On Rails
On Rails
Podcast Description
On Rails invites Rails developers to share real-world technical challenges and solutions, architectural decisions, and lessons learned while building with Rails. Through technical deep-dives and retrospectives with experienced engineers in the Rails community, we explore the strategies behind building and scaling Rails applications.Hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast covers topics such as architectural decisions, technical challenges, and lessons learned in Rails development. Examples of specific episodes include discussions on the transition from Resque to Solid Queue by 37signals, the best practices for handling recurring and long-running jobs, and insights into system design, reliability, and maintainability in Rails applications.
On Rails invites Rails developers to share real-world technical challenges and solutions, architectural decisions, and lessons learned while building with Rails. Through technical deep-dives and retrospectives with experienced engineers in the Rails community, we explore the strategies behind building and scaling Rails applications.
Hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon.
In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Jay Tennier, Engineering Manager at Rainforest QA, where he's spent over seven years working across a long-lived Rails monolith and supporting services. They explore how Rainforest maintains their platform with a small team, and the practical decisions that come with that reality. Jay shares lessons from pulling microservices back into the monolith, why they wrap third-party services in adapters, and how they push analytics work to BigQuery instead of straining their Rails database. The conversation covers testing philosophy including ”wet tests” over DRY abstractions, using dry-monads for complex service flows, and how celebrating code deletion has become part of their engineering culture.
Social + Web Presence
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytennier/
GitHub: https://github.com/jaytennie/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/jaytennier
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jaytennier.bsky.social
Company/Org Links
Homepage: https://www.rainforestqa.com/
Tools & Libraries Mentioned
Active Record: Rails ORM.
BigQuery: Hosted analytics warehouse.
Cube.js: API layer for querying analytics data.
DRY-Monads: Structured success/failure flow.
FactoryBot: Test data factories.
Grape: Ruby API framework.
GoodJob: Background job processor.
Q Classic: DB-backed job queue.
Redash: SQL-based dashboards and reporting.
RSpec: Rails testing framework.
React: Front-end application framework.
Haml: Legacy templating engine.
Segment/ Mixpanel: Event tracking pipelines.
Books Mentioned
Confident Ruby by Avdi Grimm
Exceptional Ruby by Avdi Grimm
Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.
On Rails is brought to you by The Rails Foundation, and hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon, a consultancy that helps teams modernize their Ruby on Rails applications.
Disclaimer
This podcast’s information is provided for general reference and was obtained from publicly accessible sources. The Podcast Collaborative neither produces nor verifies the content, accuracy, or suitability of this podcast. Views and opinions belong solely to the podcast creators and guests.
For a complete disclaimer, please see our Full Disclaimer on the archive page. The Podcast Collaborative bears no responsibility for the podcast’s themes, language, or overall content. Listener discretion is advised. Read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more details.