Guests

• Betsy Haibel: CTO at Cohere. Blogs at betsyhaibel.com.
• Avdi Grimm: Head Chef at RubyTapas. Blogs at avdi.codes.
• Penelope Phippen: Works at Google, makes Rubyfmt, helps make RSpec, and is on the board of Ruby Central. Blog.

Summary

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.

Related Episodes with These Guests

• Avdi: 20 Years of Web Development, Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code
• Betsy: Diverse Agile Teams, How Set Design Can Inform Software Architecture
• Penelope: Code Style and Community, Back in the Testing Weeds, In The Testing Weeds

Notes

00:50 - Previously On: Re: Testing

• Pragmatic Programmer at 20 with Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt
• Teaching and Learning with Sandi Metz

02:53 - Testing and Design

• 99 Bottles of OOP
  05:43 - TDD

• Test Driven Development

• Do We Need Constants

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

• WikiWikiWeb

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.

Guest

Mike Todasco: Senior Director of Innovation at PayPal

Summary

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.

Notes

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.

Guest

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

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• Agile / Waterfall
• Time and Materials Contract / Fixed Contract

16:08 - Interacting with a Development Team

18:28 - Estimation

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

Special Guest: Ashley Quinto Powell.

Guests

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

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• Extreme Programming Explained
• Agile Manifesto

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.

Guests

• Alex Pedersen: Co-founder of Polco.

• Abhi Nemani Founder of EthosLabs.

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• Code For America
• Chi Hack Night
• Abhi's Course Notes in Civic Tech

Special Guests: Abhi Nemani and Alex Pederson.

Guest

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

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• RailsConf 2019 - Keynote: The Stories We Tell Our Children by Ariel Caplan

04:17 - The Myth of the Lone Genius

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

• The Passion Gospel - Avdi Grimm
• Passion | David Mitchell's SoapBox
• Tim Cook Thanks Apple Devs

12:36 - Stories That Benefit Our Employers

16:11 - How We Treat New Developers

• Don't Ask Us Questions. We'll Just Ignore You.

21:11 - “Real Programmers”

• Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

26:30 - Computer Science Education

31:07 - People Skills and Community

Special Guest: Ariel Caplan.

Guest

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

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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

• RAIN: Tara Brach

30:34 - Feedback and Identity

• Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
• Paul Graham: Keep Your Identity Small

Special Guest: Amy Newell.

Guest

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.

Summary

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.

Notes

01:48 - The Intersection of Law and Tech

• Bärí's RailsConf keynote: Ethical Issues in the Law and Tech with Production Ideation, Creation & Shipping

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

• Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon
• Carina Zona: Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm

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

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

• Facial recognition creeps up on a JetBlue passenger and she hates it
• HUD Is Suing Facebook For Housing Discrimination

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

• San Francisco Bans Facial Recognition Technology
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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

• GDPR: Right to be Forgotten

Special Guest: Bärí A. Williams.

Guest

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

Summary

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.

Notes

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

• Beyond the Whiteboard Interview

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.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guests

• Rex Chekal: Director of Digital Strategy and Product Designer at Table XI.
• Jessie Shternshus: Founder and Owner of the Improv Effect.
• Chemia Davis: Innovation Methods Conductor and Member of the Tyson Foods Innovation Lab.
• Santi Proano: Experimental Brand Dreamer for Yappah Foods and Member of the Tyson Foods Innovation Lab.

Summary

In this episode, we have a slightly different topic for Tech Done Right - food. Table XI has been working to adapt our design sprint process out of the realm of custom software and into more general product design. In particular, we've worked with Tyson Foods Innovation Lab on a few different projects including the creation of their Yappah brand which is designed to prevent food waste. In this episode, you'll hear from Chemia Davis and Santi Proano from Tyson, Rex Chekal from Table XI and Jessie Shternshus from the Improv Effect and we'll show you how we adapted design thinking and Agile process from software to food products.

Notes

02:58 - The Scope of Work Between Table XI and Tyson Foods Innovation Lab

04:08 - The Goal of the Innovation Lab

• Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

06:51 - Bringing Design Thinking to Product Development and CPGs

11:13 - Design Steps

• Nduja
• YAPPAH! Chicken Crisps

17:14 - Facilitating Communication

22:05 - The Sprint Week Experience

• The Three-Hour Brand Sprint

26:40 - Next Steps After Sprint Week

• Yappah on Indiegogo

29:32 - Learning From the Design and Coaching Process

Special Guests: Chemia Davis, Jesse Shternshus, Rex Chekal, and Santi Proano.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guests

• Andrew Means: Data Analysts 4 Social Good, The Good Tech Fest, Big Elephant Studios.
• Sean Marcia: Ruby For Good, Code For Good.

Summary

Our guests this week are Andrew Means of Data Analysts for Social Good and Sean Marcia of Ruby for Good. Both of them run organizations that are involved with using technology to helping non-profits that could use even some simple software or data assistance. We’ll talk about what kinds of work their organizations do, how non-profits differ from for-profit work, how they try to keep projects running over time, and how you can get involved working with technology for good.

Notes

02:01 - The Shared Mission of Tech For Good Events

• Uptake.org

04:04 - The History and The Why

06:30 - Working with Nonprofits and Vetting Projects

• National Diaper Bank Network
• 412 Food Rescue
• BrightHive
• Salesforce

13:20 - Managing and Maintaining Projects

16:26 - Understanding Nonprofit Problems and Issues

18:54 - For Profit vs Nonprofit

• The Overhead Ratio
• Tech Literacy

25:12 - Getting Involved / Recruiting Technologists

• DataKind

26:51 - Using Open Source

• Ruby for Good on GitHub

27:34 - Growing and Maturing the Tech For Good Space

Special Guests: Andrew Means and Sean Marcia.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Dicko Sow: Founder of Yodi Naturals.

Summary

Our guest this week is Dicko Sow. Dicko is a software developer at a technical consultancy, but recently she has been spending her time building out a side project called Yodi Naturals. We talk about how she chose the project, how important it was to plan the project, the technical decisions, and what Dicko learned putting together the launch page. If you’re trying to decide whether to try a side project, this episode has some good information about how to put that together.

Notes

01:58 - Wanting to do a Side Project; Deciding on Said Side Project

• Jumpstart your sideproject! -- Dicko Sow
• PearConf

03:59 - Yodi Naturals

05:56 - Getting Started (Mentally)

07:50 - Planning and Prioritization of Minimum Viable Product Features

13:25 - Name Origin

16:08 - Getting Started (Technically)

18:45 - Using React

20:26 - Working with AWS

22:24 - Decoupling React and Rails and Releasing Features

23:51 - Design

• MailChimp
• Google Analytics

26:31 - Learning as the Project Comes Together

27:29 - Managing Search and Tag Functionality

• Elasticsearch

31:18 - Recipe Curation

31:52 - Launching the Launch Page; Shipping Things

Special Guest: Dicko Sow.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

James Coglan: Author of Building Git and JavaScript Testing Recipes. More at jcoglan.com/.

Summary

Our guest today is James Coglan. James has written an extraordinary programming book called Building Git. In it, he describes the inner workings of the Git source control tool by re-implementing a substantial part it in Ruby, including commits, diffs, branching, and networking. Along the way he shows not just how Git works, but also details of some of the algorithms it uses. There’s also a lot about building complex systems generally. And it has some great examples of test-driven development. James and I also talk about implementing in a high-level language like Ruby, versus a lower-level language like C. It’s a unique book, and I’ve been looking forward to talking to James about it for some time.

Notes

01:58 - Reimplementing Git

04:17 - Examples and Understanding Git Internals

06:32 - Building Complex Systems in General

09:10 - How the Design of the Code Emerges

11:51 - Test-Driven Development

15:16 - Implementing Git and Ruby

22:37 - Surprises

26:29 - Making UI Changes

29:30 - Gaps Remaining in Functionality and Performance

32:04 - Contribution and Implementations in Other Languages
- Gary Bernhardt's Screencasts

34:25 - Lower-level Language vs Higher-level Language Implementation

Special Guest: James Coglan.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Orlando Saez: Co-founder and CEO of Aker Technologies.

Summary

Our guest today is Orlando Saez. Orlando is the co-founder and CEO of Aker, a precision crop diagnostic data and service company. We're going to talk about what that means and more generally, about how technology and agriculture intersect. We'll talk about how Orlando got into the agriculture and technology space and who his customers are and what they learn from using specialized drones to monitor their crops. It's an interesting deep dive into a part of the technology world that I, for one, did not know very much about and I hope you enjoy it.

