Tech Done Right

After the discussions on testing and design in episodes 68 and 69, I had so much I still wanted to talk about in testing, design, and teaching testing and design. So I convened a panel with previous Tech Done Right Guests Avdi Grimm, Betsy Haibel, and Penelope Phippen to help me think through all these topics. I was very happy to have all of them on the show, and I think it's a great conversation. Stay tuned until the very end for an update about the show.

00:50 - Previously On: Re: Testing

02:53 - Testing and Design

09:36 - Testing, But Not Developer Testing + Sliming The Test

13:41 - Why + How Did You Learn TDD?

20:24 - TDD: Not a Robust Process

24:19 - Rails + Unit Testing

27:41 - Is TDD really dead?

35:06 - Keeping Code In Your Head

37:32 - Approaching the Testing and Design of Code

38:59 - What would convince you to stop doing TDD?

Special Guests: Avdi Grimm, Betsy Haibel, and Penelope Phippen.

Mike Todasco: Senior Director of Innovation at PayPal

Today on the show we have Mike Todasco, the Senior Director of Innovation at PayPal. We talk about what innovation means at a company, and how to encourage innovation both if you are a PayPal sized company and if you aren’t. Mike also shares some information about PayPal’s internal innovation tournament and how they offer incentives for innovation.

01:38 - What does the Senior Director of Innovation at PayPal do?

02:32 - Why should companies innovate?

04:29 - Who should be innovating?

08:26 - Assisting and Guiding in Innovation

11:15 - Introducing Innovation to Companies and Teams: Vulnerability

16:06 - Encouraging Innovation

18:44 - The Concept of Global Innovation Tournaments

24:34 - Giving People Opportunity and Exposure

28:40 - Innovation Tokens

30:59 - Innovation For Small Companies

32:39 - Interesting Innovations

Special Guest: Mike Todasco.

Ashley Quinto Powell: Director of Business Development at Table XI.

Today on the show, we have Ashley Quinto Powell. Ashley and I have run a workshop together called How to Buy Software aimed at people who want to buy custom software but aren't sure what the process will be like. In this episode, we try to compress a four-hour workshop into a 45-minute podcast. Ashley will talk about what to expect from the sales process and then Ashley will interview me about what it's like to work with a development team. I hope you like it.

01:40 - How do you buy software?

02:47 - Common Misconceptions When Starting the Process

04:20 - Preparing for a Conversation About Buying Software

06:42 - Terminology To Know

Offshore / Nearshore

16:08 - Interacting with a Development Team

18:28 - Estimation

28:16 - Signs Things Are Going Well / Red Flags

Special Guest: Ashley Quinto Powell.

Sandi Metz:: Author of Practical Object-Oriented Development in Ruby and 99 Bottles of OOP. sandimetz.com

Today on the show we have Sandi Metz, author of Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby and co-author of 99 bottles of OOP. I’ve literally been trying to get Sandi as a guest since we started recording the show and I’m thrilled that we’ve finally been able to connect. We talk about OOP and TDD, maybe going down a test-driven rabbit hole for a while, and also talk about what it’s like to teach and coach about OOP and TDD. I enjoyed this talk very much and I think you will, too.

02:46 - Keeping Up With Tech

04:58 - Object-Oriented Design

09:53 - Why do we write tests?

17:53 - Teaching Yourself TDD

22:11 - Procedures and Patterns

34:07 - CI

39:23 - Approaching TDD

44:49 - What should we be doing as a community to share knowledge?

Special Guest: Sandi Metz.

Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt: Authors of The Pragmatic Programmer and publishers of The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

I’m very excited to have Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt on the show today. Dave and Andy are the authors of the Pragmatic Programmer, which has a 20th anniversary edition that is out now, and they are the publishers of the Pragmatic Bookshelf, where they have (full disclosure) published my books a time or two. We talk about what’s changed in the new version, what being a Pragmatic Programmer means, whether there’s still a role for tech books, and how to make automated testing pragmatic. Somehow I avoid telling the slightly embarrassing story about the bad impression I made the first time I met Dave. Enjoy.

02:52 - Revisiting the Book 20 Years Later and What Has Changed/Hasn’t Changed

06:41 - What it Means to be a Pragmatic Programmer

08:39 - Software Development as a Team Sport

12:56 - Extreme Programming Explained and The Pragmatic Programmer; Similarities and Differences

22:09 - Finding The Pragmatic Programmer Voice/Tone

24:55 - Roles for Dead-Tree Technical Books

30:36 - How To Make Automatic Testing Pragmatic

Special Guests: Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas.

