The Ruby Blend

Panelists

• Andrew Mason
• Nate Hopkins

Guests

• Julian Rubisch

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:00:38] Julian tells us all about himself and his background. He
 also tells us how long he's been programming professionally and with
 Ruby on Rails.

[00:04:24] Nate is wondering what Julian's observation is about the
 relationship between music and programming or any type of artistic
 endeavor in programming. Nate mentions a book by Paul Graham called,
 "Hackers and Painters."

[00:06:43] Nate found it interesting that as an experienced
 programmer, Julian found it intimidating when he first encountered
 Rails, but had good mentors and friends to help him. He wonders if it
 was an existing Rails application or was it a new application he was
 building? Julian explains.

[00:10:34] Andrew is curious to know what Julian uses Ruby for now and
 what his day to day use of Ruby is. Julian mentions doing backend mobile
 stuff and what he's done.

[00:14:25] Julian gives a shout-out to Chris Oliver for Jumpstart Pro
 App which helped him a lot. Also, he explains his experience with it
 because Andrew is curious.

[00:16:20] Nate is curious to know if a tool in Jumpstart Rails helps
 or is it introducing more magic? Also, if he came into the project or if
 it was a new project and he began with Jumpstart, would he have found
 Rails more approachable? Julian gives us his opinion.

[00:21:43] Nate brings up how he agrees with Julian that he thinks
 three are more things we can do on the Rails community to make it more
 approachable to newcomers. Julian has a story to share and Andrew
 mentions a Tweet that was made by Noel Rappin in response to this.

[00:25:21] Nate is curious to know if Julian watched any of the old
 RailsCasts episodes. He makes a point to say how watching these
 teaching, tutorial websites, and videos are so important to the health
 of community. Julian lets us know what he did.

[00:27:57] Andrew brings us a point by saying that with all the new
 additions to Rails, it's fair to say that the documentation hasn't kept
 up with the new features that are getting added in. Nate agrees with
 this and gives his input as well.

[00:29:49] Julian talks about his website he created called, "Better
 StimulusJS."

[00:32:24] Andrew wants Julian to touch on how he found Stimulus
 Reflex and if he's using it on client projects. Julian also mentions
 "Znibbl.es" and his YouTube channel.

Links

-Julian Rubisch Twitter
-Julian Rubisch GitHub
-Better StimulusJS
-Hackers and Painters - Paul Graham
-Message Passing
-Rails Responders
-Strong Parameters
-Jumpstart Rails
-RailsConf 2020.2 with DHH
-[Rails new options help](ttps://gist.github.com/kirillshevch/1b52f711e66b064416d746f07e834c00)
-Avdi Grimm Twitter
-Noel Rappin Twitter
-Znibbl.es
-Become a patron of Znibbl.es
-Sponsor Julian Rubisch-GitHub
-Julian Rubisch-"Sounds of Defiance and Conformity"-EP (Apple Music)
-Julian Rubisch-YouTube

Credits

• Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
• Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
• Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
• Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund

Special Guest: Julian Rubisch.

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Panelists

• Andrew Mason
• Nate Hopkins

Guests

• Eric Berry

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:01:12] Eric tells us the story of how he found the inspiration for
 CodeFund as a company.

[00:09:24] Nate asks Eric what kind of resistance he had at the
 beginning from the developers that he was pitching his ideas to, and he
 explains.

[00:12:35] If Eric condensed CodeFund's mission down to an elevator
 pitch, what would it be and how would he summarize it? He lets us know
 right here.

[00:13:05] Andrew is curious and asks Eric what were the signs that
 you realized it was time to bring in more people, specifically on the
 code side, and what was the motivating factor to bring in someone else?
 He gives a little bit of history behind it.

[00:20:28] Since Eric has taken on other responsibilities, Nate asks
 him to talk about the dopamine hits that he feels in taking on other
 roles as compared to development and also to talk about whether or not
 he's missed development and what the experience has been for him.