Notes

01:44 - What Aker Does; The Tech/Agriculture Sector

• Becoming a Senior Engineer with Jamey Hampton

03:30 - Technology: IoT, Drones, and Machine Learning

08:55 - Aggregating Information + Shared Data

11:09 - Working with the Agriculture Sector and The Way Growers Work

• Precision Agriculture

17:14 - Differences Between Purchases and Users: Ways Products Are Used in the Field

20:40 - Aker as a Service Provider

21:53 - Drone Technology and Training Pilots

• GIS: Geographic Information System Mapping Technology
• Shapefiles

24:10 - Using General Machine Learning Techniques

25:51 - Looking Forward

28:21 - Orlando’s Background in Getting Involved in This Space

• Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food
• Food Evolution

31:18 - More Resources for People Interested in AgTech

• Thrive
• Salinas Valley Agricultural Technical Summit
• The Yield Lab
• Pro Farmer
• PrecisionAg
• Commodity Classic
• Farm Progress Show

Special Guest: Orlando Saez.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Summary

Our guest today is Barry O’Reilly, author of the book “Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results”. In it, he sets out a process for defining outcomes, identifying behaviors that might help or hinder reaching the outcomes, and then unlearning existing behaviors and relearning new ones. We talk about how that process works, how to use it yourself, how it might fail, and what Barry unlearned for himself in the process of writing the book. We’d like to hear from you. What’s something you’ve needed to unlearn to reach success? Let us know at techdoneright.io/57 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Guest

Barry O’Reilly: Author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results. Unlearn website. Author of Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale with Jez Humble and Joanne Molesky, barryoreilly.com.

Summary

03:15 - Letting Go and Unlearning Past Behavior

07:17 - How to Achieve and Define Positive Outcomes

• BJ Fogg
• Behavior Design

15:25 - Unlearning as a Continuous Cycle

20:25 - Think Big, Smart Small, and Learn Fast

26:14 - When People Don’t Succeed

29:03 - Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

31:30 - Learning to Unlearn

33:00 - Focusing on Deliberate Reflection

34:55 - Unlearning and Leadership Roles

36:56 - Getting Started with Unlearning

Special Guest: Barry O'Reilly.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or find us at http://tablexi.com.workshops

Today on the show, we're talking about hiring with Jennifer Tu and Zee Spencer of Cohere, Thayer Prime of Team Prime, and software consultant Matt Patterson. We talk about the entire developer hiring process from how to advertise your company to potential candidates, through coding tests and interviews, and all the way to the final decision process. It's a great conversation with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of good advice. We’d like to hear from you. What do you look for when hiring developers? Let us know at http://techdoneright.io/56 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Guests

• Jennifer Tu: Cofounder of Cohere.
• Zee Spencer: Cofounder of Cohere.
• Thayer Prime: Founder of Team Prime.
• Matt Patterson: Software Consultant.

Notes

02:55 - Common Mistakes When Hiring Developers

05:17 - Effective Hiring Procedures and Interview Processes

10:31 - Getting Your Company’s Name Out There

15:30 - Recruitment, Onboarding, and Reviews

18:52 - Sending Take-Home Exercises and the Problems They Present; Pre-Hire Pairing

30:33 - Good and Bad Uses of Interview Time

33:11 - Developing Interview Question and Using Standardization to Remove Biases

35:34 - Making Yes/No Decisions

Related Episodes

• Apprenticeship with Megan Tiu, Kara Carrell, and Alyssa Ramsey
• Diversity and Inclusion at Small Companies with Meara Charnetzki, Michael Donnelly, and Elena Valentine
• Live Panel: Hiring Developers in (and out of) Health Care
• Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial

Special Guests: Jennifer Tu, Matt Patterson, Thayer Prime, and Zee Spencer.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or visit the web at http://tablexi.com/workshops.

Guest

Allison McMillan: Engineering Manager at GitHub; Atom; Creator of the Parent Driven Development Podcast. Blogs at DayDreams in Ruby.

Summary

Today on the show we’re talking about engineering management. Allison McMillan is an engineering manager for the Atom team at GitHub. We talk about what her role is within the team, how she helps her team grow and improve, and how the management role is different from her previous developer jobs. We’d like to hear from you. What makes a great engineering manager? Let us know at techdoneright.io/55 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Notes

01:48 - What does an Engineering Manager do?

05:29 - Having Effective and Successful Meetings

12:20 - Goals as a Developer and Teammate

22:56 - Becoming an Engineering Manager

27:34 - Expectations and Challenges

32:01 - Measuring Yourself and Your Progress

35:10 - Plans to Improve / Having Teammates Rate Your Performance as a Manager

Related Episodes

• Episode 003: Remote Work with Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer

Special Guest: Allison McMillan.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or visit http://www.tablexi.com/workshops.

Guests

• Sam Phippen: Developer Advocate at Google and member of the RSpec Core Team
• Justin Searls: Cofounder of Test Double

Summary

On this episode, we’ve got Sam Phippen and Justin Searls back for their third round on the show. Both of them have been working on new Ruby tools to better standardize your team’s style and code formatting. We talk about why they’ve decided these tools are important, what their philosophy of coding style is, how coding style relates to the Ruby community, and how they evaluate code when given a code sample to look at.

We’d like to hear from you. How does your team handle differences of opinion in code style? Let us know at techdoneright.io/54 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Notes

02:21 - Code Style

• Bikeshedding
• Standard JS
• standard Ruby Gem
• rubocop
• Hash Rockets are good actually
• Sandi Metz: Why We Argue Style

09:46 - Choosing Ruby: Community Standards vs Style

14:59 - Evaluating Code Samples for Developer Positions

• Gilded Rose Refactoring Kata

21:04 - Ruby Format

29:05 - Selecting Rules For Standard

35:38 - Discrepancies in Rails View Template Files

• haml-lint

39:10 - What happens if these projects aren’t successful?

• Why's (poignant) Guide To Ruby

Previous Justin/Sam Episodes:

Part I: Episode 004: In The Testing Weeds
Part II: Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls

Special Guests: Justin Searls and Penelope Phippen.

TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com.workshops or email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Brian P. Hogan: Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean, Author of Small, Sharp, Software Tools: Harness the Combinatoric Power of Command-Line Tools and Utilities, teacher, student, and musician. More info at bphogan.com.

Summary

Developers use a variety of tools other than their programming language to get their jobs done. This week, we talk about those tools with Brian Hogan, an Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean. Brian's a prolific technical educator, writer, and editor and he's currently the author of the book Small, Sharp, Software Tools from the Pragmatic Press. We talk about why command line tools in particular are important, what command line tools do well, and why some people including myself often find them opaque and confusing. We talk about our favorite tools and about customizing your workflow to fit your needs.

Notes

02:33 - Benefits to being comfortable on the Command Line Interface (CLI)

• Small, Sharp, Software Tools
• Brad Urani, The Ruby Developer's Command Line Toolkit
• Noel Rappin, The Developers Toolkit
• Developer's Toolkit Cheat Sheet
• Create React App
• A command that shows commonly used commands

09:43 - Concepts that people struggle with and don’t internalize

11:13 - ‘awk’ and ‘sed’ defined

• awk
• sed
• Elixir
• F#

14:48 - The Ethos of Cargo Culting Information

• Z Shell
• Oh My Zsh
• Makefile
• Deckset
• Noel's Deckset Editor

20:02 - Reminding Yourself to Use Tools and Shortcuts

• Z Shell History Substring Search
• TextMate

27:31 - Benefit to Setup/Cost Ratio

• Bash prompt generator
• RB command line

30:28 - Differences in Tools on Different Machines and Operating Systems

32:52 - Tools You Should Know Better

• Rubular
• regex101
• regex-railroad-diagram
• entr

37:29 - Practice as Continuous Improvement

• Exercises for Programmers

Special Guest: Brian Hogan.

TableXI offers training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com/workshops or email us at workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Jamey Hampton: Senior Software Dev at Agrilyst and panelist on Greater Than Code. Blogs at jamey-alea.com.

Summary

On this episode, we're talking about becoming a senior engineer. When you first become a senior engineer, you suddenly have new job responsibilities that aren't coding and they aren't management. It's not clear how to balance your time or evaluate your success. Our guest this week is Jamey Hampton, a panelist on the Greater Than Code podcast and a Senior Engineer at Agrilyst. We talk about how to handle the changing responsibilities and perspective that comes from being promoted even when you're still the same person that you were the previous week. We also talk specifically about hiring as a non-coding responsibility.

Notes

02:00 - Taking on New Responsibilities as a Senior Developer

07:20 - Evaluating Productivity

11:05 - Seeing Victory on an Abstract Level

17:26 - Client Meetings and Talking to Non-Technical Clients

23:21 - Hiring and Conducting Interviews

33:10 - Keeping Up With Coding and Other Skills

• Kerri Miller: Crescent Wrenches and Debuggers: Building Your Own Toolkit For Rational Inquiry

Related Episodes

• Empowering Entry-Level Developers with Mercedes Bernard
• Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos
• Career Development With Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks

Special Guest: Jamey Hampton.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or see our offerings at http://tablexi.com/workshops.

The Table XI inclusive meeting Kickstarter is ongoing as this episode is released, see http://tablexi.com/kickstarter for more information.

Guest

Luisa M. Morales, luisam.com.

