Remote Ruby

[00:01:55] Chris and Andrew chat about old and new video games and server issues.

[00:09:03] Chris asks Andrew what he’s been up to this week and anything exciting like RSpec Tests. Andrew tells us he’s been working on Legacy Rails 4 App which has been an interesting experience and a new challenge for him. Chris brings up his first Rails job out of college.

[00:15:28] Andrew tells us what his mentor taught him early in his career about having no idea about the circumstances or requirements surrounding the way certain things are done. He shares some great advice here.

[00:19:58] Chris talks about doing a few screencasts of downloading the earliest version of Rails he could find and trying to build something with it and then do Rails 2.3 or Rails 3.  Will he do it? Andrew is wondering if some of the assumptions he has about issues Chris is going to run into are going to be true or not.

[00:28:02] Andrew was trying to install a version of EventMachine, and he ran into an issue. He found a comment and got it to work. Listen to Andrew’s advice here as he stands on a soapbox. ☺

[00:33:56] Andrew talks about Dash, an API Documentation Browser, for macOS.

[00:39:36] Since Andrew is on this Rails 4 app, Chris wonders if he’s going to be upgrading it to Rails 5 and 6.

[00:42:38] Chris talks about his first job out of college and it was not the best experience.  Andrew talks about companies and having a problem where there is some code somewhere in your application or something works a certain way because one customer depends on it and having to live with that code to not make the customer mad. 

[00:51:12] We end the episode by Chris telling Andrew he has to go get tested for COVID since his sister has it. He has no symptoms, so he’s hopeful it will be negative. 

Panelists:
Chris Oliver
Andrew Mason

Sponsor:
Honeybadger

Links:
Dash for macOS
EventMachine-GItHub

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:03:37] The guys catch up on what’s been going on in their lives.   

[00:10:58] Jason tells us he’s been refactoring and cranking out view components. Chris talks about the transition that he went from building the notifications things and refactoring it.  

[00:14:04] Chris asks the guys if they’ve done any other stimulus reflex features that they’re going to try and build or if they’re mostly focused on the site preview thing. Jason’s main focus is the editor. Chris tell us what he does for notifications. He mentions Basecamp has a “Name of Person” gem they published. 

[00:18:04] Chris talks about translations and internationalization and how you translate your JavaScript. Jason tells us what he does and something not being as performant which is a concern he has. 

[00:23:04] Jason and Chris discuss LiveView in Phoenix what it does.

[00:30:26] Since Andrew is the primary architect for a new podcast platform that is starting up, Andrew and Chris discuss domain switching, which he has a few questions about. 

[00:36:25] Andrew asks Chris’s opinion about the architectures of making podcasts.  Should a user have a personal account or not? Chris talks about an invisible account. 

[00:41:51] Andrew wants to know how Chris suggests people upgrade when things come out in Jumpstart?

[00:47:12] Chris talks about a cool thing he did when he wrote the notifications in the gem. 

[00:52:58] Andrew wants to know when the notification stuff is coming out and Chris lets us know all the details. Jason mentions a sales job opening at Podia if anyone is interested. (link below).

Sponsor:

Honeybadger.io

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Links:

Podia Job Opening

StimulusReflex

Phoenix LiveView

Basecamp Name of Person-GitHub

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

On today’s episode, Chris and Andrew have brought back their good friend, Steve Polito, to give us an update on his new job! Yes, he got a job after being a guest on our podcast! 😄 He will fill us in on what the interviewing process was like, what he does at his new job, how GitHub has helped him, and helpful advice on things he’s learned in the process of finding of job that he will share with you. Chris and Andrew share some stories and advice as well. 

Do you have “imposter syndrome?” Find out how you can get rid of it. Download this episode now to hear more! 

[00:01:23] Steve gives up an update on where he was when he was on the show last time and where he’s at now. 

[00:09:25] Steve lets us know what his interview process was like and he tells us about the stack he’s using in his new position as a Rails developer.

