The Code Gardener

Ryan Findley

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 20:00:00 -0700

In this episode, our guest Ryan Findley discusses doing things the Rails Way™ versus following other patterns, the case against rewriting software (and how you might anyway), the case against story points (and why you might want to use them anyway), how to measure developer productivity without triggering the wrong behavior, and bonsai gardening as it relates to software stewardship.

Guests:

Ryan Findley
- Neomind Labs

Links:

Prepare to tack: Steering Rails apps out of technical debt by Robby Russell at Rails World 2024
Strangler Fig by Martin Fowler
Things You Should Never Do, Part I by Joel Spolsky
Microsoft Developer Experience Lab
Understand and Optimize Developer Productivity with the SPACE Framework by Hillary Nussbaum @ CodeClimate
In Praise of Small Pull Requests by Elliotte Rusty Harold @ Google Testing Blog
Story Points Revisited by Ron Jeffries
Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It by Drew Bragg

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RailsConf Reminiscing

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we take a nostalgic look back at what RailsConf has meant to us over the years.

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2024 Wrapped

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:00:00 -0800

In this episode, we look back at what an amazing year it was, from adopting our puppies, to our first international conference, Tropical.rb, to RailsConf, RailsWorld, Rocky Mountain Ruby, and RubyConf. Heck, we even started a podcast!

If you want to watch our conference talks, you can find us on RubyVideo.dev:

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Hexagonal Architecture + Rails

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 10:00:00 -0800

In this episode of The Code Gardener, we discuss the Ports & Adapters pattern, also known as Hexagonal Architecture.

STOP! Before listening to the episode, please take the time to go watch Alistair Cockburn's excellent talk on Hexagonal Architecture at the Tech Excellence Conference (link below).

Seriously. We'll be here when you get back.

Links...

Hexagonal Architecture by Alistair Cockburn at Tech Excellence Conference
Hexagonal Rails by Matt Wynne from GoRuCo 2012
Together: The Merb Story by Yehuda Katz
Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

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So DRY It Chafes

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 10:00:00 -0800

In this special Thanksgiving weekend episode, Fito and Alan discuss what they're thankful for this year, and then tackle why DRY is the worst programming advice ever.

Links...

A Brewer's Guide to Filtering out Complexity and Churn from Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024.
The Case for WET Tests by Amanda Beiner
Let's Not by Joe Ferris
3A – Arrange, Act, Assert by Bill Wake
Rule of Three from Refactoring by Martin Fowler (page 58), attributed to Don Roberts
"Last Responsible Moment" from Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres (page 25), though Beck & Andres may have been influenced by Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck (page 57), which was released a year earlier.

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Introductions

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 10:00:00 -0800

In this, our first episode ever, we introduce ourselves and talk about one of our favorite projects.

RubyConf Talk mentioned:
Workshop: No Static Types? No Problem! by Noel Rappin

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