Summary

As many as 15 to 25 percent of your site’s potential users may have trouble accessing it due to some kind of disability. How can you design your site to allow your content to be usable by the widest variety of users? My guest today is Luisa Morales, an engineering fellow at the New York City Mayor’s office for Economic Opportunity. We talk about what accessibility means, how to design your site to be accessible, and what guidelines to use to help ensure success. We’ll also talk about a very literal form of accessibility — making your site behave in a way that it is accessible to users with limited bandwidth or older devices. We’d like to hear from you. What issues or successes have you had with accessibility? Let us know at techdoneright.io or on Twitter at @tech_done_right.

Notes

02:15 - Defining “Accessibility” and the Population Who May Be Affected

• W3C Guidelines

05:00 - What Web Devs Can Do To Makes Sites Accessible

07:30 - ARIA

09:55 - How Screen Readers Work

12:45 - How To Build in Accessibility

• h1 Elements

17:36 - Approaching Page Design

20:23 - Auditing Accessibility Issues

• JAWS
• NVDA
• High Contrast
• ChromeVox
• Browserstack
• Pa11y

22:20 - Accessibility Based on Access

• Progressive Web App
• Accelerated Mobile Pages
• The minimalist version of CNN is actually at http://lite.cnn.io

26:49 - Accessibility, JavaScript, Single-page Apps and Site Simulation

32:04 - Accessibility is for everyone: Reasons You Should Care

Special Guest: Luisa Morales.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email go to http://tablexi.com/workshops.

Guest

Mercedes Bernard: Senior Software Engineer at DevMynd. mercedesbernard.com.

Summary

How can your company empower your entry-level developers to grow their skills and advance their careers? If you are an entry-level developer, what are skills that are important for growth. Mercedes Bernard, a Senior Software Engineer at DevMynd, joins Tech Done Right to talk about empowering entry-level developers. We talk about giving people scaffolding to support them in owning larger and larger parts of a software process, and how to align your entire company to support growth.

Notes

02:15 - Misconceptions About What it Takes to Level Up and The Best Ways to Start Making That Journey

04:17 - On Being a “Domain Expert” or a “Sponsor”

07:52 - Job Switching, Career Advancement, and Promotion

13:48 - Determining Levels and Providing Support

• Brandon Hays

20:17 - Scaffolding

21:59 - Entry-Level Struggles: Confidence and Time Management

27:55 - Mentorship

31:01 - Giving Support to Entry Level Teammates: Feedback

33:44 - Signs People Need Support

35:06 - The Importance of Hiring Junior Developers

Related Episodes

• Apprenticeship with Megan Tiu, Kara Carrell, and Alyssa Ramsey
• Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee With Shay Howe and John Gore
• Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos
• Career Development With Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks

Special Guest: Mercedes Bernard.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, visit http://tablexi.com/workshops.

Guests

• Sarah Mei: Founder of RailsBridge, Director of Ruby Central, Software Architect at Salesforce.
• Avdi Grimm: Creator of the RubyTapas Screencast Series and author of Exceptional Ruby and Confident Ruby. avdi.codes.

Summary

What has changed in web development in the last 20 years, and what do those changes say about the next 20? I recently realized that Avdi Grimm, the head chef of Ruby Tapas, Sarah Mei, of Ruby Central and Salesforce, and I all began our professional careers within a couple of weeks of each other in August 1998. I wanted to talk to them about what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. I was curious as to whether our different career paths led to similar observations. We talk about open source, agile, dynamic languages, distributed systems and how they’ve all changed or haven’t changed the developer’s experience.

Notes

02:19 - First Software Job Education and Experiences

09:25 - What has changed? What is easier/harder?

20:16 - What has changed in Product Management?

27:22 - Processor Speed

32:24 - What has stayed the same?

40:20 - Typed Languages

42:48 - What is going to change over the next 5-10 years?

• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by by Steve McConnell

Related Episodes

• Rubyists in Other Languages with James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik
• Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm
• Livable Code With Sarah Mei

Special Guests: Avdi Grimm and Sarah Mei.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guest

Nickolas Means | nickol.as | VP of Engineering at MuveHealth

Summary

How can you learn from an engineering team's failure? Can you take the examples of how others have dealt with engineering problems to improve your team's day-to-day operations. Our guest is Nickolas Means, a software manager at Muve Health, who is fascinated by engineering failures. We talk about what you can learn from studying disasters, how to create a company culture in calm times that will works smoothly in stressful times, and how a successful engineering team communicates using stories and how they handle mistakes. Along the way, we talk about the recent incident at the Seattle Airport, the CitiCorp building in Manhattan, Three Mile Island and other engineering and team missteps. We have, I hope, a successful show about failure.

Notes

02:12 - Learning From Engineering Team Failure

• Seconds From Disaster

04:49 - Self-Reporting of Near Accidents

• How a change in hospital policy saved thousands of lives

06:54 - First Story/Second Story

• RailsConf 2018: Who Destroyed Three Mile Island? by Nickolas Means
• The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error 2nd edition Edition

08:46 - How the Airline Worker Who Stole a Plane in Seattle Exposed a Security Risk

13:44 - The Design Flaw That Almost Wiped Out an NYC Skyscraper

• RubyConf 2016 - The Building Built on Stilts by Nickolas Means
• 99% Invisible Podcast: Structural Integrity

16:33 - Focusing on Blamelessness and Building a Learning Culture on a Team

21:04 - Overpaging Engineering Teams

• Charity Majors on overpaging

25:21 - Story Communication

• Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint in Meetings. His Replacement Is Brilliant

29:44 - Helping Team Members Make Better Decisions

• The Boring Software Manifesto
• Dan McKinley: Choose Boring Technology

34:29 - How to Behave When Things Go Wrong

• The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis

Related Episodes

• Developers from the Perspective of Product Owners
• The Social Responsibility of Coding with Liz Abinante
• Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka

Special Guest: Nickolas Means.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Guests

• Steve Klabnik: Blog
• James Edward Gray II: Blog

Summary

Ruby is great. But it's not the best tool for everything. On this episode, I talk to James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik. Both James and Steve have made substantial contributions to the Ruby and Rails community, and they now both spend lots of time using other languages. We talk about what makes Rust and Elixir interesting for Ruby developers to learn, what some other interesting languages might be.

Notes

01:48 - Moving Towards Other Programming Languages from Ruby: Why?

03:39 - Rust

• The Rust Programming Language
• The Elm Programming Language
• The Rust Programming Language (Book) by Steve Klabnik

17:54 - Other Cool Programming Languages for Rubyists

• Scratch
• Logo
• GameSalad
• GameMaker Studio 2
• Prograph
• Abstract Syntax Tree

29:22 - Elixir

• The Elixir Programming Language
• Erlang
• Prolog
• Pattern Matching

Related Episodes

• Programming Languages and Communication With Kerri Miller
• React Native with Gant Laborde, Ed LaFoy, and Brent Vatne
• Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm
• The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines

Special Guests: James Edward Gray II and Steve Klabnik.

TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Summary

Presenting a technical talk can be an important part of a developer's career.
In this episode, we're talking about how to perform a technical talk with Saron Yitbarek. Saron runs the CodeNewbie Podcast, and others, and organizes and coaches speakers for the Codeland Conference. Saron and I both have some thoughts and opinions about how to deliver a good technical talk. This episode has a lot of tips about how to prepare, what to do at the start of a talk, how to engage the audience, and why emoji are better for slides than videos? We'll give advice on how to give the talk that only you can give and how to get the best performance that you can.

Guest

Saron Yitbarek: Web, Podcaster: CodeNewbie, Base.cs Podcast, Command Line Heroes.

Notes

01:46 - Saron’s Public Speaking Experience Prior to RailsConf 2014

• Reading Code Good by Saron Yitbarek
  

03:02 - The Performance of a Technical Talk

• Transitions: The easiest way to improve your tech talk
• OSCON Talk: Ask More Questions

06:50 - Should you memorize or wing your talk?

• Deckset

11:58 - Knowing Your Audience

• Jen Simmons: It's Never Been A Better Time to Learn Layout CSS

21:20 - Designing Slides

28:17 - Talk Beginnings and Endings

37:11 - Practicing and Delivering Your Talk

40:43 - Moving Physicality and Talking Speed

46:45 - Giving The Talk No One Else Can Give

Related Episodes

• Organizing Technical Conferences
• Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon

Special Guest: Saron Yitbarek.

TableXI is offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Summary

What is an apprenticeship program, how is it different from an internship, and how can your company benefit from having one? In this episode, we’re talking about technical apprenticeships with Megan Tiu of Women Who Code. Megan and I have both run apprenticeships at various companies. We’re also joined by Table XI’s current apprentice cohort, Kara Carrell and Alyssa Ramsey.

Guests

• Megan Tiu: Engineering Manager with Women Who Code. megantiu.com.
• Alyssa Ramsey: Developer Apprentice at TableXI.
• Kara Carrell: Developer Apprentice at TableXI.

