18. August 2026 · Notizen anzeigen

ÜBER DIESE EPISODE

Joanna Wang is a senior software engineer at Sixfold, where the team builds AI underwriting tools that help insurance companies gather data and assess risk. She came to Ruby on Rails after working across Java, Go, Python, and Node.

Robby and Joanna get into why the homegrown orchestration they built on state machines and callbacks turned brittle, what moving to Hatchet changed, and the tradeoffs of leaning on a gem that is no longer maintained. They also talk about what happened when the team went fully agentic, and why Rails magic is easier to understand when an agent can trace it for you.

Links:

Sixfold - https://www.sixfold.ai

Hatchet - https://github.com/hatchet-dev/hatchet

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On Rails is a podcast focused on real-world technical decision-making, exploring how teams are scaling, architecting, and solving complex challenges with Rails.

On Rails is brought to you by The Rails Foundation, and hosted by Robby Russell of Planet Argon, a consultancy that helps teams modernize their Ruby on Rails applications.

Technologie

Englisch

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IN DIESER FOLGE

Joanna Wang

Robby Russell

Rails

Ruby on Rails

Sixfold

Web Dev

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NOTIZEN ANZEIGEN 🔗

00:00:00Introduction

00:01:17What keeps Joanna on Rails, and getting there from Java

00:02:53Inside Sixfold: AI underwriting for insurance

00:04:17Where Rails sits in the stack, and how the Rails and Python sides overlap

00:06:53Writing less code, and learning to live with the magic

00:11:45When homegrown orchestration got brittle

00:13:58Fan out, fan in, and race conditions everywhere

00:15:46Buy versus build, and piloting Hatchet

00:18:36JSON API resources: empty controllers and rigid errors

00:21:55Dependencies, supply chain security, and cautious upgrades

00:24:55Testing, observability, and going fully agentic

00:28:19Harnesses for agents, and what the job becomes when code is cheap

00:30:29Why agentic tools pair well with Rails magic

00:31:56CLI tooling and Claude skills for dev setup

00:35:28Multi-tenancy, compliance, and regional data residency

00:37:13Feature flags, and moving QA to an agent

00:39:41Advice on the way out, and a book recommendation

TRANSKRIPT 🔗

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