Tuesday, June 30, 2026

On Rails — Nikky Southerland: Lessons from 13 Years of Rails at the Auto Shop

Posted by Rails Foundation and Robby Russell

Robby is joined by Nikky Southerland, Lead Software Engineer at Shop-Ware — a cloud-based platform that helps independent automotive service shops run their businesses. Ruby on Rails has powered Shop-Ware since the first line of code was written back in 2013, and more than a decade later the codebase is still 90%+ Rails.

Robby talks with Nikky about what it actually takes to keep a mature Rails app moving with a team roughly half the size it used to be, including a frontend migration that's still in progress, the API decision they regretted almost immediately, and the LaunchDarkly kill switches that save them when a third-party integrator goes down.


Listen to this episode (1h 8m) or subscribe to On Rails in your podcast player.