Notes

02:18 - Apprenticeship: Defined

04:38 - Finding and Hiring People for Apprenticeships

05:21 - Interviewing For Apprenticeships

08:35 - Organizing Apprenticeships

14:13 - Making Use of Unstructured Time and Other Opportunities for Apprentices

17:39 - Career-Growth Support

• Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye

20:40 - Having a Sponsor and Getting Support

• Sticky Note Game

24:20 - Evaluating Apprentices

27:59 - Benefits For Companies That Have Apprenticeship Programs

• How to be a Better Junior Developer, by Katherine Wu

Related Episodes

• Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee With Shay Howe and John Gore
• Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial
• Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos
• Career Development With Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks

Special Guests: Alyssa Ramsey, Kara Carrell, and Megan Tiu.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Summary

What can a small company do to improve its diversity and inclusion practices when your company just isn't changing personnel quickly enough to improve via hiring? Here to discuss this are Meara Charnetzki from Table XI, Michael Donnelly from the FWD Collective and Elena Valentine from Skill Scout. We'll all about company values, supporting a wider community, using internal feedback, and what to do to encourage improvement at your company.

Guests

• Meara Charnetzki of Table XI
• Michael Donnelly of The FWD Collective
  
• Elena Valentine of Skill Scout

Notes

02:56 - Advice For Small Companies Interested in Being More Diverse

09:08 - Vetting Companies for Diversity & Inclusion Values

13:59 - Having a Healthy Company Feedback System

• Know Your Company
• Managing for Career Development with Claire Lew

17:02 - Building Relationships as a Company Leader

20:09 - Diversity and Inclusion Benefits Everyone

23:31 - Encouraging Companies to Start D&I Initiatives as an Employee

30:45 - Company Exit Interviews

32:26 - Salary Transparency

35:51 - Flexible Working Structures

Related Episodes

• Diverse Agile Teams with Marlena Compton, Betsy Haibel, and Jennifer Tu
• Your First 100 Days at a New Company with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos
• Managing for Career Development with Claire Lew

Special Guests: Elena Valentine, Meara Charnetzki, and Michael Donnelly.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, go to http://tablexi.com/workshops.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Summary

I've been attending technical conferences for years, and I've always wondered about the hidden challenges involved in putting a conference together. In this show, four of the best conference organizers I know join me to share their secrets and stories. Marty Haught, organizer of many conferences including RubyConf and RailsConf, Jen Remsik and Jim Remsik, who organize the Madison+ family of conferences, and Leah Silber, who organizes EmberConf and RustConf. Learn about budgets, picking talks, and managing facilities and vendors.

Guests

• Marty Haught: President at Haught Codeworks, Director at Ruby Central organizing RailsConf and RubyConf
• Jen Remsik: Director of People Operations at Adorable.io, Organizer of Madison Ruby
• Jim Remsik: President of Adorable.io, Organizer of Madison Ruby.
• Leah Silber: CEO at Tilde Inc.. EmberConf, RustConf, and RailsConf Organizer. Author of Event Driven: How to Run Memorable Tech Conferences.

Notes

03:12 - Getting Things Right and Having Empathy for Attendees

11:16 - Budgetary Aspects

14:53 - Planning Conferences in Other Cities

18:22 - Putting the Program Together and Selection Processes

29:25 - Crafting a Conference Proposal

31:12 - Encouraging and Enabling Attendee Interaction

40:03 - Conference Mentorship

41:26 - Words of Advice

Special Guests: Jen Remsik, Jim Resmsik, Leah Silber, and Marty Haught.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Guests

• Marlena Compton: Organizer of PearConf.
• Betsy Haibel: CTO at Cohere.
• Jennifer Tu: Co-Founder at Cohere.

Summary

How do common Agile practices like pair programming and retrospectives work when you have diverse teams? How can you make sure that underrepresented team members have their voices heard, and how does doing so improve the way that your team delivers software? Besty Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton discuss ways in which Agile practices can better serve your team in the real world. For more discussion, be sure to check out PearConf.

Notes

02:05 - Pairing and Agile Development on Diverse Teams

• Betsy on Twitter

04:31 - Implicit Agreement, Teaching Vs Exploring, and Power Differentials in Pairing

• Ruby DCamp
• Code Retreat
• Allison McMillan

08:52 - Understanding and Improving Team Dynamics: Building a Library of Smells

• Pairing With Privilege
• Ping Pong Pairing
• Troll Pairing
• Table XI Pair-A-Palooza Station

17:57 - Good Agile Pair Programming Techniques + Retrospective Roles

• Running your unconference discussions effectively: AdaCamp session role cards

22:14 - Making People Comfortable When Speaking Up and Making Agile Healthier

• Dot-Voting

32:30 - Agile As An Institution

• Agile Manifesto

38:34 - Backing Away From The Idea of Perfection

42:42 - PearConf Details

43:55 - Bonus Conversation: The Practices Not Being the Manifesto

• The Winter Getaway That Turned The Software World Upside down by Caroline Mimbs Nyce

Related Episodes

• Nonviolent Conversation with Nadia Odunayo
• How Set Design Can Inform Software Architecture With Betsy Haibel
• Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka

Special Guests: Betsy Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping!

Summary

What does AI mean for the future of design, development? Can I be replaced by an AI algorithm? Today, we talk to Zach Pousman, from the consultancy Helpfully. Zach thinks a lot about artificial intelligence and how it might impact the future of different knowledge work. It's impossible to talk about AI without talking about the ethics of AI projects and how AI might affect the larger society. We'll talk about why AI started with chess and moved to facial recognition, what AI might and might not be able to do in the future, how we might deal with it, and how that will change the way you work.

Guest

Zach Pousman: Principal at Helpfully.

Notes

02:28 - What is AI?

05:18 - AI Potentially Changing the Way Designers and Developers Work

11:40 - Development Biases and Algorithmic Failures

• Weapons of Math Destruction
• Carina C. Zona: Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm

16:12 - Taking Novice Performance to Expert Levels

• All Websites Look The Same

18:56 - Susceptible Knowledge Work at Risk Due to AI and Ethics; AI as “Parlor Tricks”

• Reddit Thread: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job?
• McKinsey Article: What AI can and can’t do (yet) for your business
• I got the tic-tac-toe story from this tweet, which references this paper "The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution" with more examples
• Loebner Prize
• The ELIZA Program
• The Stanford Question Answering Dataset
• tf-idf

33:06 - AI Vs. Humans and Legislation

• Google Translate

• When an AI finally kills someone, who will be responsible?

• When Luddites Attack

43:09 - Human Skills That Aren’t Replaceable (4C’s: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity)

Special Guest: Zach Pousman.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping!

Guest

Kerri Miller: Senior Developer at TravisCI and Ruby Community Member. Co-Organizer of the Open Source and Feelings Conference. Blog.

Summary

Why is Smalltalk the Elizabethan English of programming languages? Why has it been so influential, and how does the programming language you use affect the way you think about programming. On this episode, Kerri Miller and I talk about programming languages and communication, and what we've learned from our most recent programming language adventures.

Notes

01:56 - Introduction

• Twitter Stream
• Creole Languages
• Pidgin

06:18 - SmallTalk is to Ruby as Elizabethan English is to Modern Day

08:11 - SmallTalk’s History

• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
• Squeak
• By the way, I did get the Squeak history partially wrong. The original work was done at Apple, and when they went to Disney after that, they downloaded their Apple work as Open Source to continue. (It is possibly named Squeak because they were being wooed by Disney). The technical details are basically right, though.

17:55 - Thinking About Programming and Software Projects in a Flexible Way

• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

22:01 - Object-Oriented Programming, Thinking, and Design

• The Overton Window

28:37 - Learning New Programming Languages, Concepts, and Techniques

• The Silmarillion by Tolkien
• Nothing is Something by Sandi Metz
• Much Ado About Naught by Avdi Grimm

Related Episodes

• Back in the Testing Weeds with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls
• Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm
• The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines

Special Guest: Kerri Miller.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated and available for purchase!

Guests

• Gant Laborde: Chief Technology Strategist at Infinite Red. Gant on Medium.

• Ed LaFoy: Director of Mobile Development at TableXI.

• Brent Vatne: React Native and Expo Developer at Expo.

Summary

After many attempts at cross-platform mobile application tools, React Native seems to be the real deal, easy to use, powerful tools, and native look and feel. On this show, Ed LaFoy, Table XI's Director of Mobile Development, is joined by two longtime members of the React Native community: Gant Laborde of Infinite Red and Brent Vatne of Expo. We talk about why React Native succeeds, and how to be successful using it, and also give some resources for people who want to get started.

Notes

02:18 - What is React Native and when would someone us it?

03:50 - The Competitive Advantage of React Native

05:48 - What makes React Native succeed as compared to other tools?

• JSX
• Redux
• redux-saga
• react-native-web

13:15 - The Immediate, Out-of-the-box Experience

• Snack
• React Navigation

20:23 - Limitations and Boundaries and Skills to be an Effective React Native Developer

29:18 - The React Native Core

38:03 - The React Native Community

38:52 - Resources

• The React Native Newsletter
• The React Native Conference (US)
• The React Native Conference (EU)
• React Native Express
• ReactEurope 2017 React Native Workshop with Expo (YouTube Playlist)
• Animated
• React Native Training
• react-native-storybook

Related Episodes

• Navigating the JavaScript World: A Panel Discussion
• The Elm Programming Language With Corey Haines
• JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks with Zach Briggs and David Copeland

Special Guests: Brent Vatne, Ed LaFoy, and Gant Laborde.