[00:28:38] Nate asks Eric if he's been able to get more into the code
 and if he's starting to experience some of that knowledge work, the
 dopamine hit from shipping code. He's got a great answer.

[00:32:38] Eric picks on Andrew here for a bit, but it's a rather nice
 kind of picking and you'll see why. Andrew chimes in as well.

[00:38:46] Nate is curious because it sounds like Eric may have hit a
 couple of interesting barriers as he was getting back into code. He asks
 Eric if he can touch on this. Apparently, he rediscovered that code can
 be hard too.

[00:41:38] Eric has something to say about anyone curious about
 developing on Windows. Also, Nate asks him if there was anything that
 stuck out as difficult on Windows for him and he tells us what was
 difficult.

[00:47:52] Eric says if you're not following Andrew on Twitter and
 GitHub then you really, really should, and he explains why.

[00:49:30] Eric has some great things to say to the guys to end the
 episode.

Links

• Eric Berry - Twitter
• CodeFund
• Sustain OSS
• Andrew Mason - Twitter
• Andrew Mason - GitHub
• Gitcoin
• Paul at Peachtree Sound

Special Guest: Eric Berry.

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Panelists

• Andrew Mason
• Nate Hopkins
• Ron Cooke

Guests

• None

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:00:41] Andrew announces that Ruby 2.4 is no longer supported so
 get off of it and upgrade!

[00:02:32] Ron had some fun DevOps to share about with Digital Ocean,
 which actually weren't that fun, and you'll find out why.

[00:10:30] Nate takes the conversation into talking about templates in
 engines with Ruby and Rails and View Component. Andrew is experimenting
 with Slm and he talks about it. Find out why Andrew says, "Nate was
 right!"

[00:19:22] Nate asks Ron what templates he's using at work.

[00:23:55] Ron gives his opinion on readable. As he says, "The less
 parentheses the better." Andrew shares his opinion on parentheses.

[00:31:45] Nate brings up the exploit on the Ruby Gems, all the fake
 gem names, called "Typosquatting." Andrew explains what happened.

[00:35:12] The guys remind everyone to support Ruby Central and Ruby
 Together since they maintain, clean up, and do all kinds of stuff. They
 even have a store you can purchase things from.

[00:36:19] Andrew asks Nate to talk about the manager vs. maker's
 schedule since he's been doing more managerial tasks at CodeFund
 recently. He's trying to find a rhythm and balance things. Andrew and
 Ron also share their views on management.

[00:46:50] Andrew mentions that Chris Oliver, friend, co-host of
 Remote Ruby Podcast, and the leader of the Go Rails community, created a
 video on Stimulus Reflex, and it has gotten pretty popular. Also, Nate
 talks about how he feels about having one of the more popular Ruby
 packages at this point.

[00:50:07] Andrew talks about some "code of conduct" issues that were
 going on in their discord and he talks about what he did to resolve it.

[00:55:12] Andrew talks about having a PR and merging migration issue,
 so he asks Nate and Ron for advice and they help him out.

Links

RubyGems Typosquatting
Support of Ruby 2.4 has ended
The Hacker News - Ruby Gem Typosquatting
Maker's Schedule/Manager's Schedule
GoRails - "Introduction to Stimulus Reflex."
Arguments and Parentheses

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Panelists

• Andrew Mason

Guest Panelists

• Chris Oliver

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:02:13] Joel starts off by saying it's an exciting time for the
 project with all the changes going on and he discusses some of these
 changes. He also talks about why View Component is not going to be in
 Rails 6.1 and is that a good thing or bad thing?

[00:07:32] Joel talks about having 126 components and goes into
 further detail about them. Primer Design System and App Directory are
 mentioned. He also goes more in depth about the different forms in the
 component library.

[00:12:01] Andrew asks Joel to explain what are some things you should
 use components for and what are some things you should not?

[00:24:31] Chris mentions how there is some kind of organizing
 stimulus controllers with a component, but he wonders how does Joel look
 at the JavaScript part of those components? Joel explains here.

