Software How-To
**Tech Done Right**

The Tech Done Right podcast is a show by and for people who care about what they build. We don’t just build software, we build teams, companies, careers, and communities.
Each episode features host Noel Rappin talking to interesting people in the tech community about building something the right way. We’re not just going to give you our thoughts on the topic, but tools, processes, or references that you can use immediately to build better software and communities.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 12: Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos May 31, 2017

Show notes

Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos

Guests

Dan Hodos: Table XI’s Director of Operations

Summary

How can you get honest feedback from co-workers, even when you are their manager? How can you support your team's career growth and support them as they improve their skills? Claire Lew, the CEO of Know your Company, and Dan Hodos, Table XI's Director of Operations, join Noel to discuss why listening is the most important thing you can do when getting feedback, how specific questions can break the "fine" reflex, how sticky notes can help with career growth, and the one thing you should never do in a one-on-one meeting.

Notes

01:33 - Why One-on-One Meetings Are Important

03:16 - Creating a Safe Space for Employees: Make Empathy Your Mission

05:03 - Active Listening and Asking Questions

07:15 - How often should these meetings occur?

08:58 - Sponsorship and Career Mentoring

10:19 - Table XI’s “Sticky Note Game”

12:56 - What are the things you shouldn’t do during a one-on-one?

15:18 - Receiving Feedback

19:41 - Favorite Questions

21:03 - Balancing Natural Conversation with Asking Tough Questions

24:12 - Conducting Remote One-on-Ones

25:29 - Investing in Your Mentees

29:17 - Surprising Revelations Learned While Building Know Your Company

Our Biggest Blindspots

32:24 - Creating Environments for Employees to Flourish

Resources:

Claire:

Dan:

Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
taking an improv class.

Noel:

Special Guests: Claire Lew and Dan Hodos.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 11: Avoiding Legacy Code with Michael Feathers May 17, 2017

Show notes

Avoiding Legacy Code with Michael Feathers

Guest

Michael Feathers: Author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code; r7krecon.com

Summary

What makes a code base go bad and become "Legacy Code"? Can teams avoid writing bad code? Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins Tech Done Right to talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices, why coding problems are never just about code, and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written.

Notes

02:36 - The Definition of “Legacy Code”

04:25 - What makes code bases go bad?

07:26 - Working as a Team to Avoid Technical Debt and Other Problems

09:49 - Tools and Techniques That Have Changed Since the Book was Written

scythe

12:38 - Lack of Institutional Memory

15:24 - What creates technical debt?

22:50 - “Symbiotic Design”

25:38 - Test-Driven Development

31:44 - Fads in Codebases

36:58 - Error Handling in Applications (in Relation to Conway’s Law)

Special Guest: Michael Feathers.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Links:

Episode 10: Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion May 10, 2017

Show notes

Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion

Guests

Kai Haley: Interaction Designer on Google’s Design Relations Team, leads the Sprint Master Academy

Zeke Binion: Former Director of Design for Table XI and runs Code for Designers

Summary

Do you have a product that needs improvement, or a process to define? Is your team looking for a way to generate and test new ideas quickly? The Design Sprint process, created at Google, is a structured way to explore a problem, create a solution, and get user feedback, all in five days or less. Join Kai Haley, who teaches sprint facilitation at Google, and Zeke Binion, who has run many sprints, as they show Noel Rappin how to use Design Sprints.

Notes

01:24 - What is a “Design Sprint?” Who should use them? What are they good for?

04:08 - The Sprint Book: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five
Days by Jake Knapp, with John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz from Google Ventures

Design Sprint Kit

06:49 - Implementing Sprints Into a Team and High-level Goals

10:47 - Facilitating Design Sprints; or “Being a Sprint Master”

16:40 - “How Might We…?” Brainstorming Sessions

19:32 - Journey Mapping and User Experience Mapping

23:45 - Success Metrics

25:18 - Sketching, Comparison, and Presenting Ideas

“Crazy Eights” Sketching Sessions

32:12 - The Deciding Stage: aka Prototyping

36:29 - User Interviews / Usability Studies

40:36 - Learning to Facilitate Design Sprints

Special Guests: Kai Haley and Zeke Binion.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 9: Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon Apr 26, 2017

Show notes

Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon

Summary

Want to start speaking at conferences? We go over how to get your first conference acceptance, then how to become a better speaker over time. For conference organizers, we also discuss how to find the best speakers from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. Carina C. Zona (@cczona) and Mark Yoon (@wimyoon) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) on this episode of Tech Done Right.