Guest

Neil Patel: Co-Founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and Kissmetrics, Serial Entrepreneur, and Marketer. Blog.

Things we Do

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com.

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated and available for purchase!

Summary

How can you take an idea, find a development team to realize your vision, and then improve it? And once the vision is realized, how do you get people to find the product? Serial entrepreneur and digital marketing expert Neil Patel joins Tech Done Right to talk about his process for repeatably going from idea to product.

Notes

02:23 - What makes a good relationship with a development team? / Initial Interactions

04:22 - How do you know things are going well? What defines success and what causes delays?

06:29 - Boundaries Between Product Owners and Developers

07:12 - Red Flags and Bad Indicators of Future Results / What are indicators that things are going well?

09:31 - How/where do product owners start projects? Design Deliverables

12:35 - Launching Products / How is this process changing?

15:12 - Getting People to Use Your Product(s)

16:33 - Onboarding Flow and Improving First Experiences

18:02 - Use Cases and User Feedback

19:56 - Dealing With vs Acquiring Users

21:29 - Tips and Processes for Marketing and Improving Products

23:48 - Getting Excited by New Products

Related Episodes

• From Idea To Company With Maci Peterson
• Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion
• Agile UX Product Design with Yana Carstens and Jeff Patton

Special Guest: Neil Patel.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right Also, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

The newsletter is back! For more information on upcoming episodes, sign up at http://techdoneright.io/newsletter

Guests

Mark Yoon: Developer and Director of Talent at Table XI
Kyoko Crawford: CEO of SkinIO.

Summary

How do you design for both doctors and patients, two very different audiences that need the same data? If you are designing health care technology, how do you build the trust that lets users know it's okay to share sensitive medical data, such as full-body skin images? Kyoko Crawford, CEO of SkinIO, joins Mark Yoon of Table XI on the show to talk about the challenges of health care technology, and how empathy is always important in the end.

Notes

02:02 - Designing for Liability

07:49 - Physicians and Technology and The Generational Divide in Doctors
Podcasting and Audio Stories with Dr. Ed Livingston

13:48 - Patients and Users

19:09 - Building Trust and Authority and Designing for Reassurance

26:41 - Testing and Detection

34:56 - Tech Team Exposure to Healthcare

37:16 - Attention Between Precision of Medical Data and Usability

41:21 - Empathy: Linking Together the Medical and Tech Fields

Related Episodes

• Podcasting and Audio Stories with Dr. Ed Livingston
• Live Panel: Hiring Developers in (and out of) Health Care
• Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt

Special Guests: Kyoko Crawford and Mark Yoon.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right Also, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

The newsletter is back! For more information on upcoming episodes, sign up at http://techdoneright.io/newsletter

Guests

Cat de Merode: VP of Product at PeaPod

Matt McNamara: Product Manager

Summary

Have you ever wondered what it's like to work with a software team? Perhaps you are a developer wondering what you seem like from the outside? Or maybe you are starting to work with a software team and you want to know what to expect? Cat de Merode and Matt McNamara join the show to talk about their experiences as product owners interacting with developer teams. We'll talk about what developers can do to build trust, how to work with product owners on estimates and to talk about technical topics. And they'll say what the most important things developers should know about working with their product owners.

Notes

02:43 - Dealing with Developer Teams

04:00 - In-house vs External Developers

05:33 - Helping Developers Understand Product Owner Motivation and Goals and Getting on the Same Page

11:18 - How can developers build trust?

12:29 - Explaining Architectural Decisions to Product Owners

14:29 - Does team size make a difference?

16:30 - Good Company Culture Behavior

18:44 - Estimation and Complexity

• More on velocity: Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka

28:40 - Curation of Features

34:15 - What should developers know about working with product owners?

Related Episodes

• Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka
• From Idea To Company With Maci Peterson and Alicia Drucker
• Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos

Special Guests: Cat de Merode and Matt McNamara.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right Also, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Nell Shamrell-Harrington: Senior Software Development Engineer at Chef, CTO of Operation Code. nellshamrell.com

Summary

What's it like to run an Open Source project as part of your day job? How does open source change when it's backed by a company? Why is it useful for a company to run open source projects? Nell Shamrell-Harrington, who runs the Habitat project for Chef is on the show to talk about open source contributing and maintenance. You'll come away with some ways to be a better contributor and maintainer.

Notes

01:57 - Nell’s History Working on Open Source

• gibbon

03:37 - Open Source Governance

• The FreeBSD Project

07:07 - Chef, Having Community Discussions, and Handling RFCs and Contributions

• Chef Compliance
• Habitat

13:48 - Being Involved in DevProgress and Campaign Volunteering as a Developer

20:57 - Closed Source vs Open Source Development

25:48 - Advice for Getting Started in Open Source and Emphasis on Defined Codes of Conduct

27:44 - Accepting & Reviewing Pull Requests and Being Clear on What Tools Are For and Looking For in Contributions

32:29 - Common Mistakes Among Contributors and Maintainers

• RailsConf 2017: Teaching RSpec to Play nice with Rails by Sam Phippen

34:55 - Keeping Open Source Projects Sustainable

Related Episodes

• Software, Open Source, and Rails With Eileen Uchitelle and Andrew Horner
• Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens
• Open Source: The Big Picture with Nadia Eghbal

Special Guest: Nell Shamrell-Harrington.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right Also, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Suzan Bond: Host of the Indiedoes Podcast, Founder of Bet On Yourself and Bet On Your People.

Summary

Are you a developer that wants to create your own content and build an audience? Suzan Bond joins the show to talk about how to bet on your self. We talk about how to be comfortable marketing, how to present yourself as a credible source for developer-focused content, and how to build and maintain an audience. It's the kind of advice you'd normally have to pay a coach for, offered for free because that's how we build our audience here at Tech Done Right.

Notes

Sorry, Suzan's audio has some glitches in the source track. We did the best we could, but there's still some words dropped. We're sorry about that, but hope you still find the conversation interesting.

02:25 - Developers, Companies, and Personal Growth

06:56 - Taking the First Steps to Betting On Yourself (Working Independently)

10:57 - Marketing: Effective vs. Comfortable

15:16 - Selling Books is Hard

• Rails 5 Test Prescriptions

18:35 - Approaching Side Projects and Presenting Yourself as a Credible Source

21:59 - Understanding Your Audience and Incorporating Information Into Planning

• Take My Money

30:31 - Tools and Techniques for Connecting and Re-engaging with Your Audience

• Paul Jarvis

Related Episodes

• Ruby Tapas and Avoiding Code with Avdi Grimm
• Building Trust and Building Teams with Jessie Shternshus and Mark Rickmeier

Special Guest: Suzan Bond.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right Also, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Dr. Ed Livingston: Practicing surgeon and Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA. Deputy Editor for Clinical Reviews and Education.

Summary

How can your company use podcasting to make their content available and relevant for a whole new audience? Dr. Ed Livingston joins the show to discuss how the Journal of the American Medical Association is using podcasting to connect with their audience. We talk about how to get started in podcasting, and about Dr. Livingston's journey from surgeon to the Voice of JAMA. Even if you don't know a scalpel from a microphone, this episode will show you where to start your own podcast stories.

Notes

01:44 - Why did JAMA decide to start doing podcasts?

04:39 - Telling a Story with a Podcast and JAMA’s Podcasting Process

07:54 - Assuming Technical Knowledge on Audiences

09:55 - Engaging with Audiences and Using Listener Feedback

11:35 - Producing Podcasts; Scriptwriting and Storytelling

• This American Life
• Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio by Jessica Abel

21:03 - Lessons Learned During the First Year of Podcasting

23:29 - Using Your Voice to Convert Script

• Ira Glass
• Freakonomics
• The Memory Palace
• Fresh Air
• Terry Gross
• The Turnaround from Jesse Thorn and Maximum Fun
• Jessica Abel’s Podcast

31:24 - Approaching Interviews and Learning with the Audience

34:36 - Getting Started with Podcasting

• Podcast Method

37:34 - Future Plans for Growing Audience

40:53 - Medical Experience Influence on the Podcast

• Podcasts from The JAMA Network

43:57 - The Typical Reporter Question: What else should I have asked you?

Related Episodes

• Using Software To Create Better Countries: Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt
• Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon
• From Idea To Company With Maci Peterson and Alicia Drucker

Special Guest: Ed Livingston.

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Liz Abinante: Senior Software Engineer at GitHub and occasionally acts as Ruby Documentation Empress at RubyTogether. Blogs at lizabinante.com.

Summary

What responsibility do developers have for the consequences of their code? Liz Abinante joins the show to talk about overlooked consequences, big and small, and what you can do if you find your self being asked to do something you think is unethical. Along the way, we talk about user data, the cloud, making career choices you are comfortable with, and why you should always go to Canadian college engineering conferences when asked.

