thoughtbot

Rails advanced routing constraints

Learn how to authorize requests at the routing layer to improve security and ergonomics.

Handling external API errors: A transactional approach

Clarifying a few possible ways to implement transactional workflows when working with external APIs.

3 Question Framework – How to Respond Without Reacting

Over-communicating is key, over-reacting is not. It's important to find the balance on when to respond to messages and when to keep still.

This Week in Open Source (November 3, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (November 3, 2023).

Incubator update 1: Josh at Knect

Learn all about the first weeks of the thoughtbot Startup Incubator with Knect — from user research to market experiments and insights from the founder himself.

Asking the Right Questions After a Demo

Product demos are crucial in development. They offer insight into team progress and align stakeholder expectations. Yet, we sometimes need more than showcasing the product. Vital to success is asking stakeholders some practical questions.

factory_bot 6.3.0

factory_bot 6.3.0 is out, with Ruby 3.2 support, better docs, and more hooks.

A Peek Behind the Curtain of Our New Open Source Page

How did we build the new Open Source page?

This Week in Open Source (September 1, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (September 1, 2023).

What does a developer do during a product discovery sprint?

How to help your team discover the right product using your technical know-how.

Week 4 of thoughtbot Startup Incubator: AvidFirst

The AvidFirst team is starting to crystallize the product idea through constant research and interviewing.

Speed up your Rack application with HTTP

You don't need a sophisticated caching mechanism to improve your application's performance. All you need is a basic understanding of the HTTP specification.

This week in #dev (Aug 18, 2023)

Caching HTTP responses forever, a fix for when your terminal is acting weird, and more!

Treat yourself days

Be kind to yourself and do something special today.

A pragmatic guide to building a Rack application from scratch

Learn how to build a production ready Rack application without a framework like Rails or Sinatra.

How to work on client problems rather than solution requirements

Here is one strategy to move a client from providing your team with a list of requirements to working on the root problem together.

Kicking off thoughtbot’s Summer 2023 incubator with AvidFirst

The team gets up to speed on everything Ashley's already learned and done so far and identifies an early adopter market.

This Week in Open Source (August 14, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (August 14, 2023).

Structuring Conditionals in a Wizard

Branching early helps structure multi-step forms.

This week in #dev (Jul 28, 2023)

Creating reusable components with vanilla JS, checking feature compatibility across email clients, and more!

Event Recap: Open Source Festival - Lagos, Nigeria

Highlights of attending the Open Source Festival in Lagos, Nigeria.

Up and running with WebSocket

WebSockets best shines in situations where real time communication is important, you can see notable examples in chat applications and even Multiplayer gaming. In this piece I will be showing you how to create your own WebSocket server and client.

This Week in Open Source (July 21, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (July 21, 2023).

Git Interactive Rebase, Squash, Amend and Other Ways of Rewriting History has been Updated

Read it again today to learn the git tools that will allow you to keep a clean git history, how to use them, and why they should be handled with care.

Implementing Deep Linking in React Native: A Quick Step-by-Step Guide

A quick step-by-step guide on implementing deep linking in React Native application, enabling users to seamlessly access specific screens or content within the app.

Building Value Objects in Rails with composed_of

Learn how to improve the interface of your existing Active Record Models with this underutilized API.

This week in #dev (Jul 7, 2023)

Highlights of what happened in thoughtbot's #dev channel on Slack this week.

Embracing Open Source: thoughtbot's Journey and Commitment

Introducing our brand-new Open Source page. Discover a curated collection of projects that showcase the essence of collaboration and innovation at thoughtbot.

GitHub pull request merge strategies

An overview of what the options provided by the pull request merge button on GitHub do and how to make the best out of each strategy.

Using Machine Learning to Answer Questions from Internal Documentation

We have a lot of internal and external documentation about how we do things at thoughtbot. I explored how we could make ChatGPT able to answer people's questions using this documentation. This articles shows how to do it and the results.

