Best Nicole Zhu Podcasts (2024)

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423: Cognitive Strategies for Coders 39:52

3d ago39:52

39:52

Stephanie is back with a book recommendation: "Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows. This book has helped to bolster her understanding of complex systems in environmental, organizational, and software contexts, particularly through user interactions and system changes. Joël describes his transformative experience watching last week's total solar…

1
422: Listener Topics Grab Bag 35:23

12d ago35:23

35:23

Joël conducted a thoughtbot mini-workshop on query plans, which Stephanie found highly effective due to its interactive format. They then discuss the broader value of interactive workshops over traditional talks for deeper learning. Addressing listener questions, Stephanie and Joël explore the strategic use of if and else in programming for clearer…

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421: The Idealistic vs. Pragmatic Programmer 41:01

17d ago41:01

41:01

Stephanie revisits the concept of "spiking"—a phase of exploration to determine the feasibility of a technical implementation or to address unknowns in feature requests—sharing her recent experiences with a legacy Rails application. Joël brings a different perspective by discussing his involvement with a client project that heavily utilizes the dry…

1
420: Test Database Woes 28:16

24d ago28:16

28:16

Joël shares his recent project challenge with Tailwind CSS, where classes weren't generating as expected due to the dynamic nature of Tailwind's CSS generation and pruning. Stephanie introduces a personal productivity tool, a "thinking cap," to signal her thought process during meetings, which also serves as a physical boundary to separate work fro…

1
419: What's New in Your World? (Extended Edition) 37:13

1M ago37:13

37:13

Stephanie introduces her ideal setup for enjoying coffee on a bike ride. Joël describes his afternoon tea ritual. Exciting news from the hosts: both have been accepted to speak at RailsConf! Stephanie's presentation, titled "So, Writing Tests Feels Painful. What now?" aims to tackle the issues developers encounter with testing while offering action…

1
418: Mental Models For Reduce Functions 42:50

1M ago42:50

42:50

Joël talks about his difficulties optimizing queries in ActiveRecord, especially with complex scopes and unions, resulting in slow queries. He emphasizes the importance of optimizing subqueries in unions to boost performance despite challenges such as query duplication and difficulty reusing scopes. Stephanie discusses upgrading a client's app to R…

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417: Module Docs 39:32

2M ago39:32

39:32

Stephanie shares about her vacation at Disney World, particularly emphasizing the technological advancements in the park's mobile app that made her visit remarkably frictionless. Joël had a conversation about a topic he loves: units of measure, and he got to go deep into the idea of dimensional analysis with someone this week. Together, Joël and St…

1
416: Multi-Dimensional Numbers 39:31

2M ago39:31

39:31

Joël discusses the challenges he encountered while optimizing slow SQL queries in a non-Rails application. Stephanie shares her experience with canary deploys in a Rails upgrade. Together, Stephanie and Joël address a listener's question about replacing the wkhtml2pdf tool, which is no longer maintained. The episode's main topic revolves around the…

1
415: Codebase Calibration 30:54

2M ago30:54

30:54

Stephanie has a delightful and cute Ruby thing to share: Honeybadger, the error monitoring service, has created exceptionalcreatures.com, where they've illustrated and characterized various common Ruby errors into little monsters, and they're adorable. Meanwhile, Joël encourages folks to submit proposals for RailsConf. Together, Stephanie and Joël …

1
414: Spike Tasks 31:46

3M ago31:46

31:46

Joël shares his recent experience with Turbo, a JavaScript framework that simplifies adding interactivity to websites without extensive JavaScript coding. Stephanie gives an update on her quest to work from her office more, and the birds have arrived—most notably, chickadees. Stephanie and Joël address a listener question from Edward about the conc…

1
413: Developer Tales of Package Management 33:33

3M ago33:33

33:33

Stephanie shares her task of retiring a small, internally-used link-shortening app. She describes the process as both celebratory and a bit mournful. Meanwhile, Joël discusses his deep dive into ActiveRecord, particularly in the context of debugging. He explores the complexities of ActiveRecord querying schemas and the additional latency this intro…

1
412: Vertical Slices 32:23

3M ago32:23

32:23

Joël shares a unique, time-specific bug he encountered, which causes a page to crash only in January. This bug has been fixed in previous years, only to reemerge due to subsequent changes. Stephanie talks about her efforts to bring more structure to her work-from-home environment. She describes how setting up a bird feeder near her desk and keeping…

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411: Celebrating and Recapping 2023! 38:40

4M ago38:40

38:40

Stephanie is hosting a holiday cookie swap. Joël talks about participating in thoughtbot's end-of-the-year hackathon, Ralphapalooza. We had a great year on the show! The hosts wrap up the year and discuss their favorite episodes, the articles, books, and blog posts they’ve read and loved, and other highlights of 2023 (projects, conferences, etc). O…

