18 Agosto 2026 · mostra note

INFORMAZIONI SU QUESTO EPISODIO

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machines and callbacks turned brittle, what moving to Hatchet changed, and the tradeoffs of leaning on a gem that is no longer maintained.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

Send us Fan Mail

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.

Tecnologia

Inglese

Stati Uniti

UsaAPIper recuperare questo episodio inJSON

IN QUESTO EPISODIO

Joanna Wang

Robby Russell

Rails

Ruby on Rails

Sixfold

Web Dev

Modifica queste etichette

MOSTRA NOTE 🔗

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

TRASCRIZIONE 🔗

Are you the producer of this podcast? Add a podcast transcript

Need Audio-to-Text? Transcribe with Listen411 in Just 60 Seconds

CERCA TRA GLI EPISODI PASSATI

Cerca gli episodi passati di On Rails.

Incorpora questa barra di ricerca nel tuo sito web

ALTRI EPISODI IN QUESTO PODCAST

Kayla Reopelle: What Your Rails App Is Trying To Tell You

19 Novembre 2025

In this episode of On Rails, Robby is joined by Kayla Reopelle, a lead software engineer at New Relic, where she works on both the Ruby Agent and OpenTelemetry RubyGems. They explore what observability means for Rails developers—not just as a debugging tool, but as a way to build clearer, more reli…