The Bike Shed

About the show

On The Bike Shed, hosts Joël Quenneville, Sally Hall, and Aji Slater discuss development experiences and challenges at thoughtbot with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, and whatever else is drawing their attention, admiration, or ire this week.

The Bike Shed on social media

Episodes

  • 502: Apps That Make Our Work Go

    June 16th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  40 mins 55 secs

    Aji and Sally are back together again, this time to discuss the different apps they use to make their workflows and To Do lists easier and quicker to achieve.

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    501: What makes for good technical writing?

    June 2nd, 2026  |  Season 3  |  34 mins 27 secs

    Sally and Joël get technical as they lay out their thoughts on blog posts.

  • 500: Celebrating with past hosts

    May 26th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  58 mins 21 secs

    The Bike Shed celebrates its 500th episode with hosts new and old as they reflect on the show’s history and ask, what’s new in your world?

  • 499: BikeTube ShedTacular!

    April 28th, 2026  |  Season 3  |  48 mins 43 secs

    Take a trip through Joël and Aji’s YouTube recommended list as they go over the media that has inspired their work the most over the course of their careers.

  • 498: Season 2 Recap

    March 17th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  37 mins 23 secs

    Our hosts come together to wrap up season 2 and share some of their highlights along the way.

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    497: Diagrams we love

    March 10th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  41 mins 46 secs

    Aji and Joël get into a flow as they discuss the different diagrams that help guide their thought processes when working.

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    496: Test suite performance

    March 3rd, 2026  |  Season 2  |  43 mins 37 secs

    Joël and Sally cover all the bases as they look at improving their test suite performances times.

  • 495: A shortcut to years of experience

    February 24th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  34 mins 13 secs

    Sally and Aji flick through thoughtbot’s guide to best practices in a bid to brush up on their coding habits.

  • 494: Primitive Obsession

    February 17th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  40 mins 41 secs

    Joël and Sally examine the simpler components of programming and why using basic data structures may not always be the best approach to solving a problem.

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    493: Suspenders with Steve Polito

    February 10th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  41 mins 30 secs

    Joël talks with guest thoughtbotter Steve Polito about his recent work rewriting Suspenders, an old thoughtbot gem from the 2000s.

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    492: Defining value within your team

    February 3rd, 2026  |  Season 2  |  32 mins 52 secs

    Sally and Aji assess some common metrics for success when working a project and how they may not always provide the clearest picture of how things are going.

  • 491: Influences that shaped our thinking

    January 27th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  40 mins 16 secs

    Joël and Aji reference their personal bibliographies as they compare the different influences that have shaped their programmer world view.

  • 490: Large Language Misadventure

    January 20th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  41 mins 4 secs

    Aji and Sally sit down to dissect the complicated beast that is AI.

  • 489: What makes a codebase welcoming

    January 13th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  39 mins 13 secs

    Joël and Sally tidy up the place as they discuss the different ways a new codebase and team can feel welcoming to them.

  • 488: The Playful Portland Programming Paradigm

    January 6th, 2026  |  Season 2  |  30 mins 47 secs

    Aji and Joël talk all things hackerthons and why taking the time to have a little having fun with your work every now and then is important for developers.

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    487: ActiveModel custom attributes

    December 30th, 2025  |  Season 2  |  37 mins 28 secs

    Joël contributes some thoughts on working with custom attributes as he follows up on last week’s discussion about ActiveModels with Sally.