[00:15:19] Chris talks about building your own confidence and Steve brings up “imposter syndrome” and what to do if you have it. 

[00:20:25] Steve tells us if you’re looking for work or looking to improve your workflow, he’s heavily into using GitHub. 

[00:25:35] Steve mentions Chris was great in mentoring him with his first PR ever and he explains how it’s such good practice to make them.

[00:31:56] Chris asks Steve of he’s had moments where he feels like he has no idea what this code does and you feel lost looking at some of this stuff or have they been pretty good about him feeling lost but just to come ask us and we’ll walk you through it. 

[00:37:22] Chris tells us what he does for an interview kind of question and how they just want to see how you make it work first, then extract it, clean it up and make it testable and reusable. Andrew shares some advice too. 

[00:39:54] Steve lets us know a very helpful soft skill to have is being able to read the docs and he explains. Andrew and Chris share some stories as well.  

[00:50:47] We wrap up with Steve giving advice for anyone looking for a job and where to find him if you want to reach out to him. 

Panelists:

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Guest:

Steve Polito

Links:

Steve Polito Design

Steve Polito Design GitHub

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:00:25] Chris has been tweeting about doing notifications in Rails and trying to build and he asks the guys if they’ve used any notifications gems in Rails or have they built it from scratch or what have they done in the past. Chris mentions about something Palkan wrote about Active Delivery. 

[00:06:34] Chris talks about getting a Tweet from Steve Polito about writing Gems is a good way of pushing your learning.  

[00:10:35] Jason tells us what notifications are to him, which is always a thing he wants to add but then he pushes it off. Chris mentions Laravel has notifications right out of the box and that was the inspiration for the approach he took. 

[00:12:29] Jason wants to know if the guys saw the GoodJob Library and then he talks  about using Sidekick and Active Job at his work. 

[00:17:15] The last few weeks, Jason’s been in an experimental research and development mode and he’s been trying to improve and make changes to their editor at Podia which is like a live website editor. He explains what they are doing. 

[00:25:18] Andrew asks Jason if they’re doing database queries from their components or if they’re passing that data, like injecting it in. 

[00:28:46] Chris asks Jason if he has the chat and that and several other things using Action Cable now. Jason also mentions that he’s been doing a lot of reflex and that they’ve expanded reflex down to four or five parts of their application. Chris wants to know if it’s still been working out without having to move to Anycable yet.

[00:33:00] Jason tells us his company, Podia, is hiring if you’re interested or you want to solve all the problems he’s mentioned, and Andrew has landed a new job and he tells us where. Congratulations, Andrew! ☺ 

[00:39:36] Andrew touches on two more things, and asks the guys if they had to guess, when are we going to see Rails 6.1?  They make their predictions. Also, he asks them if they know anything about Ruby for Good and he explains what it is.

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Links:
Podia is Hiring

Activity notifications for Ruby on Rails-GitHub

Palkan Active Delivery-GitHub

QFive ActsAsNotifiable-GitHub

Excid3 Noticed-GitHub (Chris Oliver)

GoodJob-GitHub

“Introducing GoodJob 1.0. a new Postgres-based, multithreaded, ActiveJob backend for Ruby on Rails.” (article)

Sneakers-GitHub

Queue-benchmark-GitHub

Debounced-GitHub

Anycable

Ruby for Good-GitHub

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:03:02] Jason and Chris chat about moving, selling, and designing their new homes. Chris has gone down a rabbit hole lately and tells us to check out a Matt Risinger, a builder in Texas, on YouTube. 

[00:11:20] Jason talks about using Stripe's hosted billing stuff and it was a dream come true. Chris brings up Paddle and wanting to try it.

[00:21:19] Chris has been spending the past few days extracting every string out of Jumpstart Pro into Locales and he finds there some cool stuff and some annoying stuff.

[00:23:46] Andrew informs Chris that after he converted Jumpstart to Slim, he converted it back. Why?

[00:26:32] Chris talks about a new screencast he wants to do. 

