Say that again . It's like a pork knuckle . It's like a pork knuckle on a chicken , on a chicken . It's a chicken wing . We're going to wing it , we're going to wing it . Hey everyone , this is Adrian , and with me is Tom Rossi from BuzzFroad . Hey Tom , hey Adrian . Perfect . So just so you know this is going on the show .
So everything the pork knuckle , Okay , the pork knuckle . Let's tell people a little bit the death cake .
The death cake . You want to tell people about the death cake . Let's first tell people why are we talking about these things this way ?
It's a promo . It's a promo for Friendly .
It's a promo for .
Friendly . We had so much fun at Friendly and I was educated . I learned about the pork knuckle , which I enjoyed thoroughly . I learned about death Cake , which is only a thing in . Is it Romania ?
I think it's only just .
Romania yes , because I've never heard of this and yeah , so it was a very educational experience , very friendly , definitely the most fun I've had at a conference this year .
Awesome , awesome . Thanks for that . Yeah , so one of the things that we like to do as Romanians is keep people fed . That's the quintessential job of a grandma , or maybe a mother-in-law or future mother-in-law . If you find a nice girl and you go to their place , the mother-in-law will cook everything for you . What do you like ? How do you like it ?
Do you like pork knuckle ? I never made it but I'll make the best pork knuckle for you . Like are you coming over with your fiancé ? I'll make everything , well , everything he loves . So we like keeping people fed .
And so wait , so aptly , you gave , as a speaker , a friendly . You gave me a recipe book . Yes , because Romanian food . Yes , because Romanian food .
Yeah , from the area . Have you had a hard time ? I've been going through it .
No , I haven't cooked anything , but my daughter has been flipping through it and picking out what we're going to make Awesome , awesome awesome .
If she needs any help , give me a call . I like it , I'll have a call . So yeah , I'm glad you had fun in Romania right , yeah , for sure Right . Cool . What do you think about this ? We are at Rails World 2024 in Toronto , toronto , very exciting .
Very exciting . I mean there's so much energy . I love the intimacy at Friendly Like . You get to have a lot of extended periods of time with people , very friendly people . It's great .
This is different .
Right , you don't have as much of that , but there's so much energy around all of the different things that are happening in the Rails community . It's exciting . I think DHH's keynote set the stage yeah . I loved it . Phenomenal , I loved it .
And , like I was talking to Sirtis , this venue is an old brick factory and it's actually more buildings , multiple buildings , like three or four buildings and like three brick factory and it's actually it's actually more buildings , multiple things , like three or four buildings and like three or four or five spaces and it doesn't feel like , you know , there's one large
hole where everybody goes in , everybody talks , that it's like multiple spaces where you can find your own people and have like different conversations or like new people and have like these kind of . So it feels a little bit intimate . It feels kind of like kind of like that . It definitely a little bit intimate .
It feels kind of like kind of like that it definitely doesn't feel like a convention center , or you know something like that . Yeah , yeah , it's not boring , yeah , which which I love . I really enjoyed . Have you seen any talks outside of the opening keynote ? Only a couple .
Yeah , I've been working , working the recording studio , making sure that everybody could use the Buzzsprout recording studio without any issue .
We love it . So I did a couple of these interviews here and I already feel kind of , you know , like a little DJ radio DJ person , like okay , that's great . You know primetime radio , here I come . It's totally different from shooting , like recording in your like in my office , at my desk or anything . It's definitely different . It's cooler in person .
So thank you for that . I've seen a lot of cool people you know taking and giving interviews , like doing podcast episodes here . So thank you for that .
We're having it's great , glad to have you .
Yeah , for sure , and everybody at home that's listening . I think this will give them that vibe about what's happening .
I'm so glad it came together the way it did , because when we talked about doing it for Amsterdam , we weren't sure We've done this at podcasting conferences but never at a Rails conference . But we love Rails and we love podcasting , and so what a cool way to bring it together and I think it's working .
It's so much fun to see Rails podcasters using the space and being able to interview people . It's great .
It's definitely different , it's definitely something new . Tell us a little bit about Buzzsprout , about Higher Pixels , the big company , because I know you're a big Rails fan . Because you're doing this , you're not only supporting the podcasting community but also the Rails community and I know you're a big supporter of Rails and with Rails , defaults and everything .
Tell us how deep is this rooted into the team and the culture , dev culture at the company .
Sure , I think it's definitely deep in the culture and it comes from the idea that we don't know everything we don't know a lot of things , and there are people that are so much smarter than we are and I just want to trust them , and so a lot of it comes down to when uh , when I first started building apps with rails , I just trusted rails .
I'm like I don't anytime . I tried to override rails with my own conventions and my own thoughts , it always blew up , and so I'm like I'm just , I'm , I'm vanilla as vanilla can be , I'm just going to use it the way that rails is is using it .
If I know anything about 37signals , since they're obviously the biggest contributor to Rails , I'm going to do it the way that they're doing . And you know that's continued to work for us . I think a lot of people get too confident . You get your first product out and then you start to think you know what . I'm going to kind of do my own thing .
