In this episode, Jess and Jeremy chat with Matt Swanson, CTO of Arrows, author of Boring Rails, and host of the YAGNI podcast. In addition to his blog, Matt shares a lot of his knowledge about product development on Twitter. We talk with Matt about how Arrows builds software, what it means to be a product engineer, the easiest way for devs to get to $10K MRR, working with generative AI tools, and how and why he publishes technical content online.

Related Links
Matt's Twitter
Boring Rails
YAGNI podcast
Arrows

Rhiannon Payne and Justin Bowen are one of the very few couples working together in the Ruby and Rails ecosystem. Justin is a long-time Rails developer, consultant, and AI and computer vision specialist. Rhiannon runs Sea Foam Media and is the Marketing Director for Ruby Central. Together they are building Active Agents, an AI framework for Rails. We chat about their professional backgrounds (Justin's in software development, Rhiannon's in marketing), how they collaborate as a couple, the birth of Active Agents, and AI in the Ruby/Rails landscape. Oh, and we may have a cameo from a few cats!

Rhiannon
Twitter
Bluesky
The Remote Work Era Book

Justin
Twitter
Bluesky

Active Agents
Website
activeagent gem on GitHub (latest release: v0.4.0)
Documentation (new)
Discord Invite

Sea Foam Media
Website
Twitter

In this episode we talk to Zeke Gabrielse, solo founder and owner of Keygen, a licensing and distribution API. We get deep in the weeds of running a solo business (much can be applied to any solo-type career working on the same project), how he handled the worst day(s) of his professional life, and much more!

Zeke's Links
Zeke on X

Keygen on X

Keygen website: https://keygen.sh/

Jeremy's Notable Blog Posts

How to Build a Webhook System in Rails Using Sidekiq

That one time Keygen went down for 5 hours (twice)

Keygen is now Fair Source

No calls

In defense of linear

Self-promotion
Steering the ship