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 that scaling a team is as much a social challenge as it is a technical one.
Out Our Front Door (https://www.oofd.org/)
Conway’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)
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.
STEPHANIE: And I'm Stephanie Minn. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.
JOËL: So, Stephanie, what's new in your world?
STEPHANIE: This weekend, I went bike camping for the first time. So, it was my turn to try out the padded bike shorts and go out on a long ride, combining two things that I really enjoy: biking and camping. It was so awesome. We did about 30 miles outside of the city of Chicago to close to the Indiana border. And we were at a campground that's owned by the forest preserves where I'm at. It was so much fun.
I packed all my stuff, including my tent and sleeping bags. And it was something that I never really imagined myself doing, but I'm really glad I did because I think it'll be something that I want to kind of do more of in the future, maybe even do multi-day bike camping trips.
JOËL: So, what's your verdict on the bike shorts?
STEPHANIE: Definitely a big help. Instead of feeling a little bit sore an hour or so along the bike ride, it kind of helped me stay comfortable quite a bit longer, which was really nice.
JOËL: Would you do this kind of trip again?
STEPHANIE: I think I would do it again. I think the next step for me is maybe to go even farther, maybe do multiple stops. Yeah, I was talking to my partner about it who came along with me, and he was saying, like, "Yeah, now that you've done that many miles in one day and, you know, camped overnight, you can really go anywhere. [laughs] You can go as far as you want."
And I thought that was pretty cool because, yeah, he's kind of right, where I can just pack up and go and, you know, who knows where I'll end up? Not that I would actually do that because of my need to plan. [laughs] I'm not that go-with-the-flow. But there was definitely something really special about being able to get from A to B with just, like, my physical body and not relying on any other kind of transportation.
JOËL: Yeah, there's a certain freedom to that spontaneity that's really nice.
STEPHANIE: Yeah. And I actually went with a group called Out Our Front Door. And if anyone is in Chicago and is interested in doing this kind of thing, they do group bike camping adventures, and they make it really accessible. So, it's a very easy pace. You are with a group, so it's just really fun. They make it really safe. And I had a really great time. There was about 60 of us actually at camp, and they had rented out the entire campground, so it was just our group.
And they even had a live reggae band come out and play music for us while we had dinner. And that was a really nice way for me to do it as a first-timer because there was stuff already planned for me, like meals. And I didn't have to worry about that because I was already, you know, just worrying about making sure I got there with all of my stuff. So, if that sounds interesting to you and you're in Chicagoland, definitely check them out.
JOËL: That's a great way to bring in newer people to say, let's have a semi-organized thing, where all you have to focus on is the skill itself, you know, can I bike the 30 miles? Rather than planning all the logistics around it.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, exactly. Joël, what's new in your world?
JOËL: So, speaking of planning and logistics, this week, I'm in between projects at thoughtbot