Single Table Inheritance in Ruby on Rails

Welcome back to a brand new season of Ruby for All! After a summer hiatus, Andrew and Julie are back and ready to catch up with each other and you! Julie kicks things off sharing her thrilling road trip up the West Coast, visits to national parks, and even some sandboarding in Oregon. Andrew shares his camping and hiking adventure to the Grand Canyon with his friend Drew Bragg, embarking on some challenging hikes, encounters with wildlife, a night of stargazing, and the importance of respecting park guidelines. Then, the conversation shifts gears with Andrew talking about launching a new email product at Podia during the summer, while Julie dives into her focus on research and architectural decisions in her work.  They discuss the challenges of making architecture decisions in software development, including the debate between Single Table Inheritance (STI) and Polymorphism, and they touch on their notetaking and knowledge retention practices. This is going to be an exciting new season, so go ahead and download this episode now!

[00:00:32] Julie talks about her three-week road trip up the West Coast, visiting national parks, and sandboarding in Oregon. 

[00:01:48] Julie’s favorite park is Mt. Rainier, she tells us about going into some fun caves, and Andrew and Julie discuss hiking boots vs. hiking shoes. 

[00:04:15] What did Andrew do this summer besides work? He shares his camping and hiking trip to the Grand Canyon with Drew Bragg. He talks about their camping gear and hiking experience at the Grand Canyon, and some of the challenges and safety aspects of hiking there. 

[00:12:20] Julie and Andrew tell us some encounters they had with wildlife and locking up their food to prevent animals from getting it to it. Andrew mentions seeing aggressive squirrels and the importance of not feeding them due to disease concerns. 

[00:14:47] Andrew shares stories about tourists in national parks disregarding warnings about interacting with wild animals, such as petting bison.

[00:16:34] Andrew talks about his work on launching a new email product at Podia during the summer and Julie mentions her current focus on research and architectural decisions on her work, regarding handling access lists between repositories.

[00:18:00] We hear about some challenges Andrew’s been having with architecture decisions, specifically mentioning the debate between Single Table Inheritance (STI) and Polymorphism and how changing requirements can lead to revisiting architectural decisions. 

[00:19:19] Andrew explains Single Table Inheritance (STI) and Polymorphism and how these concepts relate to their architectural decisions. 

[00:21:18] He highlights the complexity of making architectural decisions and the need to adapt to changing requirements, acknowledging that there is often no one-size-fits-all solution.

[00:23:20] Julie asks about the effort required to backtrack and change architectural decisions when they realize they’ve made the wrong choice. 

[00:24:36] Julie explains the concept of backfilling data, which involves filling in missing or incomplete data. She mentions her existing data app for meetings and notes but expresses the need to redesign it for better organization, and Andrew gives her advice. 

[00:26:02] Julie discusses the challenge of retaining and retrieving knowledge for future reference, and Andrew shares his note-taking workflow using Obsidian and how he organizes his notes hierarchically. 

[00:28:05] Julie mentions her habit of keeping detailed PR notes for her work. 

Panelists:

Andrew Mason

Julie J.

Sponsors:

Honeybadger

Links:

Andrew Mason Twitter

Andrew Mason Website

Julie J. Twitter

Julie J. Website

Obsidian

Sandboarding