[00:29:48] Joel mentions although it's been nerve wrecking for him to
 work on this project, he makes it very clear that he's been phenomenally
 well supported by several people who are mentoring him. There are also
 so many people that are working with him internally and providing so
 much support and guidance, which helps to create this welcoming
 environment.

[00:35:10] Joel makes a comment that for an Open Source project, one
 of the best gifts anyone from the community can give him is a failing
 test. Find out why.

[00:39:44] Andrew asks Joel what's next for View Component and if he
 had a dream of something it could become, what is next?

[00:44:20] Joel makes a great point by saying that the reason we need
 to Open Source the components we are working on is that we learn so much
 more from actual complex examples. Why is this?

[00:47:52] Joel makes a point to say that the most important skill for
 a Rails engineer to have is good data modeling and understanding good
 database design. He gives a shout out to the "High Scalability" site
 that has done more for Joel's success in engineering interviews than any
 other resource.

[00:50:27] Joel has some final inspiring words about how much better
 off humanity would be if we were all working on these problems together
 and this is what Open Source is all about. It's about sharing what we're
 learning with other people. Andrew also chimes in with some good advice.

[00:54:22] Joel wraps it up with one final thing to say about the
 project and Andrew gives a homework assignment to those listening.

Links

Joel Hawksley: GitHub
Joel Hawksley: Website
ViewComponent
Primer
High Scalability
RailsConf 2019 - Rethinking the View Layer with Components

Special Guest: Joel Hawksley.

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Panelists

• Ron Cooke
• Nate Hopkins
• Andrew Mason

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:03:13] GitHub sponsors starts the talk on this episode, and how a
 few people have reached out about Stimulus Reflex asking how they can
 support the project and the various contributors. Ron shares what he's
 done.

[00:05:30] Ron has been working on ramping up a Legacy Rails App that
 fell out of maintenance and it was a lot more painful than he wanted it
 to be with Gem conflicts and Gem lock files. He gives a lesson on what
 you should do.

[00:10:29] Ron gives great advice that it is so important to keep your
 tests up to date. If it wasn't for the tests that he has at his current
 job, he would be "sunk."

[00:15:04] Nate is curious and asks Andrew if he can talk about
 specifics about why he was getting "chastised" on making a change in the
 app and it messed up something else. He talks about what happened and
 how it was fixed. Ron brings an interesting point about "bugs" and what
 a "bug" actually is.

[00:18:49] Andrew puts a plug in for Jason Swett, who has a podcast he
 does on Rails and he puts a lot of testing materials around Rails, so
 you should check it out.

[00:19:25] Ron asks the guys when they are writing tests and if they
 write tests first or last, and how do they feel about it?

[00:25:24] Talking about tests and "hairy" problems, Nate and Andrew
 recently had a deep pair session with Stimulus Reflex Sessions, so Nate
 explains what happened.

[00:32:18] Andrew announced that along the "JavaScripty" side of
 Stimulus Reflex, Web Packer 5 came out and then 5.0.1. He asked if Ron
 ugraded and what version of Rails he is on, which is then followed by
 laughs.

[00:33:49] Nate wants to know what is on Webpacker 5 so Andrew
 explains what they've added. Ron is curious to know how many people or
 how many projects are using it. If anyone knows, tweet the guys at the
 Ruby Blend on Twitter to let them know.

[00:41:17] Ron talks about how it's been for him working remotely from
 home for a full week. He explains why it's been a little rough for him.
 Nate also talks about his kids being home and how it's been challenging.

[00:46:25] Andrew has a quick hack if you need a good router. He
 really likes Nighthawk from NetGear. He also talks about upgrading to
 Cat 6 cables to boost your speed.

[00:47:15] Andrew brings up with the massive shifts and changes we are
 going through, and how is it going to have an impact on college
 educations and if it will lower the value of a college education doing
 online school. Nate and Ron share their views on this as well.