[00:31:27] Chris wants to discuss with the guys if you have several pages that are similar, like your edit screen, and they all have a back link, do you make separate locale translation for each of the back links and just have duplicates, or do you extract that out as one parent level thing? Andrew plugs AppLocale. 

[00:36:48] Jason talks about using PhraseApp (which is now called Phrase).

[00:39:53] Andrew’s been playing with Bridegtown this week and having so much fun. He also mentions that Jared’s come out with some crazy cool new stuff recently replacing Liquid with ERB, Hamil, or Slim.

[00:44:35] Andrew tells us about Jared creating Liquid Components, which he builds his pages with. Also, he’s still interviewing and watching “The Boondocks.” 

[00:49:48] Chris mentions to Andrew that DHH is hiring developers soon and Andrew saw on GitHub some open Rails Engineer positions too.

[00:53:30] Chris announces that next week they will have Steve Polito back on the show and he got a job because of our podcast!! YAY!! ☺

Panelists:

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Jason Charnes

Links:

Stripe Docs Checkout

Stripe Docs Customer portal

Pay-Payments engine for Ruby on Rails

i18n-tasks

Jumpstart Rails Documentation Internationalization (I18n)

AppLocale

Phrase

Paddle

Bridgetown RB-Liquid Components

The Boondocks

Matt Risinger-YouTube

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:02:20] Andrew and Chris chat about Slim, Tailwind, and Components.  They also mention Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan, who are the creators, designers, and developers of Tailwind CSS, and how they built this framework and then taught you how to use it. 

[00:08:32] Andrew talks about why he’s been invested in Tailwind since college. Chris talks about how you can a lot of Bootstrap themes in Tailwind. The guys also discuss GitHub and Patreon sponsorships.

[00:14:57] Webpack configs is talked about here with node modules and peer dependencies. 

[00:19:34] Andrew talks about rails developers and how their packages could be bundled and shipped better. The guys also discuss the Pika Pack and what it does.

[00:22:58] Julian Rubisch published another awesome Gem which is a modern version of the render async library.

[00:27:50] Andrew brings up a story about a scarier version and goes back to the table example.  Chris explains how he’s had to deal with this on Hatchbox and he tells us to check out Futurism.  

[00:31:29] Andrew takes a moment to appreciate the graphic that render async has on their README that is freaking awesome! ☺

[00:32:05] On the non-programming side, Chris talks about designing his new house and the process he’s been going through, which has been interesting. 

[00:36:41] Andrew updates us on his job search and Chris has a few stories about past interviews he’s had.  

[00:45:11] The guys chat about the new Slots API View Component.

[00:57:56] Andrew tells us what’s in the new Jumpstart App and he tells us how he used Tailblocks when he redid Jason’s site on Bridgetown. 

Sponsor:

Linode

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Welcome to Remote Ruby!  The guys are all back together this week! In the last episode, COVID-19 was talked about, so the guys want to shift the focus to new and better things happening in the Gem world, like DHH’s Hey’s Gemfile and Basecamps Gemfile.  Jason made an Avatar Component and how he uses formBuilder. They guys also talk about WebAuthn Gem, Two-factor Authentication, and Turbolinks. There are some newer Gems out there they discuss as well and some of their favorites.  Jason brings back another question of the week to see if it will get answered. Will Jason’s secret question get answered? Download this episode now! 

[00:04:21] The guys chat about DHH’s Hey’s Gemfile, Basecamps Gemfile, Rescue, Sidekiq, and Sprocket.

[00:09:26] Jason tells us about how he entertained trying to put a Bootstrap theme in to try it and it was a nightmare. Chris tells us what he likes about Bootstrap components.  

[00:17:00] Jason tells us he made an Avatar Component because he uses Avatar’s a lot. Andrew chimes in and explains how you don’t want your components to be customizable, you want your layout to be customizable. He also tells us there’s been an update to the Tailwind CSS IntelliSense plugin in VS Code.  