I'm pretty smart , right ? I'm an engineer , I can build , I can think about stuff , right . Yeah , yeah , yeah .
And we don't .
And it's funny because you'll have you know , guys on the team , that at the beginning they're like I don't know how I feel about this because I'm not explaining a lot of why we do it this way , other than this is Rails opinion , this is the way we're going to do it , and they're like well , but why , why , why , why , and I'm like I don't know and I don't
want to explore it and there's a certain freedom that comes from that , and then at some point like ActiveStorage .
I've been talking a ton to people about ActiveStorage and that's like the first time where Rails opinion kind of led us astray , where it's just so different than what we need from buzzsprout in terms of public assets that we're serving up and Things like that . But for the most part it served us so well .
We are so thankful that All that work was done for us so that we didn't have to do that ourselves .
Yeah , yeah , I agree . I agree Getting back a little bit about getting new team members . I remember when David was speaking was talking about we prefer junior people or we prefer people that are still malleable . It's more difficult to have somebody with a strong will and a way of doing things and then bringing them to do it like you do it .
So if you bring somebody that's like a fresh slate , a blank slate , you can model them in the right way yeah , yeah , 100 , 100 .
It's a longer commit , yeah , to be able to get them up to speed , but the payoff is so great and , honestly , I mean it's the number one thing that we look for . We don't hire often , but if we're going to hire somebody , the number one thing you're looking for is are they teachable ? Yeah , teachable coachable ?
Yeah , definitely if they're not willing to to learn new things and be challenged to do things differently , then they're not . They're just not going to make it that's awesome .
That's awesome . Uh , what are you excited about from these new announcements ? Rails 8 , 8.1 , the new frameworks , all the new frameworks .
We've been playing with all the solid queue , solid cache , all the solid stuff . We haven't played with solid kibble yet . We've been doing that on some of our smaller apps . So we have some smaller products that are not actively being developed , but we use them as great test beds Kamal being able to deploy apps with Kamal introducing the solid .
Once we do that , we can experiment to decide if we want to bring it into Buzzsprout , because Buzzsprout is really the main it's our biggest product and you don't want to roll it out there until you're , because Buzzsprout is really the main .
It's our biggest .
It's our big product and you don't want to roll it out there until you're pretty familiar with it Of course , of course , of course .
Yeah , I think it's awesome and one of the things that really kind of it's something that like David and like nobody really discussed this , this result , because they just announced it is like Hotwire Native . This new framework , it's actually , like you know , multiple frameworks like brought together . It's like Turbo native . There's like the Navigator and .
Strata yeah , all together , and it's like having all that glue to just , you know , have your Rails app make and make it a real iOS or Android app , which is really good .
What was your experience with Turbo Native and Strata , Because I know you just launched I mean not just launched , but it was amazing and I think it's a great example of the fact that we were vanilla Rails and we weren't messing around with different types of front ends .
I know it's so tempting to be able to bring in React or some other type of JavaScript framework . We've always resisted the urge . We're like we're just not going to do it and because of that we were able to take advantage of all the hot . When Hotwire came out , we were immediately doing Hotwire .
When Turbo Native came out , when Strata came out , we were immediately able to do that and it was awesome . We were able to launch a mobile app from nothing at all to having a designed app that feels native . I mean , it feels like a native app . I was showing some people even here , and they just couldn't believe it .
It feels native and we were able to do that in less than nine months . We could have never done that . I think it took eight months to do the iOS only because we had to design it . We didn't even know , what was the mobile experience ?
going to be .
But then , once we had that done , it only took us a month to do the Android , and our Android users have told us we're not used to this . We're used to an Android app that feels like an Apple app that somebody ported over to Android .
This feels like an Android app , and the reason we're able to do that is because we build on top of just all the native stuff that comes from Rails . We're excited about what that means for Hotwire Native rolling it all together because we use them as independent libraries . I think it's only going to make our life easier , awesome .
I think this word like feels it's a very good description . It's a good word to describe what happens , because I was checking some apps with Yaro and I was trying to figure some things out and like , you go , you navigate through it and this is exactly what you do . It feels differently . It's not like oh , this is wrong because of this . This is wrong .
Like , because there are different patterns . You have to learn that as a web developer not necessarily as a Rails , but as a web developer there are different patterns of navigation and stuff . But I think it's awesome that the people that want to take this step and make their apps take them native . It's another cool thing that they can learn right .
It's another cool thing that they can experiment .
One thing thing that the cool thing that they can learn right , yeah , it's another cool thing that they can experiment , one one thing that we've always benefited from um .
I think that I've always recognized I'm not a design guy like you don't want me to design anything .
Uh , right , it's gonna look . It's gonna look like real scaffolding , right , like it's not gonna , it's not gonna look very good . And so I've always had a separation between our designers and our back-end software writers , coders , and because of that it creates a tension .
There's always a tension between the person who wants it to look and feel a certain way and then the coder who's like , but that's really hard , right . But that tension is something that you , you want in your , in your software environment , because it's going to help you get a better product .
Yeah , and a lot of what you're describing in terms of feel is driven by those designers pushing back on can we make it feel better ? Can we make it feel better ? What if we did this ? And the coder's going , no , no , no , well , actually , maybe , actually , we can do that .