[00:53:50] Andrew mentions they would love if you could rate them on
 iTunes or hit the star in the Overcast player. Also, you could write
 reviews to help them continue to make more content and get some guests
 on the show.

Links

• Sponsor Nate on GitHub
• Open Collective
• Justin Dorfman (J$)
• RVM
• Gem Sets
• Jason Swett
• Nate & Andrew's StimulusReflex PR
• Webpacker 5.0.1
• Webpacker 5.0 article
• Nighthawk

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Summary

Nate, Ron, and Andrew stay quarantined along with the rest of the nation. Ron is
 happy he has snacks, so he's good! In this episode, the guys talk about
 Gatsby, Frontend JavaScript, Static Site Generation, and testing
 frameworks. Also, find out why Ron and Andrew affectionately refer to Nate as "Grandpa".

Panelists

Andrew Mason
 Nate Hopkins
 Ron Cooke

Guest

None this week

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:00:54] The guys start off by telling stories about how being
 quarantined has changed the dynamic of their lives with family, jobs,
 and social life.

[00:07:40] Andrew talks about he's been dabbling at static site
 generators for years. He goes into his experience trying to componentize
 it using React and Storybook. He also explains where his data lives for
 the static site.

[00:10:25] "GraphQL" is explained and how it essentially wraps your
 markdown. It also has a tool called "Graphical" that builds on your
 queries.

[00:17:00] Nate asks how easy is it to build with Gatsby without
 knowing React? Andrew explains and adds you need to figure out how JSX
 works.

[00:19:14] Nate asks Andrew how his experience went with
 componentizing things that he wanted to do with CodeFund codebase for a
 while and how far did he take it and what lessons did he pull out of it?

[00:21:11] Andrew mentions if anyone has heard of Mark Dalgleish who
 works on Playroom and has the best memes. He also mentions how Mark's
 belief is that you should make spacing itself a component.

[00:26:08] Andrew mentions the component library he was looking at
 called Braid-Design System.

[00:28:21] Andrew defines what "Storybook" is for anyone who may not
 have been exposed to it. He says it's a pretty slick tool!

[00:35:20] Nate brings up the old Java days or the .net days and how
 he feels the modern JavaScript ecosystem is even worse than the old Java
 XML configuration days.. in which he gets called "Grandpa" by Ron.

[00:37:30] Nate talks about what's going on with his controller
 library which contains three controllers right now and he has three
 lined up.

[00:39:01] The guys all talk about testing and frameworks and how they
 feel about them.

[00:47:00] Nate talks about a test suite he wrote called "PRY test."
 Listen to hear why he created this and how he uses it.

[00:52:34] Nate touches on layered caching but for more info on this
 check out Remote Ruby-Epsiode 70, where Nate talks more in depth about
 layered caching stuff they did at CodeFund.

Links

• Andrew's tweet to Eric
• Braid Design System
• Storybook
• Andrew's ActionView Component Demo with Storybook
• Mark Dalgleish Twitter
• Stimulus Controllers Package
• Pry Test
• Grumpy Old Man
• Gatsby
• CodeFund Gatsby Site
• StaticGen
• Remote Ruby #70

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Panelists

Andrew Mason
 Nate Hopkins
 Ron Cooke

Guest

None this week

Sponsor

Linode

Show Notes

[00:02:25] Nate asks Ron if his new company is using Rails like his
 last job. Ron explains how things like deploys are much easier and fast
 to do now, the differences in traffic, and the use of traditional Rails
 background jobs.

[00:06:23] Ron, Andrew, and Nate discuss the benefit of Rails monolith
 framework and how it ends up being a single deployed distributed system.

[00:10:11] From the, "Nate, please make this a gem file," Nate talks
 about his layered cache he added to CodeFund which IMMENSELY sped up
 average response time on the server side well below the 100ms, half of
 what it was before. Nate goes into details how he did it. Kind of neat!
 Andrew is flexing hard!

[00:12:09] Andrew brings up the news of GitHub buying out JavaScript
 developer platform, NPM. Microsoft is again strengthening its hold on
 Open Source. Is this a positive thing?