1
410: All About Documentation 32:02

4M ago32:02

32:02

Joël shares his experiences with handling JSON in a Postgres database. He talks about his challenges with ActiveRecord and JSONB columns, particularly the unexpected behavior of storing and retrieving JSON data. Stephanie shares her recent discovery of bookmarklets and highlights a bookmarklet named "Check This Out," which streamlines searching for…

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409: Support & Maintenance and Rotating Developers 28:07

5M ago28:07

28:07

Stephanie recommends "Blue Eye Samurai" and a new ceramic pot (donabe) for cooking. Joël talks about the joy of holding a warm beverage in a unique mug. Stephanie discusses her shift to a part-time support and maintenance role at thoughtbot, contrasting it with her full-time development work. She highlights the importance of communication, document…

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EP103: "Motherhood & Business" with Christel Goh 56:23

5M ago56:23

56:23

In this episode we will be talking about “Motherhood & Business” where I feel she is the best person to talk about this topic and see if she has any new discoveries since then. Christel will also be sharing on how she overcame her challenges and struggles as a mompreneur. Christel Goh is the CEO & founder of Grow Public Relations. Christel brings a…

1
408: Work Device Management 32:57

5M ago32:57

32:57

Joël recaps his time at RubyConf! He shares insights from his talk about different aspects of time in software development, emphasizing the interaction with the audience and the importance of post-talk discussions. Stephanie talks about wrapping up a long-term client project, the benefits of change and variety in consulting, and maintaining a balan…

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EP102: “How to make the best out of my '40s'” with Claudia Zhu 58:55

5M ago58:55

58:55

In this episode we will be talking about “How to make the best out of my '40s'” with Claudia Zhu who is a Wealth and Investment Strategist who has been committed to providing trusted and professional financial advice for the past 14 years. Claudia strongly believes that responsible financial planning is key to avoiding hardship and grief. With her …

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407: Tech Opinions Online with Edward Loveall 36:44

5M ago36:44

36:44

Stephanie interviews Edward Loveall, a former thoughtbotter, now software developer at Relevant Healthcare. Part of their discussion centers around Edward's blog post on the tech industry's over-reliance on GitHub. He argues for the importance of exploring alternatives to avoid dependency on a single platform and encourages readers to make informed…

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EP101: “How to run a successful NFT project” with Nicole Yap, 8SIANMOM 57:19

5M ago57:19

57:19

Welcome to Season 6 of Mompreneur Space LIVE show podcast where I interview inspiring moms from around the world so that you can LEARN HOW THEY OVERCOME THEIR CHALLENGES AND STRUGGLES AS MOMPRENEURS!I'm your host KENNETH CHOO, and today is the 101th episode of Mompreneur Space Live Show podcast. In this episode we will be talking about “How to run …

1
406: Working Solo 32:27

5M ago32:27

32:27

Joël got to do some pretty fancy single sign-on work. And when it came time to commit, he documented the ridiculous number of redirects to give people a sense of what was happening. Stephanie has been exploring Rails callbacks and Ruby debugging tools, using methods like save_callbacks and Kernel.caller, and creating a function call graph to better…

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405: Retro: Sandi Metz Rules 31:58

5M ago31:58

31:58

Stephanie discovered a new book: The Staff Engineer's Path! Joël's got some D&D goodness. Together, they revisit a decade-old blog post initially published in 2013, which discussed the application of Sandi Metz's coding guidelines and whether these rules remain relevant and practiced among developers today. The Manager’s Path The Staff Engineer’s P…

1
404: Estimation 22:49

6M ago22:49

22:49

Joël was selected to speak at RubyConf in San Diego! After spending a month testing out living in Upstate New York, Stephanie is back in Chicago. Stephanie reflects on a recent experience where she had to provide an estimate for a project, even though she didn't have enough information to do so accurately. In this episode, Stephanie and Joël explor…

1
403: Productivity Tricks 37:49

7M ago37:49

37:49

Stephanie is engrossed in Kent Beck's Substack newsletter, which she appreciates for its "working thoughts" format. Unlike traditional media that undergo rigorous editing, Kent's content is more of a work-in-progress, focusing on thought processes and evolving ideas. Joël has been putting a lot of thought into various tools and techniques and reali…

1
402: Musings on Mentorship 37:56

7M ago37:56

37:56

Joël describes an old-school object orientation exercise that involves circling nouns in a business problem description. The purpose is determining which nouns could become entities or objects in a system. Stephanie shares she's working from the Hudson Valley in New York as a trial run for potentially relocating there. She enjoys the rail trails fo…