Notes

01:39 - The Social Responsibility of Coding Talk

• Why do people keep coming to this couple's home looking for lost phones?
• Reply All 53: In The Desert
• The Not-So-Wholesome Reality Behind The Making of Your Meal Kit
• VW Engineer Sentenced

07:35 - Being Responsible For Data

14:09 - Speaking Up for Ethical Practices

21:44 - Staying at an Unreputable Company and Guiding Your Career

• Amazon Key

28:29 - Being Aware of the Context You’re Coding In

• The Impact

34:30 - Liz’s Talk Audience

• CUSEC

37:30 - Empathy and Ethics Training

Related Episodes

• Nonviolent Conversation with Nadia Odunayo
• Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt
• Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens

Special Guest: Liz Abinante.

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Avdi Grimm: Creator of the RubyTapas Screencast Series and author of Exceptional Ruby and Confident Ruby. avdi.codes

Summary

Avdi Grimm has been creating the RubyTapas screencast series for five years. In this episode Avdi and I talk about why he decided to do RubyTapas, and what makes a good episode. We also talk about the resources that helped us when we were learning to code. Then Avdi talks about his experience building the RubyTapas web site and explains how sometimes avoiding code can be the best business decision of all.

Notes

01:20 - Starting and Sustaining RubyTapas

04:59 - Shorter Episodes Vs Longer Episodes

08:00 - Creating an Example for a Topic

10:49 - Future-proofing Episodes

12:51 - Helpful Resources When Avdi and Noel Were Learning How to Code

• Programming Perl (The Camel Book)
• The Pragmatic Programmer
• Code Complete
• Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns
• Ruby Midwest 2011 Confident Code by Avdi Grimm

18:31 - Learning New Things Now; Online Marketing

• Copyblogger

26:12 - Avoiding Code

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Nadia Odunayo, nadiaodunayo.com, Co-host of Ruby Book Club, director at Ignition Works.

Summary

Do you have interactions with co-workers where one or both of you get angry and defensive, and everybody ends up frustrated? Today we talk to Nadia Odunayo about "Nonviolent Communication", a way to communicate that honestly addresses issues, explaining how you feel without harming the other person, and getting everybody to the point where they feel better about the situation and have a clear path to move forward. Nadia gives examples of how she uses nonviolent communication in her day-to-day life, and she tries to coach me to improve my own skills. By focusing on communication your needs and not assuming anything about others, you can make difficult discussions less difficult.

Notes

01:47 - Nonviolent Communication

• Nadia’s Talk: This Code Sucks: A Story About Nonviolent Communication

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

03:16 - A Concrete Example of Violent and Nonviolent Communication: A Code Review

07:08 - How should a manager communicate nonviolently?

11:01 - Judging and Assuming People’s Character Subconsciously

• Fundamental Attribution Error

18:11 - How has nonviolent communication affected your day-to-day interactions?

24:14 - Self-Empathy: Being Non-Violent with Yourself

28:32 - Transparency and Vulnerability

32:15 - Nonviolent Communication and Being Nice/Kind

36:17 - Screaming Nonviolently

• Masters of Love

Special Guest: Nadia Odunayo.

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest

Betsy Haibel or betsyhaibel.com, co-founder of Cohere

Summary

Any profession that requires you to hit a budget and a deadline while balancing the project vision with practical logistics has a lot to say to software architects and project managers. Betsy Haibel was a professional theatrical set designer before becoming a software developer and architect, and we talk about how set design is like and not like software design. Not only do we talk about favorite shows, we also give you practical advice for designing your project.

Notes

01:24 - Creative Work as a Set Designer and it’s Relation to Software Architecture

• The Merry Widow
• Man of La Mancha
• Stuart Little

11:13 - Software Architecture Metaphors

• Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark

15:11 - Approaching Software Design as Set Design

17:22 - Designing For Flexibility/Keeping Design Open

• On The Verge
• Falsettoes

27:13 - Scalability in a Smaller vs Larger Environments

• Tent of Dreams

30:44 - Communication

36:12 - Approaching Purity and Reality

Special Guest: Betsy Haibel.

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guests

• Mark Guzdial: Professor in Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and Computer Science Education Researcher.
• Jeff Casimir: Executive Director at The Turing School.

Summary

How do people learn computing? Who learns best from traditional computer science education and who from bootcamps? How can we teach people who are not developers but who need to learn some programming to do their jobs? Jeff Casimir, the founder of Turing academy, and Georgia Tech's Mark Guzdial, one of the founders of the International Computing Education Research conference, join Noel to answer these questions and also explain why Excel is both the best and the worst thing in the world.

Notes

01:45 - “Computing Education”

• Paul Krugman: The Excel Depression
• The Language of Programming

05:27 - Teaching Developers at The Turing School

09:53 - Measuring the Quality of Education

14:05 - The Graduation Rate of Women and Underrepresented Groups

16:19 - Skills Acquisition

20:20 - Why not Fix Traditional Computer Science?

24:05 - Computing and Contextualized Computer Education

• “Cargo Culting”

41:00 - Why Do Bootcamps Close?

• Steve Lohr: As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check (New York Times Piece)
• Audrey Watters: Why Are Coding Boot Camps Going Out of Business?
• The Problems with Coding Bootcamps: Allure with little Payoff (Mark’s Post)
• Barriers Faced by Coding Bootcamp Students by Kyle Thayer and Andrew J. Ko
• What I Learned from Researching Coding Bootcamps by Kyle Thayer

46:11 - Success Rates Between People Who Have Had a Career First vs People Who Skip College and Enter Bootcamps

Special Guests: Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Guests

Jeff Patton: Author of User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product and owner of Jeff Patton & Associates.

Yana Carstens: Senior User Experience Designer at TableXI.

Summary

Agile practices help you build software. UX design helps you build the right software. Teams often struggle integrating UX design into agile practice. In this episode, Jeff Patton, author of User Story Mapping, and UX Designer Yana Carstens talk about the importance of bringing UX design together with development and how to bring your team from unconscious competence to conscious competence.

Notes

01:47 - Jeff’s Involvement with Company Product Development

03:31 - The History of Agile Software Development

05:37 - The Role and Integration of the UX Designer

09:00 - Creating Products Without a Design Process

• FUBU

12:21 - Consciousness and Competency

• The Four Stages of Competence

16:08 - Advice for Newbies Striving to Reach the Competence Level in UX

• The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide by Leah Buley

19:11 - Deciding Design Cadences Within Cycles

23:20 - When Designers are Sprinting Ahead of Developers; Lean User Experience

• Implementing Lean UX In Large Organizations

28:48 - Inceptions and Product Strategy Workshops to Integrate Design Into Agile Development

31:16 - Team Development: The Benefits of Hiring Experienced Professionals and Upscaling the People You’ve Got

34:38 - UX Practices in the 90's vs 2010's

• Agile 2017 Conference

Special Guests: Jeff Patton and Yana Carstens.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Guest

Corey Haines: CTO of Hearken, creator of code retreats, and author of Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design.

Summary

Want to build great front-end apps without having to deal with the entire JavaScript ecosystem? Corey Haines joins the show to talk about Elm, a front-end language and framework that is type safe, has great build tools, and a full-fledged MVC framework to create client interactions with less hassle. Corey has been using Elm to build the site for his company, Hearken, and talks about why he picked it, and what has made Elm a success for them.

For More Info

We've got a blog post relating to the code examples in this episode, you can find it at https://medium.com/table-xi/union-types-in-elm-fb6a974ec427.

Notes

02:25 - What is Hearken?

05:14 - The Elm Programming Language

• The ML Programming Language
• Dealing with Time in Elm

08:06 - The Type System and The Compiler

• Editable
• F#
• If you want a really detailed overview of types in programming languages, here's one from Gary Bernhardt
• Maybe type in Elm
• Union Types

21:27 - Elm as a Framework

• The Elm Architecture
• Managed Effects and Elm

26:16 - Deciding to use Elm

28:37 - Elm: Gotchas and Technical Limitations?

• Uploading files with Elm

32:37 - Styling and Working with Designers

• elm-css

35:45 - The Elm Community

• Join Elm on Slack

37:14 - Getting Started with Elm

• The Elm Guide
• The Pragmatic Studio: Building Web Apps with Elm
• Elm Remote Meetup
• Webpacker

Special Guest: Corey Haines.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and please sign up for our newsletter!

Guest

Nadia Eghbal: Works on Open Source Initiatives at GitHub, Author of Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure; Read her essays on Open Source on Medium

Summary

The Internet runs on Open Source. Open Source runs on maintainers and contributors. Is that sustainable? We talk to Nadia Eghbal about her work documenting and analyzing the Open Source ecosystem. How did we get here, and how did GitHub change Open Source? Nadia answers why Open Source makes economic sense, and discusses what can make projects more sustainable (hint: it's not just money).

Notes

01:22 - Researching the Open Source Community

03:14 - How the Relationship Between Open Source and the Rest of Technology Changed in the Mid-2000s

07:22 - Where is Open Source going? How will it evolve?

09:28 - What do successful projects do that others can learn from?