[00:16:05] Coronavirus has caused a lot of other businesses to make
 their employees work at home. At Dev's, quite a few of us already have
 been in that world for years. Haven't we been training for this our
 whole lives? Ron's current job has had him working out of the office and
 now transitioned to home. He discusses how that is going. Did his
 company have a plan in place? Using remote tools like Tuple to stay
 connected with the team, and (ugh) email. Nate brings up Hey.com's new
 email client.

[00:20:06] Like a lot of us, Andrew has a lot of unread emails. How
 many? Find out. Andrew you are NOT alone. The guys go in-depth on email
 clients and apps.

[00:26:27] How do you get in the "deep creative work" zone especially
 if you have meetings and other things interrupting your day? Do you
 block off time like Ron? Do you just work late at night? Are you like
 Nate and use 5 minutes of music to get you in the zone?

[00:33:03] Things that interrupt or even help you procrastinate
 getting into the deep work. Find out the one thing they shut off to stop
 the interruption.

[00:35:35] Social distancing is causing lots of people to be out of
 work. The boys talk about things they've been doing to help out
 businesses near them, as well as stories in the news they've read.

[00:44:24] Andrew tells Ron and Nate about the GitHub Actions
 Hackathon going on right now. Andrew has submitted, have you?

[00:47:39] Andrew's timing is amazing. He really didn't want to do the
 Ruby Meetup initially, but now with things like RailsConf getting
 cancelled & COVID-19...he "may" be all in now?! Stay tuned to the
 podcast for news on this.

Links

• GitHub (Microsoft) Aquires NPM
• Steve Ballmer's super sweaty "Developers" Speech snippet
• Tuple
• Screen Hero (throwback!)
• HEY Email Client
• Rollbar
• Front App
• Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
• Brain.fm Functional Music to Improve Focus
• Volunteers Produce 3D-printed Valves
• GitHub Hackathon
• Ruby Meetup

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Panelists

Andrew Mason
 Nate Hopkins

Guest

Chris Oliver

Show Notes

[00:01:37] Chris talks about how he discovered Ruby and began
 developing with it. It started with him wanting to build websites.

[00:05:05] Active resource is mentioned and what it did.

[00:08:12] Chris talks about IRC Bots that worked, and he also expands
 on his goal to teach himself how to use raw socket and the IRC Protocol.

[00:12:15] What helped Chris get his first job?

[00:14:17] Nate wants to know if Ruby is a good program language for
 beginners and if you can equate learning programming to learning a
 musical instrument, like a guitar. Chris explains and mentions an
 experience he had.

[00:20:40] Chris talks about his first Rails job where he had to build
 "breadcrumbs" and the issues he had. He has some great advice.

[00:31:22] Andrew shares a funny story about asking Chris for help
 refactoring. Listen what he did to help him.

[00:33:06] Chris explains what GoRails is, how it was born, where it
 came from, and what he does with it. You will be amazed at how many
 videos he's recorded.

[00:40:20] Two questions are answered by Chris that Nate is curious
 about. What's been his most popular episode and what is his personal
 favorite one?

[00:44:28] A rundown on HatchBox is given. Let's say it's a cheaper
 hosting service and you don't have to set it up all by yourself.

[00:51:57] A discussion is brought up about frustrations with
 Webpacker.

[00:54:48] Andrew finds the "log file" topic interesting and Chris
 expands on this and explains what can be used to help.

Links

RailsConf 2020
KeryxAdmins
Active Resource
DRb Overview
Coin
Refactoring
GoRails
RailsCasts
Student Developer Pack
GoRails Liking Posts
Hatchbox

Special Guest: Chris Oliver.

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Panelists

Ron Cooke
 Andrew Mason

Guest

None this week

Show Notes

[00:00:42] The guys discuss what they know about view component which
 is a component type library that GitHub was working on which was
 upstreamed into Rails and released with Rails 6.1.