This week, we have Alex Pedersen of Polco and Abhi Nemani of EthosLabs. They're both involved in various uses of technology to increase civic engagement. We'll talk about how technology can improve the public sector and why technologists should be interested in public sector work.

02:09 - Technology and Civic + Political Engagement

06:14 - Risks of Making the Government More Technological

10:01 - Balancing Conversations Amongst Citizens

12:18 - Building and Designing Software for Government vs Commercial Use

14:39 - Getting Involved in Government, Civic Engagement, and the Public Sector

Special Guests: Abhi Nemani and Alex Pederson.

Ariel Caplan: Co-Host of Dev Empathy Book Club, Backend Developer at Cloudinary, and Flatiron School Alum. Personal Site

Our guest this week is Ariel Caplan. Ariel is a developer at Cloudinary and the Founder of the Dev Empathy Book Club. At RailsConf this year, Ariel gave a keynote about culture and stories using examples from Israeli and American children's literature. In our conversation, we focus on the stories that developers tell ourselves about who is successful, what it takes to be successful, and what people and skills are left out of those stories, and how we might be able to change them.

02:18 - Stories We Tell New Members of the Community

04:17 - The Myth of the Lone Genius

06:28 - How Stories Affect Day-to-Day Expectations on Teams

12:36 - Stories That Benefit Our Employers

16:11 - How We Treat New Developers

21:11 - “Real Programmers”

26:30 - Computer Science Education

31:07 - People Skills and Community

Special Guest: Ariel Caplan.

Amy Newell:: Director of Engineering at Wistia. Previous Director of Engineering at PatientsLikeMe. RailsConf 2019 - Failure, Risk, and Shame: Approaching Suffering at Work by Amy Newell

Our guest this week is Amy Newell. Amy is the Director of Engineering at Wistia, and she gave a talk at RailsConf this year entitled “Failure, Risk, and Shame: Approaching pain and suffering at work”. We have what I hope is an uplifting conversation about failure and pain, how to recognize it, and how to skillfully manage those feelings to be more resilient, prevent additional pain, and ultimately be more satisfied with your job.

01:56 - Why Use Words Like “Pain” and “Shame” When Talking About Work Experience

04:21 - Specific Kinds of Pain and Suffering at Work

07:31 - Mistakes People Make When They’re Dealing with Failure, Anxiety, and Shame

10:28 - Skillful Responses

17:37 - Mitigating Pain

21:57 - Skillful Responses (Cont’d)

25:04 - Mindfulness

30:34 - Feedback and Identity

Special Guest: Amy Newell.

Bärí A. Williams: VP of Legal, Business, and Policy Affairs at All Turtles, a startup advisor in the tech industry, and a published author in the New York Times, WIRED, Fortune, and Fast Company. Bärí writes at bariawilliams.com.

Our guest this week is Bärí A. Williams, the VP of Legal, Business, and Policy Affairs at All Turtles. She provides legal guidance to startups working with Artificial Intelligence. Bärí was a keynote speaker at RailsConf this year, you can see the video at https://youtu.be/HBAra5J5c90. She and I talk about writing ethical terms of service, and how to collect and use data properly. We talk about facial recognition and other data mining and machine learning topics in the news, and how having a diverse user and testing base can prevent damaging mistakes.

01:48 - The Intersection of Law and Tech

03:16 - Writing Ethical and Clear Terms of Service

05:48 - Legal and Ethical Collection of Data

09:01 - Principles That Should Be in Ethical Codes of Conduct

10:38 - Combatting Algorithmic Bias in AI

14:15 - Facial Recognition Technology and The Importance of Diverse Testing

18:07 - Facial Recognition Technology and Preventing the Selling of Information

26:39 - Facial Recognition Technology, DNA and the Government

31:18 - Opting In and Out of Things Due to Privacy Concerns

Special Guest: Bärí A. Williams.

Chad Pytel: CEO, Co-Founder, and Developer of thoughtbot.

Our guest this week is Chad Pytel. Chad is the CEO of thoughtbot, which is a design and development firm known in the world for its support of open source projects like paperclip and shoulda. Chad and I talk about how to make short consulting projects work, the importance of hiring, why thoughtbot makes their internal guides public, and how they continue to be able to support open source. It's a great conversation about how thoughtbot approaches the world.

02:09 - How thoughtbot Works as an Integrated Design and Development Team

06:50 - Handling Discovery Phases and Product Design Sprints

11:40 - When Clients Aren’t a Good Fit and Setting Expectations

14:12 - Hiring for Values

21:05 - The thoughtbot Playbook

26:43 - Client Communication During Projects

30:48 - Investment Days and Supporting Open Source Projects

36:49 - Using Rails and Not Using Rails

Special Guest: Chad Pytel.