 secs
    board games, programming

    It’s board game night at the Bike Shed as Joël and Aji crack out the game pieces to assess how their work as programmers influences strategy when playing some of their favourite games.

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    473: Mental models for browsers

    September 9th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  44 mins 12 secs

    Joël prepares to write his new book by asking Sally some fundamental questions about Web browsers.

  • 472: What is the skill in software development?

    September 2nd, 2025  |  Season 1  |  41 mins 26 secs

    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?

  • 471: New Hosts Join the Show

    August 26th, 2025  |  Season 1  |  42 mins 12 secs

    Joël reveals some exciting changes to the show.

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    470: All about queues with Adam McCrea

    August 19th, 2025  |  40 mins 7 secs

    Joël talks with Adam McCrea, founder of Judoscale, about the best ways to manage your queues and autoscaling.

  • 469: How are we using AI? with Jimmy Thigpen

    August 12th, 2025  |  38 mins 32 secs

    Joël and fellow thoughtbotter Jimmy Thigpen assess their AI workflows and question whether LLM partners really are as helpful as they claim to be.

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    468: RailsConf Recap with Tess Griffin

    July 22nd, 2025  |  41 mins 35 secs

    Joël sits down with Tess Griffin as they take a moment to recap the very last RailsConf together

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    467: How to get the most out of attending a conference with Matheus Richard

    July 1st, 2025  |  41 mins 20 secs

    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.

  • 466: All about keynotes with Aji Slater

    June 24th, 2025  |  43 mins 36 secs

    As the final RailsConf draws near Joël and Aji Slater sit down to discuss its varied and interesting history of keynote presentations.

  • 465: What is quality software with Elaina Natario

    May 27th, 2025  |  37 mins 52 secs

    Elaina Natario returns to talk with Joël about what makes good quality product design and the priorities that shape development.

  • 464: Modelling the stars with Rémy Hannequin

    May 20th, 2025  |  42 mins 59 secs

    Joël and Rémy draw inspiration from the stars as they discuss Rémy’s new open source Ruby gem, Astonoby.

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    463: All about modals with Elaina Natario

    May 13th, 2025  |  36 mins 42 secs

    Joel strikes up a dialogue with fellow thoughtboter Elaina Natario about the various use cases of modals.

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    462: Decomposition as a key developer skill with Steve Polito

    May 6th, 2025  |  42 mins 18 secs

    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.

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    461: Writing new vs existing code with Sara Jackson

    April 29th, 2025  |  42 mins 20 secs

    Joël talks with fellow thoughtboter Sara about the different ways developers can help one another across the various stages of an app’s lifecycle.

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    460: Programer Productivity with Valerie Burzynski

    April 22nd, 2025  |  36 mins 10 secs

    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.