[00:01:18] Andrew mentions Joel Hawksley gave a talk at RailsConf last
 year about taking action of your component. GitHub was all in on this
 library seeing a lot of performance gains over traditional partials.

[00:02:33] Andrew explains how you can create tests for your
 components and open them up with Rails Conductors and see the page or
 the component being rendered.

There was an announcement made this week so listen on.

[00:05:43] Andrew comments on the "Golden Path" and the "Rails Way"
 and how Rails is a product of Basecamp.

[00:09:35] Ron gives his opinion on why Action Cable is on by default
 in Rails.

[00:11:10] The guys discuss whether they like to use Haml, Slim, or
 ERB.

[00:19:54] Ron asks Andrew what his testing framework of choice was
 before he started at CodeFund.

[00:24:18] Ron mentions his recent changes in his job and Andrew has
 been "binging" working on code and he's created a design system
 visualizer engine.

[00:39:32] Pagination is discussed and how nobody is using it anymore.
 Instead, we infinite scroll and load more.

[00:45:45] Pagy and Pagy gem are brought up how it has a plug-in that
 will integrate with Arel and it's much faster.

[00:47:40] Unscoped and Default scopes are brought up in discussion.

[00:50:50] The guys "lightly" touch on the subject about going to
 college and bootcamps.

Links

Ruby on Rails
View Component Changes
Pagy with Arel
The Rails Way
ActionCable
Haml, Slim, ERB
Pagination
Scopes
RailsConf 2019- Joel Hawksley

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Sponsored By:

Linode

Panelists

Ron Cooke
 Nate Hopkins
 Andrew Mason

Guest

None this week

Show Notes

[01:32:15] Nate brings up Basecamp 3 and the new Hey! Menu, an email client competitor. Nate REALLY hopes it can replace Slack for him as he is tired of the constant notifications which mess with his workflow. 

[05:08:28] Ever curious Andrew has pulled the source code from Basecamp 3 and gives us a sneak peek at what is hidden in there and what might be coming down the road for Hey! 

[09:15:13] Nate also had to take a look and noticed that Basecamp is using an HTTP protocol vs WebSockets protocol. The Discourse team has articles that support doing it this way. 

[11:07:28] Ron has been busy working in the React App and the Ruby API Server. He talks about having to relearn it after not doing it for a while. It’s not like riding a bike. ☺ 

[18:21:10] The guys dive into the deep end and discuss how configuration is “developer quicksand.” Ron also talks about another item of “quicksand” for him…tweaking the setup in his Notion App.

[21:32:20] On the subject of both project and time management methods, the guys talk about how very few things actually work for them. Nate remembers an interesting article on how sometimes just writing something down can create a mental imprint to help you to remember to do something.

[25:55:00] Nate circles back to the Hey! source code. Andrew forgot to mention one takeaway he saw, something called Harmony, which he expects David Heinemeier Hansson to announce at RailsConf in Portland. This lead into an in depth discussion on Turbolinks and why it got such a bad rap and how in reality it’s a very forward thinking library.
 [33:21:29] Rack 2.2.1 got released. What’s new?? We are sure some of you are shouting, ”Please say bug fixes!” ☺
 [37:03:08] Nate is excited about Samuel Williams joining the Rack team, who’s done a lot of “under the hood” work for Ruby Concurrency. Nate also can’t wait to see what he does with things like Falcon Web Server.

[43:46:09] Ron brings up the Basecamp book, “Shape Up.” This leads into a big conversation on doing stand ups at work. 

[48:32:14] The guys talk about debugging with the Pry gem.

Links

Hey!
Yehuda Katz
Samuel Williams Website
Samuel Williams Twitter
React
Ruby On Rails Active
 Support
Notion
David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)
RailsConf Portland
Turbolinks
Paul Graham "Maker's Schedule, Manager's
 Schedule"
Rack Changelog
Ruby Concurrency
Falcon Web Server
Break
Pry
SameSite
MessageBus

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