Notes

Carina C. Zona: Longtime developer and advocate in the tech community, certified sex educator, founder of @CallbackWomen

Mark Yoon: Developer and Director of Talent at Table XI

01:12 - @CallbackWomen: What it is and How it Came to Be

05:45 - Questions You Should Ask as a First-time Speaker and Speaker Outreach

10:06 - The Goal and Mission of @CallbackWomen

15:24 - Advice for Conference Organizers to Make Conferences Accessible to Everyone; Internal and External Barriers for Potential Speakers

23:29 - Everyone Has Something Valuable to Contribute and Talk About: Approaching Talk Proposals

Nadia Odunayo: The Guest: A Guide To Code Hospitality

32:28 - Getting a Talk Accepted

Nickolas Means: How to Crash an Airplane @ RubyConf 2015

38:38 - Benefits and Impacts of Speaking at a Conference

Special Guests: Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 8: Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens Apr 12, 2017

Show notes

Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens

Guests

Coraline Ada Ehmke: Open Source Advocate, Creator of The Contributor Covenant, Founding Panelist of Greater Than Code, Senior Engineer on the Community and Safety Team at GitHub

Yana Carstens: Senior User Experience Designer at Table XI

Summary

How can you manage a social media site to maximize community and make all contributors feel safe? Coraline Ada Ehmke (@CoralineAda), from GitHub's Community and Safety Team, and Yana Carstens (@YanaCarstens), a Senior UX designer with Table XI, join Noel on this episode of Tech Done Right. We discuss tools for allowing users more control over their social media environment and community, and how to use personas in design as a way to understand user's goals and guide them toward positive community actions.

Notes

02:59 - GitHub’s Community Management and Anti-Harassment Tools Team and the Problems that They Are Trying to Solve

06:47 - Exposing Anti-Harassment Features and Making Them Prominent, Improving User Experience, and Identifying Harassers

15:10 - Throwing Friction to “Jerkfaces”; Block Functionality

19:13 - Sentiment Analysis

Eudora

26:38 - Working Together with Other Social Platforms

Chatham House Rules

30:38 - What does success look like? “Social Coding”

33:05 - Visibility and Flagging of Comments

Resources:

Coraline:

GitHub Community Guidelines

Yana:

Special Guests: Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Software, Open Source, and Rails With Eileen Uchitelle and Andrew Horner Mar 29, 2017

Show notes

Episode 007: Software, Open Source, and Rails with Eileen Uchitelle and Andrew Horner

Notes

How does the Rails core team work? How are new features planned and implemented? How can I contribute? What should I do if I find a security issue in Rails? Our guest is the newest Rails core team member Eileen Uchitelle (@eileencodes) joins Table Xi senior developer Andrew Horner and host Noel Rappin (@noelrap) to discuss Rails, the new testing features in Rails 5.1, and the Rails Core Team.

Guests

Eileen Uchitelle: Senior Systems Engineer at GitHub on the Platform Systems Team; Member of The Rails Core Team and the Rails Security Team

Andrew Horner: Senior Developer at TableXI

Summary

01:12 - Eileen: Getting Started as a Developer and Getting Involved with The Rails Core Team

CRUD! What to do When Active Record, MySQL, and Your Data Betray You

03:29 - How Rails Governs Itself Internally

05:52 - The Role of the Release Manager

07:32 - Feature Discussions and Prioritization

08:46 - Requesting Features and Raising Issues as a Non-core Team Member

HackerOne

17:52 - Backporting

21:44 - System Testing

27:13 - Potential Future Features in 5.1

Security is Broken: Understanding Common Vulnerabilties

32:12 - User Expectations

RailsConf 2017: Building Rails ActionDispatch::SystemTestCase Framework

36:12 - Getting Involved in Rails

Special Guests: Andrew Horner and Eileen M. Uchitelle .

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt Mar 15, 2017

Show notes

Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt

Guest

Andy Slavitt: Ran Medicare, Medicaid & ACA for President Obama

Summary

How can we use software to build better countries? Our guest, Andy Slavitt (@aslavitt), helps us answer by telling us what he learned leading the recovery effort on Healthcare.gov in 2013 and 2014. Andy will talk about the 6,000 defect backlog he inherited when he took over the system, how it got worse before it got better and why it took a culture shift to really improve things. Even if you can't call the White House to berate underperforming contractors, you'll be able to learn how to run a rescue project under monumental pressure.

Notes

Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt

02:58 - Healthcare.gov
The Affordable Care Act

07:28 - The Launch Process and Software Project Coordination
Uncle Bob Martin: Healthcare.gov

17:20 - Solving Trust Issues Over Architecture

23:20 - Speaking Up About Problems

27:06 - Turning The Culture Around

30:46 - Focusing on Architecture

34:17 - Taking Risks

Special Guest: Andy Slavitt.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks with Zach Briggs and David Copeland Mar 08, 2017

Show notes

Episode 005: JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks

Summary

Dave Copleand (@davetron5000) and Zach Briggs (@theotherzach) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) for a Tech Done Right discussion of JavaScript practices. When does it makes sense to build single page JavaScript app? How can your JavaScript and Rails interact? Is it an island of interactivity or a sprinkle of JavaScript? Which frameworks are handling community management well (hint: not Angular)? And how do you test any of this?

Guests

Dave Copeland: Author of Rails, Angular, Postgres, and Bootstrap

Zach Briggs: JavaScript Practice Lead at Table XI

Show Notes

02:15 - Reasons to Build a Single-Page App

Conway’s Law

09:37 - The Ease of Building Web Over Single-Page Apps

11:30 - Tooling; Navigating Good Choices vs Bad Choices

14:31 - Setup

16:30 - Combining a Rails App and a JavaScript App

18:34 - AngularJS; 1 vs 2

33:05 - Testing

35:35 - TypeScript

Tips & Resources:

Dave: Check out Test Double.

Zach: As a developer, don’t feel forced into choosing between a single-page app and a non-single-page app on the first day of development. There are infinite points in between when it comes to interactivity.

Noel: Read about frameworkless JavaScript in Noel’s book Master Space and Time With JavaScript.

Special Guests: Dave Copeland and Zach Briggs.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 004: In The Testing Weeds With Sam Phippen and Justin Searls Feb 22, 2017

Show notes

Episode 004: Testing

Summary

Sam Phippen, Justin Searls, and Noel Rappin spend this episode talking about the value of test-driven development (TDD) as well as its cost. They discuss the kinds of problems that developers are likely to have after they learn TDD and attempt to apply it to a large application. Learn why Rails is both great and terrible for automated testing, and how testing can influence the structure of your code.

Guests

Sam Phippen: Engineer at Digital Ocean and member of the RSpec Core Team

Justin Searls: Writes bad code effortlessly and cofounder of Test Double. Maintainer of several testing tools, and frequent speaker on test related topics.

Show Notes

01:30 - Intermediate Level Problems in Testing
04:58 - The Value of Testing
- Boundaries by Gary Bernhardt
15:15 - Isolated Unit Tests
17:52 - Structuring Applications
23:13 - Test-Driven Development (TDD)
- Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
33:22 - TDD in a Smalltalk Environment
35:00 - Isolating Tests in a Rails Environment
- Rake Without Rails
36:54 - Test Tools

Tips & Resources:

Sam:

Justin:

Find some little problem and instead of implementing it in a Rails app, type bundle.gem and then make up a name and then practice and invent your own way of organizing code and tests so you can break things down.

Noel:

JUnit Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests

As you’re trying to test stuff, really try to focus on going back and forth between the tests and the code more rapidly than you’re probably doing so right now.

Special Guests: Justin Searls and Penelope Phippen.

Episode 003: Remote Work with Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer Feb 08, 2017

Show notes

Summary

Allison McMillan (@allie_p) and Bradley Schaefer (@soulcutter) talk about remote work in the age of Slack. What makes a good remote worker, or a good remote working team? How can you support more junior team members who want to work remotely? How do you email cake to remote workers on launch celebration day? How can you improve code review for remote workers?

Guests

Allison McMillan: Software Developer at Collective Idea and Rails Girls
Bradley Schaefer: Senior Developer at Table XI and the RSpec Core Team

Show Notes

01:07 - Working Remotely: Getting Started, Setups, etc.
- Allison McMillan: Even the Justice League Works Remotely @ RubyConf 2016
03:19 - Coworking Spaces
- STARTMART
04:34 - What makes an individual successful to be able to work remotely?
07:30 - Gains and Challenges of Working Remotely
10:18 - Transitioning From Onsite to Offsite Work
11:48 - Being the Only Remote Person: How can companies help remote workers feel included?
- Slack
- Know Your Company
21:10 - Building Trust Between Companies and Remote Workers
24:30 - Working Remotely in Other Fields First
25:42 - Working Remotely as a Newbie
30:08 - Cultivating Teams and Positivity
- rubocop

Tips & Resources:

Allison: Schedule weekly pairing sessions and make it a goal to ask questions.

Zach Holman: Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly

SheNomads

Bradley: Try to find pairing tools that work well for you.

Remote: Office Not Required

Special Guests: Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer.

Sponsored By:

Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

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Tech Done Right

Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos

Guests

Summary

Notes

Resources:

Avoiding Legacy Code with Michael Feathers

Guest

Summary

Notes

Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion

Guests

Summary

Notes

Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon

Summary

Notes

Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens

Guests

Summary

Notes

Resources:

Coraline:

Yana:

Episode 007: Software, Open Source, and Rails with Eileen Uchitelle and Andrew Horner

Notes

Guests

Summary

Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt

Guest

Summary

Notes

Episode 005: JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks

Summary

Guests

Show Notes

Tips & Resources:

Summary

Guests

Show Notes

Tips & Resources:

Sam:

Justin:

Noel:

Summary

Guests

Show Notes

Tips & Resources:

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