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Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

631: “They’re Not Carrying a Pager” with Aaron Patterson

November 12th, 2026

Will returns to the thoughtbot couch this week to chat with Aaron Patterson, Software Engineer at Rails and Shopify.

In this episode, Will and Aaron discuss how Shopify has a huge impact in the coding side of development, why ZGit is the new Git compiler, tracepoints in Ruby, the As-If Rule in coding and how AI fits within the principle, and how just reading your code will help you avoid the dreaded Slop Grenade - lest you want to be messaged on your days off!

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Mentioned in this episode:

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

‘Pairin' with Aaron: ZJIT Internals’ on Youtube

Our guest for this episode has been Aaron Patterson. If you'd like to get in touch with Aaron, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.

Your host for this episode has been Will Larry, you can find and connect with Will over on LinkedIn.

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