1
401: Making the Right Thing Easy 31:24

7M ago31:24

31:24

Stephanie has another debugging mystery to share. Earlier this year, Joël mentioned that he was experimenting with a bookmark manager to keep track of helpful and interesting articles. He's happy to report that it's working very well for him! Together, they discuss tactics to ensure the easiest route also upholds app health and aids fellow develope…

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400: How To Search 36:02

8M ago36:02

36:02

Joël shares he has been getting more into long-form reading. Stephanie talks about the challenges she faced in a new project that required integrating with another company's system. Together, they delve into the importance of search techniques for developers, covering various approaches to finding information online. Domain Modeling Made Functional…

1
399: Scaling Code Ownership and Accountability 34:16

8M ago34:16

34:16

Stephanie experienced bike camping. Joël describes his experience during a week when he's in between projects. Stephanie and Joël discuss the concept of code ownership, the mechanisms to enforce it, and the balance between bureaucracy and collaboration. They highlight the challenges and benefits of these systems in large codebases and emphasize tha…

1
398: Developing Heuristics For Writing Software 34:07

8M ago34:07

34:07

Want a cool cucumber salad? Joël's got you covered. Stephanie has evolved and found some pickles she enjoys. Experienced programmers use a lot of heuristics or "rules of thumb" about what makes their code better. These aren't always true, but they work in most situations. Stephanie and Joël discuss a range of heuristics, how to use them, how to com…

1
397: Dependency Graphs 42:53

8M ago42:53

42:53

Stephanie is consciously trying to make meetings better for herself by limiting distractions. A few episodes ago, Joël talked about a frustrating bug he was chasing down and couldn't get closure on, so he had to move on. This week, that bug popped up again and he chased it down! AND he got to use binary search to find its source–which was pretty co…

1
396: Build vs. Buy 33:57

9M ago33:57

33:57

Joël has been fighting a frustrating bug where he's integrating with a third-party database, and some queries just crash. Stephanie shares her own debugging story about a leaky stub that caused flaky tests. Additionally, they discuss the build vs. buy decision when integrating with third-party systems. They consider the time and cost implications o…

1
395: Human Connection in a Virtual (Work) World 30:59

9M ago30:59

30:59

Stephanie had a small consulting win: saying no to a client. GeoGuessr is all the rage for thoughtbot's remote working culture, which leads to today's topic of forming human connections in a virtual (work) environment. GeoGuessr Strategies for saying no by Elle Meredith NYT Let’s Ignore Each Other in the Same Room Random question generator Transcri…

1
394: Submitting a Conference Talk Proposal from Start to Finish 38:53

9M ago38:53

38:53

Joël recently had a fascinating conversation with some friends about the power of celebrating and highlighting small wins in their lives. He talks about bringing this into his work life. May Stephanie interest you in a secret she learned regarding homemade pizza? RubyConf is coming! Who's submitting talks?! It's hekkin scary. Don't fret! Joël and S…

1
393: Is REST the Best? APIs and Domain Modeling 33:49

9M ago33:49

33:49

It's updates on the work front today! Stephanie was tasked with removing a six-year-old feature flag from a codebase. Joël's been doing a lot of small database migrations. A listener question sparked today's main discussion on gerunds' interesting relationship to data modeling. Episode 386: Value Objects Revisited: The Tally Edition RailsConf 2017:…

1
392: Managing Changing Business Requirements 39:14

10M ago39:14

39:14

Joël has a fascinating discovery! He learned a new nuance around working with dependency graphs. Stephanie just finished playing a 100-hour video game on Nintendo Switch: a Japanese role-playing game called Octopath Traveler II. On the work front, she is struggling with a lot of churn in acceptance criteria and ideas about how features should work.…

1
391: Learn with APPL 40:45

10M ago40:45

40:45

Stephanie went to her first WNBA game. Also: Bingo. Joël's new project has him trying to bring in multiple databases to back their ActiveRecord models. He's never done multi-database setups in Rails before, and he doesn't hate it. Stephanie shares bits from a discussion with former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari about learning goals. Four elements st…

1
390: The Truth about Truthiness 39:58

10M ago39:58

39:58

Joël's new work project involves tricky date formats. Stephanie has been working with former Bike Shed host Steph Viccari and loved her peer review feedback. The concept of truthiness is tough to grasp sometimes, and JavaScript and Ruby differ in their implementation of truthiness. Is this a problem? Do you prefer one model over the other? What can…

1
389: Review Season 33:45

10M ago33:45

33:45

Stephanie just got back from a smaller regional Ruby Conference, Blue Ridge Ruby, in Asheville, North Carolina. Joël started a new project at work. Review season is upon us. Stephanie and Joël think about growth and goals and talk about reviews: how to do them, how to write them for yourself, and how to write them for others. Blue Ridge Ruby Impact…