And that conversation happens so much in the building of features all the time for higher pixels .
Yeah , this is the coachability part of that developer where you want to see it flourish .
Yeah , and I think it's . It's tension . There should be a tension . The designers should be pushing the programmers and the programmers should be pushing the designers Rather than one dominating . The designers shouldn't just design and then throw it over the cube , and then the programmers just have to hook it up . There needs to be a tension between the two .
It's kind of like you know architects and engineers , the engineers want everything to be like a square building . You know architects and engineers , the engineers want everything to be like a square building because , then the architect . No , no , we want a rounded corner here , like , oh well , we could do it .
So it's always you know that back and forth , because everybody's fighting for their own thing , right ?
Yeah , that's perfect . Architect and engineer . Same kind of yeah , yeah , yeah , that exists , that's awesome . And so we talk about that in the office all the time , Like if there's not attention , then we're doing something wrong .
We're not passionate about it .
Yeah , yeah .
We're not doing our jobs , basically kind of right , Healthy tension . That should be . You know , a quote , a big quote on the wall . Yeah , I'm going to remember that . Cool , what are your plans ? Rest of the day .
I'm going to hang out here at the conference , record some more podcasts and then after party .
I'm looking forward to that . It's going to be at Shopify's headquarters .
That's right at their office .
What about next year ? Do you have any ideas for when it's going to be ? That's the big question . That's the big question .
For the folks listening when do you think it's going to be ? Should I say yeah , I want to hear what you think .
So for the folks that are listening , because now it's being recorded , it's being recorded , so the folks that are listening whenever you get your swag bag , you get a raffle ticket at Railsworld and this year they had a space where you could it . Or do you want to say it ?
Yes , I want you to say it . I wrote down Berlin , berlin .
I think so , because it's a very fashionable place . It has all the amenities , it has all the venues , everything . It's pretty close , it's central to Europe . Somehow you can get there from everywhere . I think Spain was a big . I wanted it to be Barcelona , but I think Madrid has a big .
I wanted it to be Barcelona , but I think Madrid has a little bit more again the infrastructure that we need , but Spain is . I heard a lot of people that said oh my god , I want to do Spain because it's beautiful , it's Spain , right , the good food , the great weather and everything . So yeah , I said Berlin . What did you say ?
so okay , this is funny because I misunderstood . I thought I was saying where would you like it to be , and I said Jacksonville Florida . Because that's where I would like it to be .
It's okay , you're not going to win . I'm not going to win . I'm not going to win .
I'm 100% sure . But if I were to guess , I would have guessed South America , I would think Brazil .
Well , we have Tropical on Rails , so you think that would be a that's kind of the Latin America I don't want to say official , but the Latin America Rails Conference and I think it's quite healthy to have it like that . Somehow I can't explain it right now , but I think it's healthy because Latin America is such a big place .
They do their things a little bit different . I don't know . It feels a little bit like it's okay that they do it that way and the world just goes between Europe and the US .
North America , north America , yeah , for sure , for sure , yeah exactly because we're in Canada .
So , yeah , awesome .
Yeah , so we'll see . I like that idea . I would be excited about any of those places .
Any of those places right , yeah , yeah , bata , paella , tinto de Verano , we're already going to talk about food .
Yeah , see , see . But one thing that we can be sure I mean Amanda and the Rails Foundation this is so good , awesome , awesome , so good , awesome , awesome job . Such a good use of the space , yeah , yeah , yeah , space catering , everything .
Whatever they pick , it's going to be good . Yeah , yeah , yeah , it's awesome . It's really a spectacle . It's a festival .
Yeah , it's not a conference , it's a freaking festival Two Rails and I think it's cool that they're launching , they're releasing the year during this or , like you know , the betas and everything , so it becomes kind of , you know , like apple does it , like , oh my god , this is the rails event right this is . This is where you want to be .
If you're with rails , this is the the place .
Yeah , and I love how we celebrate it this uh , this is the first time my business partner who's on the design side right , you talk about the healthy tension , right ? So he's . When , when we first started building products , he was the only designer , I was the only programmer . Right , he was the only designer , I was the only programmer .
Right , he was the Jason Freed , I was the DHH and he's never been to a Rails conference at all . Yeah , and he's loving it . Awesome . He's like the . Even though he doesn't understand a lot of the tech that we're talking about , he's still just excited .
All the energy you know , yeah , yeah , you feel it , you , you feel it , you feel it if you're here , awesome .
Well , thank you , thanks for having me on the show .
Thanks for being on the show , are you ?
kidding , we chicken winged it . And congratulations on your achievements , on your Buzzsprout achievements .
Oh yeah , yeah , I have them with me . Yes , the cool pins . Yes , we chicken winged it very well .
Yes , yes , very good . Awesome , thanks , I'm going to go get a pork knuckle . I'm going to go find one here .
We can find some amazing food . Thank you , thank you everyone . Thank you Tom for being here , thanks Amanda and the team and the Rails Foundation for doing this .
Thank you .
Have a good one , bye .