[00:20:43] Jason talks about using formBuilder and Chris says it doesn’t get the attention it needs because it’s such a nice tool to have. 

[00:24:01] Chris jumps back to talking about Hey’s GemFile, and asks the guys if they’ve seen the basecamp/okra and the actiontext fork using the okra branch and if they’ve heard any of the changes that are coming? He also mentions an article that came out about the new Turbolinks frames stuff.

[00:32:34] Chris talks about how he’s excited to see them use WebAuthn Gem and about using Two-Factor Authentication. 

[00:35:52] Jason fills us in on a newer Gem called Break and Solargraph in VS Code. Chris points out a Gem called Geared Pagination and his favorite one called Pagy, which he uses for everything.   

[00:43:20] Jason tells us that the Active Record encryption stuff that DHH talked about is going into Rails eventually. Also, he’s been using a couple of others which are Lockbox and Blind Index.

[00:45:17] Jason’s question of the week is, “When are we going to get authentication in Rails?”

[00:47:57] Andrew mentions a Gem called “console1984” that DHH is going to get up streamed into Rails and Sentry. Jason mentions local time and timestamp. 

Sponsor:

Linode

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Links:

Hey’s Gemfile

Headwind-Tailwind CSS class sorter for VS Code

Tailwind CSS IntelliSense

Geared Pagination-GitHub

Bye

Break

Solargraph

Pagy

local-time

TImestamp

Sentry

Lockbox

Blind Index

formBuilder

Avatar

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:01:03] Andrew fills us in on being laid off from his job and he talks about how his job search is going. 

[00:09:32] Jason asks Andrew how the interviewing process has been going and if he’s had to do any whiteboarding. Andrew tells us what he’s had to do for some interviews. 

[00:14:32] Andrew tells us he’s been redoing his website with BridgetownRB, Tailwind, and little bit of Stimulus. He also mentions Tailwind Builder and what it does. He gives a s/o to Jared White from BridgetownRB who was recently on this podcast. 

[00:20:26] Jason talks about using a Jekyll Tailwind starter kit and working on his Field Help app which he wants to launch now. Andrew tells us about a blog post he wrote on how to integrate Tailwind which is on Dev.to.  and his site his Open Source.   Also, the BridgetownRB site inside the BridgetownRB main repo is another great resource.

[00:22:37] Jason’s had some ideas brewing in his mind about Tailwind UI and whether or not he should put in into his field help app.  He has a few ideas that he runs by Andrew, mainly about using View Components, and Andrew gives him some good ideas. 

[00:26:28] Jason is working with making a navigation component which became specific with his app. He made a button component and wonders if you just make a button component and not have a background.  Also, he wonders how do you make that a reusable component for other projects and how would Andrew approach this?

[00:34:47] Andrew tells us about this idea he’s been thinking about for a while. He’s been collecting Tailwind resources and reading a lot of component or design systems in other languages and researching how they’re doing it.

[00:37:04] Andrew explains to us Tailwind’s philosophy and he tells us he’s been working on a style guide system so you can see all the types of your components, all the variants, see the code, and maybe some best practices using it. 

[00:44:53] Andrew mentions Awesome Tailwind CSS where he finds things he likes to use. The other thing he likes to use is Tailblocks.

Sponsor:

Linode

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Andrew Mason

Links:

“Build and deploy a static site with Ruby, Bridgetown, TailwindCSS, and Netlify” by Andrew Mason

Tailblocks

Awesome Tailwind CSS

Tailwind Builder

BridgetownRB

Bridgetown Ruby with Jared White- Remote Ruby Podcast #78

Andrew Mason 

Andrew Mason Twitter

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Welcome to Remote Ruby!  On this episode, we have Jason and Chris.  Chris tells us that their Hey email addresses got secured and that makes him excited for Rails 6.1. Jason brings up his struggles with MiniTests and Chris comes to the rescue and helps him out.  Also, the guys have discussions on Tailwind CSS and PurgeCSS config, working on field help, RSpec, Factories, Fixtures, Faker and Mocha Gems, and Shoulda Matchers. We end with finding out Jason is publishing the Stimulus Reflex Testing Library. Download this episode now! 