How to Use ChatGPT to Find Custom Software Consultants

A new, perhaps more accurate tool has emerged to help innovative companies find the best software consultants.

This Week in Open Source (June 30, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (June 30, 2023).

Take the Outside View: A solution to the planning fallacy

Optimism is our kryptonite but history is our saviour.

Getting started with React on Rails

Let's explore the benefits of using the React on Rails gem and how it can streamline your development process.

A love letter to Objective-C

Let's take a trip to Objective-C from Ruby.

This Week in Open Source (June 23, 2023)

Recent thoughtbot open source updates (June 23, 2023).

This Week in #dev (Jun 16, 2023)

Highlights of what happened in our #dev channel on Slack this week.

The Blank Page Problem

Getting started from a empty page can be tough. But there are some strategies for breaking the blank.

Inspecting Ruby's inspect method

Because 0x0000000103f70c98 never helped anyone.

This week in #dev (Apr 21, 2023)

This week, we discussed splitting arrays, handling deprecation warnings, and querying missing records.

Week 6 of thoughtbot startup Incubator: Senga

The Senga team is hard at work gaining insights and iterating the strategy and prototype based on real user feedback.

Week 2 of thoughtbot Startup Incubator: Senga

Customer interviews continued, we launched some ad campaigns, and we learned some things!

Error Messages Are Our Friends

This article is about how to understand and embrace error messages as tools to help us find issues in our code.

Build or buy: Is it core business?

The one key question that can simplify the build or buy decision making process.

Simplifying React Native Development with Expo

With a slew of improvements, Expo might be the future of Hassle-Free React Native Development.

In relentless pursuit of some parts of REST

If we want clients to create small controllers and use resources in their routes, it's a good idea to know why. This is a refresher of Derek Prior's advice from Railsconf 2017.

We're Building a New Design Sprint Guide

We've been running design sprints for over 10 years, it's time for us to share everything we know about them in an updated guide.

Pairing is Caring

Some thoughts about pair programming and what an ideal pairing session looks like to me.

Introducing the first entrepreneur to go through the thoughtbot Incubator

Learn about the entrepreneur who was selected to participate in the thoughtbot startup incubator.

Ruby Groups Around The World 🌎🌍🌏

Come on a journey to discover the various Ruby groups around the world. From Argentina to Vietname going through Mexico.

DevOps and Resiliency in HealthTech Panel Event Recap

Victoria moderated a panel of healthcare technology founders and lead engineers on the acceleration of DevOps adoption into Healthcare Industry during the pandemic.

Ask thoughtbot CTO - All About CI / CD

Our Mission Control team talks with thoughtbot CTO Joe Ferris about questions related to continuous integration and continuous delivery practices at thoughtbot and how they have evolved over time.

Handling external API errors: A resumable approach

Clarifying a few possible ways to implement resumable workflows when working with external APIs.

My Adventure With Async Ruby

I used the `async` gem to speed up a portion of my app. Here's how it went and my thoughts on the gem.

Rails developers write some Rust: a review of Axum 0.6

Is Rust Web yet? We used our Rails knowledge to try writing a Web application in Axum in two days.

This week in #dev (Dec 30, 2022)

Highlights of what happened in our #dev channel on Slack this week.

Don't just do it

Understanding the need behind a change is important to build better software. Here's why.

Announcing the thoughtbot Incubator

Apply to have thoughtbot be your technical co-founder for 8 weeks.

Announcing DevOps in HealthTech virtual panel on Tuesday Jan 17th 2023 5:30pm ET

Join DevOps DC's virtual panel of healthcare technology founders and lead engineers talking about the acceleration of DevOps adoption in the Healthcare Industry during the pandemic on Tuesday, January 17th.

This week in #dev (Dec 23, 2022)

Highlights of what happened in our #dev channel on Slack this week.