12:34 - Standardization of Funding

13:33 - As Projects Mature

17:26 - The Open Source Ecosystem: Excludable and Non-Excludable

21:42 - The Reputational Economy

25:20 - “Worse is Better”: Sharing Between Ecosystems; Fragmentation

30:03 - Diversity and Being New in the Open Source Community

34:16 - Hopes for the Future: Better Tooling for Maintainers, Shared Understanding of Best Practices, Supporting Open Source

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and please sign up for our newsletter!

Guests

Maci Peterson: Co-founder and CEO of On Second Thought.

Alicia Drucker: Director of Software Delivery at Table XI

Summary

How does an idea become a pitch become a company? Join Maci Peterson, founder of the startup On Second Thought, and Alicia Drucker, from Table XI, to discuss how a bad text can lead to a good pitch and then a funded startup. How hard is it to break into Silicon Valley if you don't match the expected image of an entrepreneur? Maci discusses how diversity and inclusivity improved her startup business.

Notes

We had an unusually high number of audio quality issues this time around, we're sorry.

01:39 - Starting On Second Thought

03:26 - Pitch Competitions

04:53 - From Idea To Company

07:04 - Sending a Bad Text To Getting To SXSW

09:05 - Taking a Leap of Faith and Starting a Tech Company

10:46 - Funding the Company

12:30 - Breaking Into Silicon Valley

18:46 - Diversity and Inclusivity

• Through the Looking Glass: When Upward Mobility and Access to Tech are a Train Stop Away by Stephanie Morillo
• Michelle Obama to Silicon Valley: 'Are you ready to have women at the table?'

27:05 - Encouraging Inclusivity While Leveraging a Product

31:14 - Speaking Up and Sharing Stories

36:39 - Taking Action After Speaking Up

• Quick note that this was recorded June 7th, and the Uber story has taken some twists and turns since them.

We got cut off before we could give Maci's contact information, you can find her on Twitter at @macipeterson and On Second Thought at https://www.onsecondthought.co and @onsecondthought

Special Guests: Alicia Drucker and Maci Patterson.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, leave us a review on iTunes, and please sign up for our newsletter!

Guest

Sarah Mei: Founder of RailsBridge, Director of Ruby Central, Chief Consultant at DevMynd Software.

Summary

Is your code the kind of cluttered house you might find on a reality TV show? Or the kind of sleek, minimalist house you might find in a architectural magazine. Neither one sounds like a place you could comfortably live. Sarah Mei joins the podcast to talk about Livable Code, what makes a codebase livable, how to negotiate tension between junior and senior developers and how Rails deals with developer happiness.

Notes

01:33 - What is meant by “Livable Code”?

04:25 - Where does codebase abstraction go wrong?

05:41 - What makes a codebase livable?

• Code Climate

09:16 - Calibrating the Right Level for Your Team: Retrospective Meetings

12:22 - Principles of a Codebase

18:21 - Alleviating Tension Between Junior and Senior Developers

22:57 - The Goal of Career Development

26:42 - Guiding Architecture Choices on a Team

30:37 - Does testing help?

34:23 - Programmer Happiness

37:42 - The Attitude Toward JavaScript

39:01 - The Right Design For Your Codebase is Subjective

Special Guest: Sarah Mei.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Links:

• Confreaks TV | How to be a Better Junior Developer - RailsConf 2014

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, leave us a review on iTunes, and please sign up for our newsletter!

Guests

Claire Lew: CEO of Know Your Company

Dan Hodos: Table XI’s Director of Operations

Summary

How can you get honest feedback from co-workers, even when you are their manager? How can you support your team's career growth and support them as they improve their skills? Claire Lew, the CEO of Know your Company, and Dan Hodos, Table XI's Director of Operations, join Noel to discuss why listening is the most important thing you can do when getting feedback, how specific questions can break the "fine" reflex, how sticky notes can help with career growth, and the one thing you should never do in a one-on-one meeting.

Notes

01:33 - Why One-on-One Meetings Are Important

03:16 - Creating a Safe Space for Employees: Make Empathy Your Mission

05:03 - Active Listening and Asking Questions

07:15 - How often should these meetings occur?

08:58 - Sponsorship and Career Mentoring

10:19 - Table XI’s “Sticky Note Game”

12:56 - What are the things you shouldn’t do during a one-on-one?

15:18 - Receiving Feedback

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
• Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration

19:41 - Favorite Questions

21:03 - Balancing Natural Conversation with Asking Tough Questions

24:12 - Conducting Remote One-on-Ones

25:29 - Investing in Your Mentees

29:17 - Surprising Revelations Learned While Building Know Your Company

• Our Biggest Blindspots

32:24 - Creating Environments for Employees to Flourish

Resources:

Claire:

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
• The Know Your Company Blog
• The Know Your Company Knowledge Center

Dan:

• Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• taking an improv class.

Noel:

• RSA Animate — Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
• Bossypants by Tina Fey

Special Guests: Claire Lew and Dan Hodos.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes and sign up for our newsletter!

Guest

Michael Feathers: Author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code; r7krecon.com

Summary

What makes a code base go bad and become "Legacy Code"? Can teams avoid writing bad code? Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins Tech Done Right to talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices, why coding problems are never just about code, and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written.

Notes

02:36 - The Definition of “Legacy Code”

04:25 - What makes code bases go bad?

07:26 - Working as a Team to Avoid Technical Debt and Other Problems

09:49 - Tools and Techniques That Have Changed Since the Book was Written

• scythe

12:38 - Lack of Institutional Memory

15:24 - What creates technical debt?

• Scrum
• Extreme Programming

22:50 - “Symbiotic Design”

• Symbiotic Design Provocation
• Symbiotic Design Implications
• Conway’s Law

25:38 - Test-Driven Development

• Keynote - Writing Software (2014 TDD is dead from DHH)
• RailsConf 2017: Opening Keynote by David Heinemeier Hansson

31:44 - Fads in Codebases

36:58 - Error Handling in Applications (in Relation to Conway’s Law)

Special Guest: Michael Feathers.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Links:

• Working Effectively With Legacy Code
• michaelfeathers/scythe: A tool for detecting barely used code in production

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes and sign up for our newsletter!

Guests

Kai Haley: Interaction Designer on Google’s Design Relations Team, leads the Sprint Master Academy

Zeke Binion: Former Director of Design for Table XI and runs Code for Designers

Summary

Do you have a product that needs improvement, or a process to define? Is your team looking for a way to generate and test new ideas quickly? The Design Sprint process, created at Google, is a structured way to explore a problem, create a solution, and get user feedback, all in five days or less. Join Kai Haley, who teaches sprint facilitation at Google, and Zeke Binion, who has run many sprints, as they show Noel Rappin how to use Design Sprints.

Notes

01:24 - What is a “Design Sprint?” Who should use them? What are they good for?

04:08 - The Sprint Book: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five
Days by Jake Knapp, with John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz from Google Ventures

• Design Sprint Kit

06:49 - Implementing Sprints Into a Team and High-level Goals

• How to Conduct Your Own Google Design Sprint
• From Google Ventures, The 6 Ingredients You Need To Run A Design Sprint

10:47 - Facilitating Design Sprints; or “Being a Sprint Master”

16:40 - “How Might We…?” Brainstorming Sessions

19:32 - Journey Mapping and User Experience Mapping

23:45 - Success Metrics

25:18 - Sketching, Comparison, and Presenting Ideas

• “Crazy Eights” Sketching Sessions

32:12 - The Deciding Stage: aka Prototyping

36:29 - User Interviews / Usability Studies

40:36 - Learning to Facilitate Design Sprints

Special Guests: Kai Haley and Zeke Binion.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Summary

Want to start speaking at conferences? We go over how to get your first conference acceptance, then how to become a better speaker over time. For conference organizers, we also discuss how to find the best speakers from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. Carina C. Zona (@cczona) and Mark Yoon (@wimyoon) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) on this episode of Tech Done Right.

Notes

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Carina C. Zona: Longtime developer and advocate in the tech community, certified sex educator, founder of @CallbackWomen

Mark Yoon: Developer and Director of Talent at Table XI

01:12 - @CallbackWomen: What it is and How it Came to Be

• Website with More Information
• DevChix

05:45 - Questions You Should Ask as a First-time Speaker and Speaker Outreach

10:06 - The Goal and Mission of @CallbackWomen

• On BritRuby (Avdi Grimm’s Blog Post Re: Diversity at Conferences)
• Carina’s Talk: Schemas for the Real World

15:24 - Advice for Conference Organizers to Make Conferences Accessible to Everyone; Internal and External Barriers for Potential Speakers

23:29 - Everyone Has Something Valuable to Contribute and Talk About: Approaching Talk Proposals

• Nadia Odunayo: The Guest: A Guide To Code Hospitality

32:28 - Getting a Talk Accepted

• Nickolas Means: How to Crash an Airplane @ RubyConf 2015

38:38 - Benefits and Impacts of Speaking at a Conference

Special Guests: Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes!

Notes

How does the Rails core team work? How are new features planned and implemented? How can I contribute? What should I do if I find a security issue in Rails? Our guest is the newest Rails core team member Eileen Uchitelle (@eileencodes) joins Table Xi senior developer Andrew Horner and host Noel Rappin (@noelrap) to discuss Rails, the new testing features in Rails 5.1, and the Rails Core Team.

