Episode Details

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph share a speedy step to restart your rails server and chat about accessibility improvements and favorite a11y tools. They also dive into a tale of database switching and delight in a new Rails query method that returns orphaned records.

• Restart Rails server via tmp/restart.txt
• WebAIM: Constrast Checker
• IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker
• axe™ DevTools
• AccessLint
• Assistiv Labs
• An introduction to macOS Head Pointer
• Rails date_select
• Rails strong_migrations
• Ruby RBS
• Sorbet - Ruby Type Checker
• Scout APM
• Rails 6.1 adds query method missing to find orphan records

Transcript:

STEPH: People put microphones in front of us. That is their fault, not ours. We just show up. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari.

CHRIS: I'm Chris Toomey.

STEPH: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. Hey Chris, happy Friday.

CHRIS: Happy Friday.

STEPH: How's your week been?

CHRIS: It's been great. I did something that is wildly overdue, but I got a new chair and one day in. But it's also a very familiar chair because it's basically the same -- I think it's the same model as we had at the thoughtbot office. And it's nice to have a chair that is reasonable. And I think my old chair was maybe ten years old or something, deeply embarrassing and absurd like that for such a critical piece of infrastructure in my house.

STEPH: I mean, I guess depending on if it's a good chair. I don't know what the lifespan is of a good chair. [laughs]

CHRIS: I would not describe it as such.

STEPH: [laughs]

CHRIS: I think it was like $100 at Staples. It was a fine chair. It served me well for many years. I'm very slow and cautious with what I consider to be large-scale purchases. I hate the idea of having a thing that I've spent a bunch of money on, but I don't actually like. And these are very solvable problems. But I just tend to drag my feet and over-research and do all those sorts of things. And so finally I was just like, nope, we're going to get a chair, got a chair. Cool. Now I have a chair, and it's good. It's got all of the adjustments, which is what makes it very nice. I'd say Steelcase Leap is the model for anyone that's interested.

STEPH: That's funny. I tend to do the same thing. I tend to drag my feet until I get desperate enough that then I'm forced to make a decision and buy something. I do have an oddly specific question. Do you like chairs with or without the arms?

CHRIS: Oh, with the arms.

STEPH: Really?

CHRIS: Yeah.

STEPH: I am team, no arms.

CHRIS: Where do your arms go if there are no arms to put on the chair? <