Introducing thoughtbot.social: Our Social Media Space on Mastodon

thoughtbot is now on Mastodon!

thoughtbot Apprenticeship Applications for Europe, West Asia and Africa for 2023 Are Now Open

Applications are now open for our first 2023 Apprenticeships. This is our paid, junior-level position providing structured support and mentorship to get you to be a billable thoughtbot Designer or Ruby on Rails Developer.

This week in #dev (Dec 16, 2022)

Highlights of what happened in our #dev channel on Slack this week.

In praise of verbosity

I often find myself running into mysterious command line errors as I install different development dependencies over and over. Fortunately many commands have an option for verbose output that gives more insight.

Case Equality Operator in Ruby

An introduction to the `===` method in Ruby, and how it works in `case` expressions and beyond them.

Travailler dans ma langue maternelle demande de l'empathie

Travailler toute la journée dans une autre langue que sa langue maternelle est épuisant, mais nous pouvons apporter de la bienveillance et de la compréhension pour soulager une partie de cette charge mentale.

How to Fix Rails 6.1 'Initialization autoloaded the constants' Warning Messages

Got autoloading during initialization warning messages in your Rails 6.1 app? It's time to_prepare for the next version.

Keeping it simple

A reminder that code is a step in a process, not an end in itself.

This week in #dev (Pilot)

Highlights of what happened in our #dev channel on Slack this week.

Figma UI Starter Kit

New Figma resource, a lightweight UI design starter kit to save you time.

Your flaky tests might be time dependent

Time dependent tests are difficult to diagnose, and the symptoms don't present themselves until it's too late. This article will help you determine if your test suite is time dependent.

Our macOS setup script, Laptop, adds official support for Ventura

We've just pushed a new release of our macOS setup script, Laptop, which adds official support for macOS Ventura and fixes a few other issues.

DEI: Speaking Up About Our Values

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is part of thoughtbot's core values. As we encounter critiques of these principles, it is important to explain why we do what we do and why it sets us apart from toxic tech culture that still lives true today.

2023 Consumer Tech Trends

To best support thoughtbot’s teams and our clients, we spend the end of the year analyzing the patterns we’ve experienced and the trends on the horizon for the industries we support most frequently.

Data Modeling Resources in Elm

Links to some of the best Elm data modeling resources around the web.

Automate manual deployments with Git and binstubs

Your team's manual deployment process doesn't have to be so manual. Here's how we automated our team's deployment process with a few lines of bash and basic Git knowledge.

thoughtbot approved as UK Crown Commercial Gcloud 13 supplier

UK public sector organisations can find and contract thoughtbot cloud support services.

Moving Beyond, Not Getting Over, Imposter Syndrome

Let’s move away from individual responsibility, and towards collective and systemic accountability.

Do Not Use Obliques in Arabic

The history of obliques/italic fonts, and why you shouldn't use them in Arabic-based texts.

Histogram Distribution in Ruby is Double Tally

Using `#tally` to calculate the distribution of letters in a piece of text.

Our strategy for B2C founders starting a product company during the cost of living crisis

Based on nearly 20 years of experience, thoughtbot’s suggestions for successful B2C product strategy during an economic downturn.

Navigating & Maximising Fundraising in the UK - Event Recap

We recently hosted a live panel discussion with industry experts. This article summarizes a part of that conversation, highlighting tips for UK startup teams either considering or navigating fundraising in the current landscape.

Recapping our Ask Me Anything session with our partner 1871

A few weeks ago we got to join an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event to give thoughtbot’s perspective on product strategy, research, design, development, and culture.

Ready to fundraise? Learn from thoughtbot and our partner, Forecastr, at our event October 3rd

thoughtbot and our partner, Forecastr, will share insights and resources for startups preparing their product roadmap, and their financials, for investor conversations.

Recapping our June - August podcast episodes

If you've missed any of our recent podcasts, get a quick synopsis to see which ones you'd like to catch up on.

thoughtbot is one of Quartz's Best Companies for Remote Workers in 2022

We've been named one of Quartz’s Best Companies for Remote Workers! Here are some highlights of our path to fully remote and things we've learned along the way.