1
388: Empowering Other Departments Within a Company 34:11

11M ago34:11

34:11

Joël has a bike shorts update; Stephanie has a garden one. Often, power is centralized within the dev team. This is usually because they are the only ones able to execute. Sometimes this ends up interfering with team processes and workload. Joël is a fan of empowering other teams to do things themselves. Strangler Fig Pattern What Being a Staff Dev…

1
387: RubyKaigi 2023 with Mina Slater 31:22

11M ago31:22

31:22

Stephanie is joined by very special guest, fellow thoughtboter, Senior Developer, and marathon trainer Mina Slater. Mina and Stephanie had just been traveling together for two weeks, sponsored by WNB.rb for RubyKaigi in Matsumoto, Japan, and together, they recount their international adventure! RubyKaigi WNB.rb Understanding the Ruby Global VM Lock…

1
386: Value Objects Revisited: The `Tally` Edition 41:08

11M ago41:08

41:08

If you're in the market for bicycle shorts, Joël's got you. Stephanie just returned from RubyKaigi in Japan and shares details of her trip. Recently at thoughtbot, there have been conversations around an interesting data modeling exercise. Joël and Stephanie discuss the following: Value Objects vs. Hashes Doing Math on Compound Numbers Monoids and …

1
385: The Boring Parts of Tech 24:41

11M ago24:41

24:41

Joël is joined by thoughtbot Software Developer and Dirt Jumper Daniel Nolan. Dirt jumping is BMX-style riding 🏍️ with really enormous dirt jumps. But for a person who loves excitement in his spare time, for Daniel at work, it's not the new and shiny that interests him. When he dives into something, the "boring" parts of tech are what he finds most…

1
384: Not All Numbers Are Numbers 37:56

11M ago37:56

37:56

Joël gives a recap after attending RailsConf 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia (and yes, there was karaoke! 🎤 🎶). Stephanie plugs the The Tightly Coupled Book Club Podcast from friends and fellow thoughtboters Aji and Mina Slater where they're reading The Rails Guides from cover to cover and treating it like a book club and having a discussions about the do…

1
383: Code as Storytelling with Nicole Zhu 43:02

12M ago43:02

43:02

Engineering manager at Vox Media and author Nicole Zhu joins Stephanie on today's episode to discuss her writing practice. nicoledonut is a biweekly newsletter about the writing process and sustaining a creative life that features creative resources, occasional interviews with creative folks, short essays on writing and creativity, farm-to-table me…

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"The challenges of a working mom and her side hustle" with Fion Koh | EP100 55:56

12M ago55:56

55:56

EP100: "The challenges of a working mom and her side hustle" with Fion KohIn this episode, I have invited Fion Koh who is a Mum of 3, Staff Nurse, Founder of Baby Carriers Rental SG & Atomy Sales Master awardee where we will be talking about "The challenges of a working mom and her side hustle"Fion is a certified babywearing educator with Die Trage…

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382: Domain-Specific Languages 36:09

12M ago36:09

36:09

Joël has been integrating a third-party platform into a testing pipeline...and it has not been going well. Because it's not something she usually keeps up-to-date with, Stephanie is excited to learn about more of the open-source side of things in Ruby, what's new in the Ruby tooling world, and what folks are thinking about regarding the future of t…

1
"How to thrive in a male dominated environment!" with Nicole Russell | EP099 1:04:28

12M ago1:04:28

1:04:28

EP099: "How to thrive in a male dominated environment!" with Nicole Russell In this episode, I have invited Nicole Russell who is the CEO and founder of CellBotics where we will be talking about "How to thrive in a male dominated environment!" CellBotics is a training center in the United States that is internationally renowned for IT repair. She c…

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381: To TDD or Not to TDD? 40:58

1y ago40:58

40:58

It's gardening season! Stephanie swaps seeds with friends and talks about her Chicago garden. Joël recently started experimenting with a dedicated bookmark manager. They discuss the aspirational (and sometimes dogmatic) sides of TDD and explore when to test: first or after. How does that affect the tests? How does that affect the code? How does tha…

1
"Mompreneurship is not a hobby!" with Florinda Tay | EP098 58:09

1y ago58:09

58:09

"Mompreneurship is not a hobby!" with Florinda Tay | EP098In this episode, I have invited Florinda Tay who is a former cabin crew turned beauty entrepreneur where we will be talking about "Mompreneurship is not a hobby!"Ms Florinda Tay has been in the beauty business for over 11 years, leading a team of 12 directors and 1500 consultants in the APAC…

1
380: Remote Work Life 32:19

1y ago32:19

32:19

Joël has been working on his RailsConf talk about various aspects of discrete math useful in day-to-day work as a developer and going deep on some concepts from propositional logic and Boolean algebra, particularly DeMorgan's Laws, which explain how to negate a compound condition. Stephanie attended a meeting with a fun "Spicy Takes" topic. She gav…

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