Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots
About the show
A podcast about the design, development, and business of great software. Each week thoughtbot is joined by the people who build and nurture the products we love.
Episodes
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59: Nowhere to Hide
July 28th, 2013 | Season 2 | 25 mins 52 secs
In this episode, Ben Orenstein speaks with thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris about the technical interview process at thoughtbot, and more.
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58: A Thousand Neckbeards
July 21st, 2013 | Season 2 | 31 mins 12 secs
This week Ben Orenstein, Pat Brisbin, and Mike Burns talk about Haskell, Linux, functional and dynamic programming, Conway's Game of Life, and much more.
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57: Delayed Gratification
July 14th, 2013 | Season 2 | 28 mins 10 secs
In this episode, Ben Orenstein is joined by Michael Klett, Co-founder and tech lead of Chargify. Ben and Michael discuss the evolution of Chargify and bumps along the way, underwear subscriptions, Michael’s transition from hardware to software, negativity in the Rails community, slow tests, and much more.
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56: Code in a Bubble Bath
July 7th, 2013 | Season 2 | 36 mins 36 secs
In this episode Ben Orenstein is joined by Alex MacCaw, creator of Spine, formerly of Twitter, and now a developer at Stripe. Ben and Alex talk about travel, writing, code, and couch surfing.
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55: The Value of Flow
June 30th, 2013 | Season 2 | 42 mins 29 secs
In this episode Ben Orenstein speaks with designer and founder of Authentic Jobs, Cameron Moll, about Authentic Jobs, design, the value of flow and family, and much, much more.
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54: Build your stuff on the side and have a good time
June 23rd, 2013 | Season 2 | 25 mins 22 secs
In this episode, Ben Orenstein is joined by 17 year old Jack Kaufman, author of The Found a Business Book. Ben and Jack discuss Jack's inspiration for the book and how he got all his interviews, the other opportunities it's led too, the common themes he uncovered in his interviews, the differences between those who got funding and bootstrappers, working on the book while in highschool, marketing he's doing, his plans for the future, the issue with college computer science programs, his fears about the future, and much more.
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53: Not everything needs to be extracted
June 16th, 2013 | Season 2 | 38 mins 29 secs
In this episode Ben Orenstein is joined by Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale from Tilde. They discuss bootstrapping a business and the model behind Tilde, their breakdown of product development and consulting, and how they all met. They also talk about designing APIs and frameworks that people actually want to use, how teaching helps them be better framework developers, how they can beat the competition, how supporting multiple languages and frameworks can ruin your app's experience, the big surprises as they've launched, Ember.js' push to 1.0 and beyond, the difference between Ember.js and Backbone.js and why JavaScript matters, and much more.
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52: You look really fancy in your tuxedo
June 9th, 2013 | Season 1 | 58 mins 19 secs
In this special episode, number 52, and our 1 year anniversary episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Ruby and Rails core team member Aaron Patterson, thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris, and a live studio audience. The trio discuss Rails 4, observers, callbacks, dubstep, namespaces, Scheme, functional programming, thread safety in Rails, what it would take to remove callbacks from Rails and why you would want to do it, what should be in our anniversary episode, dealing with Rails security issues, why Aaron likes to work on Rails, meeting people's expectations, Vim, intuitive software, and so much more.
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51: I found a voice
June 2nd, 2013 | Season 1 | 32 mins 50 secs
On this week's show, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Sandi Metz, developer, author, podcaster, and recent Ruby Hero award winner. Ben and Sandi discuss winning awards, writing, whether notoriety changes who you are, what Sandi is proud of, the bad code she's writing and why, what she's doing now, getting real feedback on your work, that it's OK not to know everything, and much, much more.
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50: It's Monday today, let's change everything
May 26th, 2013 | Season 1 | 43 mins 26 secs
In this week's episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Jeff Casimir and Katrina Owen from Jumpstart Lab and gSchool to discuss performing, speaking, and imposter syndrome, preparing for your talk, and what makes a good talk and how to give one. The also discuss gSchool, the way the program works and they way it's guaranteed, teaching, admitting ignorance, how good practice should be harder than the real thing, and why Jeff didn't like studying Computer Science and why he didn't enjoy programming and how Rails reignited his passion for creating things, and much more.
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49: The psychology of work
May 19th, 2013 | Season 1 | 35 mins 46 secs
In this episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Gregg Pollack and Nathaniel Bibler from EnvyLabs and codeschool.com. Gregg shares what he's learned running his business, when not to be transparent, how to deal with compensation, and how the EnvyLabs compensation structure has changed over the years. Nathan, Gregg, and Ben also discuss Code School, yearly payments to a subscription, making courses effective, effective marketing, the effectiveness of mailing lists, community events, shared ownership, and much more.
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48: Barista imposter syndrome
May 12th, 2013 | Season 1 | 37 mins 44 secs
In this episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Jon Larkowski, closet hippie and developer at CareZone. Ben and Jon discuss being a closet hippie, transitioning from consulting to working on a startup/product team, ping-pong, paying attention to your habits and improving to your life, meditation, firewalling your attention, fostering a startup culture, imposter syndrome, podcasting, coffee, code review, guitar, and much more.
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47: Two hours per minute
May 5th, 2013 | Season 1 | 20 mins 53 secs
In this episode, recorded at RailsConf 2013, Ben Orenstein is joined by Ryan Bates of RailsCasts. Ben and Ryan discuss Ryan's transition to working on RailsCasts full time, staying up to date on the latest technology, how his coding style has changed, maintaining his open source, the process of producing RailsCasts, why he doesn't speak at conferences, the latest technology he is excited about, and much more
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46: We don't have a monopoly on being unhealthy
April 28th, 2013 | Season 1 | 33 mins 43 secs
Ben Orenstein is joined by Joe Kutner, programmer and author of ‘The Healthy Programmer’. Ben and Joe discuss how the demands of a development job lead to unhealthy habits, and ways to address the issues. They discuss specifics like standing desks, walking desks, the pomodoro technique, exercise, vitamin D, and much more.
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45: Tiny Robots Cuddling with other Tiny Robots
April 21st, 2013 | Season 1 | 34 mins 56 secs
This week we try something a little different. Joe Ferris, Matt Jankowski, Ben Orenstein, and Chad Pytel get together and have a little fun, in what we're calling "Tiny Robots cuddling with other Tiny Robots". We'd love to get your thoughts on this special format, tweet us @thoughtbot or email learn@thoughtbot.com.
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44: I feel the opposite of burnt out
April 14th, 2013 | Season 1 | 52 mins 52 secs
In this week's podcast, Ben Orenstein is joined by Chad Fowler, author, speaker, and CTO of 6wunderkinder. Ben and Chad discuss Chad's recent move to Berlin and 6wunderkinder, what a CTO does, getting back to coding, the early Ruby community, who Chad wants to hire, predicting success of new hires, and what makes a truly good developer, favorite interview questions, how Chad's interviewing process has changed over time, how age and experience can change your perspective, how Chad built a great team, and what he might write about in the future. They also discuss Chad's new tattoo, his regrets, meditation, therapy, gaining control over your mind, and much, much more.