Working Iteratively

Working in small chunks is one of the most impactful things we can do as developers.

Event recap: Panel Discussion on the Cost of Living Crisis

We recap the insights and advice our experts give to technology companies navigating the current landscape.

Product Considerations for Middle-Eastern Users: No Fixed Location (Part 2 of 2)

In this two part blog series, we share more detail on two of the challenges we faced and our collective learnings for building digital products for a Middle-Eastern audience. This is our second blog which shares how we built a delivery app for users with no fixed location.

Product Considerations for Middle-Eastern Users: Multi-Currency (Part 1 of 2)

In this two part blog series, we share more detail on two of the challenges we faced and our collective learnings for building digital products for a Middle-Eastern audience. Our first blog focuses on Multi-currency support.

Upcoming event—The Cost of Living Crisis and what it means for technology

Join us for a Free Virtual Event on Technology & The Cost of Living Crisis including Panel Discussion & Q&A.

Interviewing like it's a classroom. In a good way.

Observing some aspects that job interviews and learning and teaching a foreign language have in common, in communication style in a broad way.

Financial modeling for startups from Forecastr

Better visibility into your financial outlook and the confidence to pitch investors.

Connascence as a vocabulary to discuss Coupling

How Connascence can make discussions around Coupling easier and more productive.

It's official - RSpec Training

Formalizing how we support our clients with unique to you RSpec training.

Your Phone Belongs to You, You Don't Belong to It

Sometimes we can become addicted to the fast-paced nature of our industry. It doesn't have to be this way. You can disconnect from it all, and the first step sits right in your hand.

Query by Duration in Active Record

How do you even save a "duration", let alone query for records by that value? It's actually easier than you think.

thoughtbot presentations & good vibes from RailsConf 2022

thoughtbot has been a passionate and active participant in the Ruby on Rails community and are proud to be a contributor in the open source community. Each year thoughtbot participates in RailsConf and were fortunate enough this year to have a few thoughbotters join as speakers.

thoughtbot Design Link Pack: April 2022

What are the thoughtbot designers reading and sharing this month?

A Case for Query Objects in Rails

When is it best to reach for query objects and how can we best structure them?

Steal this interview script

A boilerplate script for 1:1 remote user interviews.

Agreeably Disagreeing aka How to Handle Conflicts

A collection of conflict resolution tips from personal experience in customer service.

Kotlin StateFlow vs LiveData on Android: What Are They & Why Should You Care

A comparison of Kotlin Flow vs LiveData, and use cases for each.

Custom Ranges in Ruby

How can we create ranges out of custom objects?

thoughtbot Design Link Pack: March 2022

What are the thoughtbot designers reading and sharing this month?

Reducing Leaky Abstractions Introduced by ActiveRecord

ActiveRecord provides a comprehensive interface for querying the database, but at what cost?

Switching from ENV files to Rails Credentials

A little bit of my struggles with ENV files throughout the years, and hopefully a better solution.

Rails Server Side Analytics From Scratch

Learn how to track user events without sacrificing privacy and performance.

The opportunity will find you

Learning makes magic happen.

Write Readable Code

Techniques and reasons to optimize your code for people, not metrics.

Pipelining without pipes

Ruby, functional programming, how to build operation pipelines, and the average programming language color.

Working in my native language requires empathy

It's exhausting to communicate all day in your non-native language, but we can practice kindness and understanding to relieve some of that mental load.

What We Loved from ProductCon 2022

This February, a handful of thoughtbotters attended the virtual ProductCon event. Here are a few of the team’s takeaways from this year.

thoughtbot Design Link Pack: February 2022

What are the thoughtbot designers reading and sharing this month?

Knowledge playlists are now available in our playbook

A breakdown of our best-of blog posts for consulting.

Chesterton's Fence

You're driving along a road and you come across a fence blocking your way. What do you do? You could tear it down. After all, what's the use of a fence over a road? But you would be wise to reconsider.

