Rails Business
Brendan Buckingham and Ryan Frisch talk about developing with Ruby on Rails and how to leverage it to build a business.
Episodes
33 episodes
Is Data the Moat for Your Business?
The hosts explore whether “data is the new moat” in SaaS and argues that data alone—especially customer data—is rarely defensible as extraction and migration get easier. Instead, moats increasingly come from clear product vision, differentiated...
Do Pull Request Reviews Still Matter in the Age of AI?
The hosts once again discuss the recurring theme of AI’s impact on development workflows. They discuss various topics, including: Increased PR volume from AI-assisted coding and whether traditional pull request reviews ar...
Building with an AI Orchestrator Workflow
In this episode, the hosts discuss building a “universal scraper” for event calendars and a new AI-assisted workflow using a long-running orchestrator.md thread.00:12 Why Change AI Workflow01:29 Orchestrator File Setup04:36 How M...
AI Coding at Scale: Managing PR Overload, Using Claude to Stay Organized and Rethinking SaaS for an AI-First World
The hosts discuss how AI-assisted coding has massively increased their output, creating a new bottleneck: cognitive load, PR review, testing, and getting work shipped. Ryan discusses splitting time between finishing near-complete work, advancin...
Scaling AI-Assisted Development
Today we discuss lessons from our previous episode with John Nunemaker, focusing on the Conductor tool and how multi-workspace, multi-agent workflows can speed up coding and bug fixing. Brendan shares his experimenting with parallelizing six Ro...
John Nunemaker on AI Development
John Nunemaker returns to discuss how fast AI tooling has changed and argues tech leaders should adopt Claude Max (defaulting to Opus), set up agent-friendly local environments, and roll that out to their teams. He shares how his company built ...
Kyle Keesling
In this episode, Kyle Keesling, co-owner of PASS Testing and long-time solo Rails developer, shares how PASS grew from a college web design side project into a niche software and training business for the ...
Reflecting on Our First Year of the Podcast
In this episode, the hosts reconnect after a holiday break to reflect on their podcast journey over the last year. They discuss important milestones like their one-year recording anniversary, the various episodes from the past year, and sharing...
Striving for Ideal Code
In this episode, the hosts discuss reflect on the high-quality, maintainable code found in various videos and books and their own aspirations to emulate such coding standards. The conversation covers the challenges of maintaining good coding pr...
Mateus Pereira
In this episode, we chat with Mateus Pereira from Ombu Labs about the nuances of Rails upgrades and how AI is revolutionizing the process. From tackling gem dependencies to client collaboration, Mateus shares valuable insights and tips for exec...
Nate Berkopec
In this episode, Nate Berkopec, the proprietor of Speedshop, a Ruby on Rails performance consultancy, author of several books including the Complete Guide to Rails Performance, and a maintainer of
Communicating Project Requirements
In this episode, we tackle the nuances of communicating project requirements within development teams. From managing user stories and acceptance criteria to balancing control and flexibility, we explore best practices for ensuring clarity and e...
Stephen Anderson
In this episode, we welcome Stephen Anderson, founder and owner of Bendyworks, a Madison, Wisconsin based Ruby on Rails consultancy. Stephen shares his journey from corporate Java consulting to...
Scott Werner
In this episode, we welcome Scott Werner, CEO of Sublayer, to discuss the future of software development and how AI is transforming the industry. Scott shares his experiences and insights on how AI is cha...
Chris Gaffney
This week, Chris Gaffney, owner of Dead Man's Snitch, a niche monitoring service for CRON jobs and service heartbeats joined us. Discover the origins of the company, its growth journey, and the challeng...
Leveraging AI to Enhance User Productivity
In this episode, we explore how AI can be leveraged to build engaging features in our applications. We discuss the development of a 'guided blogging' feature using AI, its benefits for users, and the challenges faced in implementing conversatio...
Challenges of Performance Monitoring in Rails
In this episode, we dive into the complexities of performance monitoring in Rails applications. Our discussion revolves around popular tools like Honey Badger, New Relic, Skylight, and App Signal, and the challenges of effectively using them. W...
Chris Oliver
In this episode, the hosts welcome Chris Oliver, a prominent figure in the Rails community, known for his work on numerous projects including GoRails, Hatchbox, and
Irina Nazarova
In this episode, Irina Nazarova, CEO of Evil Martians, shares her unconventional journey from earning a degree in computer science and working in finance to eventually becoming a leader in the Rails community. She discusses her entry into web d...
Discussing Documentation
In this episode, Ryan and Brendan discuss the importance of documentation within a business and development context. They cover various types of documentation, including internal, user-facing, and code comments, and highlight the necessity of c...
Ernesto Tagwerker
In this episode, the hosts are joined by Ernesto Tagwerker, founder of Ombuabs and FastRuby.io, a company specializing in Ruby on Rails upgrades as well as AI solutions. Topics covered include...
Jess Brown
In this episode, Jess Brown, shares his journey from freelance consulting to becoming a Rails developer and business owner. Topics covered include Jess's origins with development and Rails, his roles in his businesses, Bootstrap upgrades, mobil...
Adrian Marin of Avo
In this episode, the hosts interview Adrian Marin, the creator of Avo, to discuss his journey from PHP and Node.js to Ruby on Rails. Adrian shares insights into the development of Avo, an internal tools and operat...
Jason Swett is Back to Discuss Sin City Ruby and more
The hosts welcome back Jason Swett to the podcast. He discusses the recent Sin City Ruby conference, including notable highlights such as having Dave Thomas as the keynote speaker. Jason provides insights into the conference's history, th...