Guests

Eileen Uchitelle: Senior Systems Engineer at GitHub on the Platform Systems Team; Member of The Rails Core Team and the Rails Security Team

Andrew Horner: Senior Developer at TableXI

Summary

01:12 - Eileen: Getting Started as a Developer and Getting Involved with The Rails Core Team

• CRUD! What to do When Active Record, MySQL, and Your Data Betray You

03:29 - How Rails Governs Itself Internally

05:52 - The Role of the Release Manager

07:32 - Feature Discussions and Prioritization

08:46 - Requesting Features and Raising Issues as a Non-core Team Member

• HackerOne

17:52 - Backporting

21:44 - System Testing

27:13 - Potential Future Features in 5.1

• Security is Broken: Understanding Common Vulnerabilties

32:12 - User Expectations

• RailsConf 2017: Building Rails ActionDispatch::SystemTestCase Framework

36:12 - Getting Involved in Rails

• RailsConf 2015 - Breaking Down the Barrier: Demystifying Contributing to Rails
• Aaron Patterson: I am a puts debugger

Special Guests: Andrew Horner and Eileen M. Uchitelle .

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Guest

Andy Slavitt: Ran Medicare, Medicaid & ACA for President Obama

Summary

How can we use software to build better countries? Our guest, Andy Slavitt (@aslavitt), helps us answer by telling us what he learned leading the recovery effort on Healthcare.gov in 2013 and 2014. Andy will talk about the 6,000 defect backlog he inherited when he took over the system, how it got worse before it got better and why it took a culture shift to really improve things. Even if you can't call the White House to berate underperforming contractors, you'll be able to learn how to run a rescue project under monumental pressure.

Notes

Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes!

02:58 - Healthcare.gov
The Affordable Care Act

07:28 - The Launch Process and Software Project Coordination
Uncle Bob Martin: Healthcare.gov

17:20 - Solving Trust Issues Over Architecture

23:20 - Speaking Up About Problems

27:06 - Turning The Culture Around

30:46 - Focusing on Architecture

34:17 - Taking Risks

Special Guest: Andy Slavitt.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes!

Summary

Dave Copleand (@davetron5000) and Zach Briggs (@theotherzach) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) for a Tech Done Right discussion of JavaScript practices. When does it makes sense to build single page JavaScript app? How can your JavaScript and Rails interact? Is it an island of interactivity or a sprinkle of JavaScript? Which frameworks are handling community management well (hint: not Angular)? And how do you test any of this?

Guests

Dave Copeland: Author of Rails, Angular, Postgres, and Bootstrap

Zach Briggs: JavaScript Practice Lead at Table XI

Show Notes

02:15 - Reasons to Build a Single-Page App

• Conway’s Law

09:37 - The Ease of Building Web Over Single-Page Apps

11:30 - Tooling; Navigating Good Choices vs Bad Choices

14:31 - Setup

• Bower
• webpack
• Browserify
• Broccoli
• Yarn
• The Asset Pipeline

16:30 - Combining a Rails App and a JavaScript App

18:34 - AngularJS; 1 vs 2

• Angular
• React
• Vue.js

33:05 - Testing

• jasmine-rails gem
• Test Double

35:35 - TypeScript

• Elm

Tips & Resources:

Dave: Check out Test Double.

Zach: As a developer, don’t feel forced into choosing between a single-page app and a non-single-page app on the first day of development. There are infinite points in between when it comes to interactivity.

Noel: Read about frameworkless JavaScript in Noel’s book Master Space and Time With JavaScript.

Special Guests: Dave Copeland and Zach Briggs.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Summary

Sam Phippen, Justin Searls, and Noel Rappin spend this episode talking about the value of test-driven development (TDD) as well as its cost. They discuss the kinds of problems that developers are likely to have after they learn TDD and attempt to apply it to a large application. Learn why Rails is both great and terrible for automated testing, and how testing can influence the structure of your code.

Guests

Sam Phippen: Engineer at Digital Ocean and member of the RSpec Core Team

Justin Searls: Writes bad code effortlessly and cofounder of Test Double. Maintainer of several testing tools, and frequent speaker on test related topics.

Show Notes

• 01:30 - Intermediate Level Problems in Testing

• 04:58 - The Value of Testing

  • Boundaries by Gary Bernhardt

• 15:15 - Isolated Unit Tests

• 17:52 - Structuring Applications

• 23:13 - Test-Driven Development (TDD)

  • Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

• 33:22 - TDD in a Smalltalk Environment

• 35:00 - Isolating Tests in a Rails Environment

  • Rake Without Rails

• 36:54 - Test Tools

  • minitest
  • Dan North: Introducing BDD
  • teenytest
  • RSpec

Tips & Resources:

Sam:

• Sandi Metz: The Magic Tricks of Testing @ Rails Conf 2013

• Test Smells

• Justin Searls: How to Stop Hating Your Test Suite @ RubyConf 2015

Justin:

Find some little problem and instead of implementing it in a Rails app, type bundle.gem and then make up a name and then practice and invent your own way of organizing code and tests so you can break things down.

Noel:

• JUnit Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests

As you’re trying to test stuff, really try to focus on going back and forth between the tests and the code more rapidly than you’re probably doing so right now.

Special Guests: Justin Searls and Penelope Phippen.

Allison McMillan (@allie_p) and Bradley Schaefer (@soulcutter) talk about remote work in the age of Slack. What makes a good remote worker, or a good remote working team? How can you support more junior team members who want to work remotely? How do you email cake to remote workers on launch celebration day? How can you improve code review for remote workers?

Guests

• Allison McMillan: Software Developer at Collective Idea and Rails Girls

• Bradley Schaefer: Senior Developer at Table XI and the RSpec Core Team

Show Notes

• 01:07 - Working Remotely: Getting Started, Setups, etc.

  • Allison McMillan: Even the Justice League Works Remotely @ RubyConf 2016

• 03:19 - Coworking Spaces

  • STARTMART

• 04:34 - What makes an individual successful to be able to work remotely?

• 07:30 - Gains and Challenges of Working Remotely

• 10:18 - Transitioning From Onsite to Offsite Work

• 11:48 - Being the Only Remote Person: How can companies help remote workers feel included?

  • Slack
  • Know Your Company

• 21:10 - Building Trust Between Companies and Remote Workers

• 24:30 - Working Remotely in Other Fields First

• 25:42 - Working Remotely as a Newbie

• 30:08 - Cultivating Teams and Positivity
  - rubocop

Tips & Resources:

Allison: Schedule weekly pairing sessions and make it a goal to ask questions.

Zach Holman: Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly

SheNomads

Bradley: Try to find pairing tools that work well for you.

Remote: Office Not Required

Special Guests: Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks join the Tech Done Right podcast to discuss career development. We'll discuss some career development questions like: What makes somebody a senior developer? How do you acquire senior developer skills? What can you do to prepare yourself for a lifetime career and ensure that you are properly valued?

Show Notes

• Pete Brooks: Software Developer at Table XI. Author of "How I landed my first programming job"
• Brandon Hays: “My friend” and line-level developer at OJO Labs

02:07 - Classifying Yourself as a Developer
- The Conjoined Triangles of Senior-Level Development (12 Traits Blog Post)

05:51 - Working Independently" “Throw a couple juniors at it!”

09:19 - What does it meant to progress?
- Brandon Hays: The long strange trip as a software developer @ RubyConf 2016
- Brandon Hays: Hacking Spacetime for a Successful Career @ RubyConf 2015
- Occam’s Razor

13:43 - Quantifying Value and Talking About Money

17:27 - The Cult of the New: The Approach to Technology and Breaking Into the Industry
- Impostor Syndrome

22:54 - Learning New Things and Becoming Professionally Proficient; Levelling
- Software Engineer Career Ladder

32:04 - When do I need to move on? Where do I see myself going?

34:20 - What should new developers be doing?

Resources:

Brandon:

• John Allspaw: On Being A Senior Engineer
  
• Find and befriend a software developer with 25+ years of experience.

Pete: Keep following your interests.

Special Guests: Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks .

Guests

• Mark Rickmeier: CEO of Table XI
• Jessie Shternshus: Founder of The Improv Effect and Author of the book, CTRL-SHIFT

Show Notes

01:08 - The Improv Effect and Improv as an Effective Method of Communication
- Yes, And!

03:21 - Working with Teams to Build Communication and Trust

05:20 - Ops Conf

06:02 - Tools or Games for Establishing Trust with Others Quickly in a Conference Environment
- Commonality Boggle
- Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
- Extreme Rock, Paper, Scissors

15:23 - Group Facilitation Techniques

18:13 - Kickoff Techniques for Smaller, New Teams
- Agile Software Development

22:30 - Techniques for Remote Team Communication

26:59 - Talking About Failure to Build Trust

28:42 - Giving and Receiving Feedback

Special Guests: Jesse Shternshus and Mark Rickmeier.

Sponsored By:

• Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Special Guest: Aly Fluckey.

Special Guest: Ed LaFoy.