Hotwire: Turbo-Streaming ViewComponents

Learn how to Turbo-Stream ViewComponents by building a message board.

thoughtbot Design Link Pack: January 2022

What are the thoughtbot designers reading and sharing this month?

SRE: The Next Big Thing from Mission Control

thoughtbot is proud to add Site Reliability Engineering to our Mission Control team. This blog shares more info on the role and our goals with the offering.

Dynamic forms with Turbo

Fetch fresh fields from your servers with Turbo Frames.

Dynamic forms with Stimulus

Progressively enhance your server-generated forms with Stimulus.

Getting Up and Running Quickly When Joining a Project

Joining an existing project as a developer comes with loads of challenges. If you need some inspiration on how to become more productive quicker, this article is for you.

Using A Silent Activity To Get Group Buy-In

We walkhtrough how we use a silent sorting activity to help hear from all stakeholders and align the group on a singular product strategy.

How to Introduce Investment Time at Your Company

A client of ours plans to introduce a day of improvement each week. Here is my best advice for how to make it successful.

How we screen Apprentice Rails Developer applications

A summary of the things we look at during our initial screening of Apprentice Rails Developer applications.

How we screen Apprentice Designer applications

A summary of the things we look at during our initial screening of Apprentice Designer applications.

Hotwire: Asynchronously loaded tooltips

Learn how to effectively render tooltips in Rails without writing any JavaScript.

Adding Tailwind to Electron

A guide to adding Tailwind CSS to an Electron React project.

Security: Start today

Simple actions can make a big difference in Security. What can we do today to make our lives safer?

thoughtbot’s Year In Review On Clutch For 2021

Our CEO, Diana Bald reflects and celebrates our 2021 Year in Review on Clutch.

How the Beatles Helps Us Reduce Risk

How cross-functional teams and different perspectives help your product (& the Beatles) reduce risk

Ruby Splat Operator 🌟

The Ruby splat operator is confusing and here is why...

An Honest Look at Tailwind as an API for CSS

Treat Tailwind as an API for CSS and avoid common pitfalls of utility-first CSS frameworks.

A Mindset for Better Code

The key to better code is making it easy to delete.

Gratitude

A thank you to everyone who supports thoughtbot and helps us succeed.

Why Your Prototype Isn't Securing Investment

We have a few tips for entrepreneurs to use more than just a prototype to secure investment for their product.

Celebrating 2021 Wins Going Into 2022

Check out this infographic we created while taking some time to celebrate the team's great work in 2021.

Choosing the right database index type

A quick introduction to which database index types are right for the task at hand in Postgresql.

Tailwind and the Femininity of CSS

Why we undervalue front-end expertise in the web development world.

Attending RubyConf Virtually

RubyConf happened last month! It spurred some reflections on the good and bad of virtual conferences.

Making the Case for Practicing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at a Company Level

We invest in DEI because it's the right thing to do.

thoughtbot Apprenticeship Applications for 2022 Are Now Open

Applications are now open for our first 2022 Apprenticeships. This is our paid, junior-level position providing structured support and mentorship to get you to be a billable thoughtbot Developer or Designer.

Debugging at the Boundaries

Get better at detecting and preventing bugs by focusing on the boundaries in and around your program.

A Standard Way to Lint your Views

Find out how to use erb-lint to lint your views, including using Standard to lint the Ruby code they contain.

What technologies should I learn?

What technologies do we recommend to early career web developers?

The Benefit of React Native for your v1 Mobile App

What we've learned while supporting our clients in the decision to go with React Native for their first mobile app.

Meet Fiber, Thread's Cooperative Cousin

A brief introduction to Ruby's lightweight concurrency primitive.

thoughtbot Design Link Pack: October 2021

What are the thoughtbot designers reading and sharing this month?

Product Roadmap Best Practices

Our tips can help founders nail their first version product while keeping track of their future vision.

Anouncing the Native vs React Native App Development Live Panel

The hard truths, cold facts, and brutal opinions about React Native.

Integration Testing with Capybara

Blend the speed of `Rack::Test`-driven Integration Tests with the power and utility of `Capybara` finders and assertions.

FOSS Like A Boss

It's possible you've seen the abbreviation while looking for a note-taking app or for alternatives to Google Maps. But what is it?

We’re Fully Remote

In the beginning of 2021 thoughtbot made the decision to go fully remote. This blog highlights a bit more insight into the decision and the excitement we have for the path ahead.

A Broader Take on Parsing

Broadening our definition of "parsing" yields some useful insights.

Ruby Safe Navigation

Ruby's safe navigation can hide some subtle edge cases. We explore approaches to think about conditional logic, alternatives to `&.`, and when `&.` is the best tool for the job.

Models That Match Reality

When modeling a domain, it's important to have our model actually match reality.

Fewer Operations on Custom Types is Valuable

Less is more. Wrapping primitives in custom types restricts your available operations and that's a good thing.

Who is empowered by your API design?

Analysing API design through lens of skill floors and ceilings can help us think about the impact of adding a feature.

Rubocop: Custom Cops for Custom Needs

Parsers, grepping, ASCII art, and how that helps you automating boring stuff.

Using a Function Design Recipe to Debug

Ever notice how some of your bugs are annoyingly simple once you find them? Use this six-step checklist to skip straight through to harder problems.

The Curse of Knowledge

Ever played Charades and acted out the perfect mime to 'James Bond', only to be met with blank stares? That moment when you wonder "Are my friends fools!?", that's the curse of knowledge.

How Validating Your Idea First Can Save You Money

We walk through the importance of product validation and how we've seen it succesfully save founders time and money in planning their first version product.

Seeking Product Managers who love launching NEW products and NEW product teams.

thoughtbot is growing our Product Management Team. Please see our current open positions.

Hotwire: Typeahead searching

Build a search-as-you-type text box with Turbo, Stimulus, and Rails.

Migrating thoughtbot Repositories to use Main as default branch

thoughtbot is moving all of it's GitHub Repositories to use "main" as the default branch.

Spaces: The Final Frontier

One big giant blob of words is hard -- and tedious -- to read. Let's get back to elementary school and see how we can improve this.

Hotwire: Server-rendered live previews

Turbo-charge your Article drafting feedback cycle with Hotwire-powered live previews.

Testing Your Edge Cases

A little combination math goes a long way to catching edge cases.

Solving the Prototype Puzzle

Curious what you can expect from a product prototype. Here is how we suggest getting the most out of a prototyping effort.

MVP vs PoC: What’s the Right Road?

You have a product idea but aren't sure how hard it is to build (or if it's technically possible). thoughtbot shares our perspective when a Proof of Concept might be a good first step before moving forward with your MVP.

I have a product idea. Now what do I do?

Walking through how we work with founders to determine the best first step in exploring a business and product idea.

New Case Study & A Look at Discovery Questions

We are exited to share a new case study featuring our work with Grandstand and also highlighting the Discovery work that helped them quickly plan the right approach.

Debugging Series 2021: Summer Break!

Sometimes, the debugger needs a break.

New Case Study & Updated Services for Early-Stage Teams

After a successful project with Oromoon and others, we've updated our services to better support early-stage companies and entrepreneurs.

Back to Basics: Boolean Expressions

Write Boolean expressions using operators instead of if/else for a more readable outcome.

Modifications we’ve made to the Design Sprint

Design Sprints, by their very nature, are flexible. They follow an overall arc that drives towards testing ideas with potential users, but are not constrained to a single dogmatic way to go about that.

How We Set Up Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council

Some specifics on how we work towards a more equitable workplace.

Pipeline Decoders in Elm

What's the difference between Elm's classical and pipeline JSON decoders?

Designing for Failure

What ideas can we borrow from video game design to create a better user experience?

Full-text search with PostgreSQL and Action Text

Search through user-provided HTML content with PostgreSQL and Active Record.

Indiana Jones and the Crypt of Cryptic Error Messages

Researching an error message is like deciphering an ancient language and then running into a room full of traps. But without the cool theme music part.

The Investment Pitch Package sets up your product and your business

thoughtbot helps founders translate a product vision into a strong investor pitch deck with a validated prototype and a roadmap for bringing your product to life.

Running Out of Maps

What happens when you need a bigger mapN?

Say ‘Yes’ to More Ideas With The Innovation Challenge

thoughtbot can help your team by enabling them to use product and design-thinking to innovate faster.

Nail your product roadmap with a Discovery Sprint

The Product Discovery Sprint will help you determine the right product roadmap for your idea.

Classical Reasoning and Debugging

Classical philosophy offers us multiple reasoning strategies for dealing with tricky bugs.

Debugging: Navigating the Maze

Bring your yarn ball!

Add punctuation to your alt text

While alt text end punctuation isn’t technically required for compliance, it makes for a better experience for your audience.

Debugging: Listing Your Assumptions

Kick-start your debugging process by turning implicit assumptions into explicit ones.

Debugging: Getting Unstuck

For that crucial tipping point when, after a frenzied blaze of code scouring and log surfing, you realize you've made no progress towards finding that pesky fiendish bug.

Debugging Series 2021: Welcome to the Jungle

Whether you're a novice or a master, we're going to help you level up your debugging game in this multi-part blog series, featuring new content every week!

Organizing Styles in React Native

Styles are important. We should be thoughtful about how we organize them.

We're hiring more remote developers and designers in UTC through UTC+3!

Our new remote developer roles throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and how we’re working to make the hiring process inclusive.

A conversation can be an output

Rapidly and inexpensively de-risking ideas by talking to people is the true power of a Design Sprint.

New health tech report looks at design in healthcare.

After connecting with leaders across health tech product teams, we are excited to share the trends we are seeing. We hope these ideas help your product team reach their goals.

Inspect Redis commands using MONITOR

Take a look at a live log of all commands run on your Redis server.

Process: Improving on unconscious bias & anti-racism trainings and workshops for 2021

We’ve updated our process for selecting this year’s internal unconscious bias and anti-racism training and workshops. Here’s why and how.

An Introduction to macOS Voice Control

Finally! A way to yell at your computer and have it actually listen.

How to run a panel for fun and profit

Learn how to expand your professional network by putting together an expert speaking panel.

Things We Learned (& loved) From ProductCon

After attending ProductCon, we wanted to share some of our favorite takeaways.

React Server Components: What are They?

React Server Components provide a seamless mechanism for rendering components on the server at any point in the app lifecycle. Should you experiment on this?

What is design debt?

Paying down your product design debt enables you to hit the product metrics you are working towards like acquisition and retention. Let's take a look at what design debt encompasses and some small projects to get you started.

How 3 hours of conversation saved a company hundreds of thousands of dollars

De-risking ideas early and often is an effective, enlightening way of figuring out the how.

Simplifying Tests by Extracting Side-Effects

Test-driven development, object-oriented design, and functional programming converge on some similar ideas.

Understanding SQL GROUP BY

Finally, you too can understand how to use GROUP BY in your SQL queries.

Understanding SQL JOIN

A mental model to understand SQL's JOIN.

Understanding SQL SELECT and WHERE

See WHERE and SELECT visualized in this SQL primer.

Why You Shouldn't Build a Mobile App

Only a fool would build a mobile app!...without making sure they should.

Learn about some big changes at thoughtbot

thoughtbot has a new CEO, is remote-first, and we've reorganized our teams. Ask us anything!

Type-Driven Design, Test-Driven Design

TDD purism belongs to the world of dynamic typing.

We're hiring remote developers!

Our new remote developer role, and how we're working to make the hiring process inclusive.

Scoping .or clauses with common joins

Extract common clauses when using Active Record's .or method.

Useful utilities

A strict type system doesn't mean inflexible. We can bend it to meet our needs with the utilities that ship with TypeScript.

An introduction to macOS Head Pointer

Did you know you could use a mouse without using your hands?

Functional Programming as Algebra

Let's return to everyone's "favorite" subject. 🙄

Send your questions to The Bike Shed!

Ask Steph and Chris your burning questions!

Testing Objects with a Functional Mindset

Some ideas from functional programming can help us improve the unit tests for our object-oriented code.

Type systems and checking in Elixir and Ruby

Adding type checking to dynamically typed languages is possible, and awesome!

Server, They Wrote

A case of how to squeeze your server for every last 💧.

Make a snazzy one-time code input in React Native

Let's make a nice one-time code input in React Native.

thoughtbot is a best place to work. Again!

thougtbot was recently named a Best Place to Work by Built In and Crain's.

Why remove user tracking?

Individual tracking has been removed from thoughtbot.com. Learn more about why and how we made this change.

Zero Downtime Rails Deployments with Kubernetes

If you're deploying with downtime you don't have continuous delivery, you have continuous downtime.

Utility Classes I Have Known and Loved

These are my favorite CSS utility classes. I take them everywhere.

New Case Study: Health Match 360

We've released a Case Study sharing more of detail on the activities and findings of our Product Design Sprint with Health Match 360.

How to stop using your GraphQL API as a REST API

It's so easy to get lost in the flexibility of GraphQL that we can miss out on some of its benefits.

How to Create a Minimum Viable Content Strategy

After starting a business, creating a content strategy might be the last thing on your mind. But you don't have to do months of research to create meaningful content for your audience. Enter: Minimum Viable Content Strategy.

Undercover Founder

Drift can happen between business goals and boots on the ground. When that happens, problems arise.

KISSing It: On Revisiting Old Code

One of the many things that's cringeworthy but worth it.

How to be super-fast with Trello

We use Trello for a lot of our processes and projects. Here's how to be hyper-productive with it.

Next online event: How to turn 2020 learnings into 2021 product strategy

Check out our next panel for an exclusive look at how high growth health tech startups reacted to 2020 curveballs, and what to expect next year.

Alt vs Figcaption

Describing images with the alt attribute and figcaption element.

So you wanna create an eco-friendly website

A client recently asked if it was possible to create a green website. The answer is a little more complicated than you’d expect.

Follow our Product Design Sprint with Health Match 360

thoughtbot is conducting a pro-bono Product Design Sprint with the founders of Health Match 360, and you're invited to watch the process unfold and learn how PDS' help early stage companies get to the next level.

We are storytellers along the code-people change continuum

A commit message is a tiny story.

Next Online Event: The Future of Digital Pandemic Response

We have been working with our client PathCheck to design and develop contact tracing apps. We are both big believers in sharing what we’ve learned, and are hosting a fireside chat to share our learnings.

New Online Workshop: Patient has entered the chat!

Join thoughtbot Design Director Jaclyn Perrone for a fireside chat with Mallory McMillan, User Researcher at Seven, to uncover the challenges and triumphs of conducting remote user research for health tech.

Tailwind versus BEM

There are benefits and drawbacks to every CSS styling approach. Keeping an open mind helps.

Choosing processes that build trust

Do your team's policies, processes, and norms promote trust?

Software's evolving role in the patient experience

In the new wave of tech-enabled communication between patients and providers, it’s not just about convenience. In this online event, we'll talk about expanding access to healthcare, improving health outcomes, and telehealth predictions.

Redirecting routes in a Phoenix application using plugs

Let's explore a pragmatic, flexible, and testable approach to route redirection.

Free Online Event: Scale Your Rails App Internationally

Join thoughtbot and Locale for a free live online event all about scaling your Rails app internationally. Wedesday, October 28th 2020.

Calling All Health Tech Founders - We Are Here To Help!

To best share what we know, and support a deserving health Tech founder, we are seeking applicants for a pro-bono Product Design Sprint.

Beyond Best Intentions

Assuming best intentions is the result of building a culture of trust in your organization, not a step towards it.