[00:01:45] Chris and Jason talk about Hey email and how they love using it.  

[00:07:50] Chris mentions Snowpack, which he doesn’t know much about, so he needs to look into it. 

[00:10:15] Tailwind CSS now has the PurgeCSS configuration option and Chris and Jason chat more about this.   

[00:11:44] Jason asks Chris if he knows what kind of Action Texts changes are coming?

[00:13:09] Chris and Jason talk about Basecamp and new things DHH and Jason Fried are working on.  

[00:16:44] Jason talks about working on field help, MiniTests, and RSpec. 

[00:19:48] Jason brings up his struggles with MiniTests and Chris helps him out. Factories and Fixtures are also discussed. 

[00:27:35] Jason tells us his favorite gem, which is Faker and why. Also, Jason mentions Shoulda Matchers in RSpec and he asks Chris if he’s ever tested certain validations or associations.

[00:40:40] Jason asks Chris about bringing in context block stuff as a mini test extension and does it then switch to the IT Syntax or does it still test this thing?

[00:43:44] Jason asks Chris if he’s ever used Mocha.

[00:46:43] Chris talks about Julian Rubbish building a BetterStimulus.com and what he’s doing with it. And Chris also mentions Jason publishing the Stimulus Reflex Testing Library, which is not complete, but it exists. 

Sponsor:

Linode

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Links:

Hey

Snowpack

MiniTest

Integrate PurgeCSS into Tailwind-GitHub

Faker-GitHub

Shoulda Matchers-GitHub

Mocha-GitHub

Better Stimulus

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

[00:06:10] Jason starts out by talking about working on action cable this past weekend since he uses stimulus reflex for everything in life and he couldn’t control the logging.  Chris mentions he had a similar issue happen to him. 

[00:10:00] Andrew chimes in to say he thinks this is a place where components can really shine with cable ready. Jason talks about using components at work. 

[00:13:19] Chris wonders if Jason has dropped down into Cable Ready since he’s been using Stimulus Reflex a lot. Chris finds it far more effective than Stimulus Reflex for what he has to do. 

[00:18:51] Jason brings up offline and using it with Trix and he feels like he’s having to break rules to get it to work with Trix.  Cursor positioning issues are talked about here. 

[00:21:56] The guys chat about using halt so actions don’t re-render. Andrew reads the docs and lets us know what it says about halts

[00:25:19] Jason talks about the really cool and foundational pieces is the JavaScript Callbacks and he explains why. He also tells us about something he did for fun with rewriting messaging in Reflex. 

[00:33:32] Chris brings up the scroll stuff and how that gets to the edge of trickiness with Stimulus Reflex for chat. He wonders if you want to scroll back in history how do you keep track of it and render it? Andrew shares something with Chris he has in their code base that may help. 

[00:37:35] Staying on the topic of Reflex, Jason mentions shipping out through Podia, a Stimulus Reflex testing library called, “Stimulus Reflex Testing” and he couldn’t find any test helpers or any testing story for reflex right now.  

[00:42:00] Jason mentions a problem he’s had with reflex creating a request, like a dummy request in order for it to re-render. He explains what happens and what he tries to do to make it work out. 

[00:46:47] Andrew explains why there is no amazing testing support in Reflex and he also has a few suggestions for Jason that he could try.  

[00:49:57] Andrew asks the guys if they’ve enabled the new design on GitHub yet and he tells them how to do it. 

Sponsor:

Linode

Panelists:

Jason Charnes

Chris Oliver

Andrew Mason

Links

Server-Side Reflex Callbacks

Turbolinks persist scroll.js-GitHib

Podia StimulusReflex testing-GitHib

Action Cable

JavaScript Callbacks

CableReady-GitHub

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter