Guest and fellow thoughtbotter Stephanie Minn and Joël chat about how the idea of specialized vocabulary came up during a discussion of the Ruby Science book. We have all these names for code smells and refactors. Before knowing these names, we often have a vague sense of the ideas but having a name makes them more real. They also give us ways to talk precisely about what we mean. However, there is a downside since not everyone is familiar with the jargon.
This episode is brought to you by Airbrake (https://airbrake.io/?utm_campaign=Q3_2022%3A%20Bike%20Shed%20Podcast%20Ad&utm_source=Bike%20Shed&utm_medium=website). Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack.
Stephanie's previous talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0dC5RmxcFk)
Non Violent Communication (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/71730.Nonviolent_Communication)
RubyConfMini (http://www.rubyconfmini.com/)
Ruby Science book (https://books.thoughtbot.com/books/ruby-science.html)
Connascence as a vocabulary to discuss coupling (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/connascence-as-a-vocabulary-to-discuss-coupling)
Wired series "5 levels of teaching" (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLibNZv5Zd0dyCoQ6f4pdXUFnpAIlKgm3N)
Transcript:
JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville. And today, I'm joined with fellow thoughtboter Stephanie Minn.
STEPHANIE: Hey, Joël.
JOËL: And together, we're here to share a little bit of what we've learned along the way. Stephanie, what is new in your world?
STEPHANIE: Thanks for asking. I am on a new project I just started a few weeks ago, and I'm feeling the new project vibes, I think, kind of scoping out what's going on with the client with the work that they're doing. Trying to make a good impression. I think lately I've been in that mode of where can I find some work to do even when I'm just getting on boarded and learning the domain, trying to make those README updates in the areas that are a bit outdated, and yeah, just kind of along for the ride.
One thing that has been surprising already is that in my second week, the project pivoted into a different direction than what I was expecting. So that has been kind of exciting and also pretty interesting to see sometimes this stuff happens. I was brought on thinking that we were working on rebuilding the front end in React and TypeScript, pulling out pieces of their 15-year-old Rails monolith. So that was kind of one area that they decided to start with.
But recently, they actually decided to pivot to just revamping the look of the existing pages in the Rails app using the same templates and forms. So it's kind of shifted from more greenfield-esque work to figuring out what the heck's going on in this legacy codebase and making it a little bit more modern-looking and cleaning out the cobwebs, I suppose as we find them.
JOËL: As a consultant, how do you deal with that kind of dramatic shift in expectations?
STEPHANIE: I think it's tough because I necessarily wasn't in those conversations, and so I have to come at it with the understanding that they have a deep knowledge of the business and things that are going on behind the scenes that I don't, and I am coming in kind of with a fresh set of eyes. And it definitely raises some questions for me, right? Like, why now? What were the trade-offs that were made in the decisions?
And I hope that as a consultant, I can poke and prod a little bit to help them with the transition and also figuring out its impact on the rest of the team in a way maybe someone who is more familiar with the situation and more tied to the politics of the org might not have that perspective.
JOËL: I have a lot of questions here. But actually, I'm thinking that onboarding as a topic would probably make a good standalone episode. So maybe we'll have to bring you back for a future episode to talk about how to onboard well and how t