The Laracasts Snippet

We love tools: linters, type checkers, test runners, asset compilers, et al. Whilst these tools can help solve problems, they might also be a sledgehammer when all you really need is a screwdriver. Let me tell you a little anecdote about upgrading my personal site to Laravel 11, and why sometimes removing a tool is even better than adding one.

Tell me what you think of this. We all have certain stories about ourselves that we repeat, like mantras. "I am the type of person who is X, therefore..." But, for all the reps, I'm not sure these are doing us any good at all.

Luke, here! I recently got the chance to attend and speak at Laracon EU 2024, and it was fantastic. The venue was awesome, the talks were amazing, but what really makes the event special are the conversations you have with like-minded developers. Let me tell you about it.

It occurred to me recently that, if my job consisted exclusively of writing code 40 hours a week, I don't think I'd be a programmer today. I might go out of my mind. The secret, from my experience, is to find your fit. Figure out how to combine all of your skills into some unique concoction that gets you through the day with a smile on your face.

If someone on your team presents a business idea to you, they've likely had it simmering in their head for quite some time. Don't be so quick to toss that idea aside. If there's such a thing as anti-patterns in business, this is one of them. Give the idea its due.

Programming taught me an interesting life lesson: be a stickler for the details. You see, getting the thing to work is only half the battle. You’re not done. Not even close. Yes, make it functional. But then make it readable. Should it also be flexible? Then do so. And certainly make it beautiful.

When it comes to business, I - like many developer-turned-small-business-owners, I’d imagine - am really quite green. Not just green, deep green. No MBA in sight. I’m not even sure what that stands for, to be honest. Master of Business Administration? Is that it? Yep, a master of business… yours truly is not. Can you relate?

In this episode, we'll talk about stealing techniques and approaches from other hobbies or industries. What have you learned from one hobby that might be useful for your programming career? I can think of a few.

It's hard to believe, but the last Q&A episode was published over two years ago. Let's fix that with a new 2022 edition. I'll answer a wide variety of questions, such as: how to initially plan a business, are lifetime accounts are worth offering, why aren't there dedicated Laracasts apps, how to avoid content creator burnout, and more. 

I often hear about flat organizational structures and how they lead to more autonomy and better collaboration. That could be true! It sounds appealing. But my worry is: don't you lose the zoomed out perspective in the process? From my experiences, that multi-focus hierarchy is essential.

For a number of years now, I've found myself quietly mumbling the words, "Don't participate," every time I feel the need to insert myself into events or conversations that have nothing to do with me. It works wonders. Nearly every time, I delete the draft and get back to work.

In this episode, I take some time to ponder over which programming bullet points I wish had been drilled into me more in the early days of my learning. We'll discuss the psychology of learning, design patterns, SOLID, and, of course, the never-ending river of programming opinions.

It's far too easy for developers to fall into a trap of never shipping new code to production. "It's not ready," we tell ourselves. "Just one more month to clean things up, and then we'll push it up." But if you're not careful, there will always be a reason why it's still not ready. In this episode, we discuss habit building and why it's necessary to not be a perfectionist. 

If you've worked in programming spaces for any period of time, you will surely have heard the advice, "It's better to go slow than fast." We all instinctively knows this, and, yet, we're simultaneously obsessed with optimizing every facet of our workflow. 

Whenever I ask a slightly controversial programming question, the responses often take one of three shapes. Let's talk about each of them in this episode, before taking a few moments to discuss why it's so important to play gracefully with ideas.

Every time I learn something new, I have to re-remind to trust the process. I'm not sure why. That feeling of "I can't" never goes away. You would think we'd eventually make the connection that if you work on something a little bit today, and a little more tomorrow, you'll eventually become quite skilled. And, yet, why do I always begin the learning phase with a hesitation that says, "You'll never be able to do this."

In this episode, we discuss the three-month process of converting Laracasts to a single-page application with Inertia.js.

It has occurred to me that I might have made some teaching mistakes in the past. Learning sticks when it can immediately be applied to a particular task or need you have. If you don't have an immediate use case, it might as well go in one ear, and out the other. It's not going to stick.

I keep seeing oddly similar threads around the web that relate to Laravel 8's "increased prerequisites." They all seem to share the view that, if you want to upgrade to Laravel 8, be prepared to also learn Livewire, Inertia, and Tailwind. Of course, I find it odd...because it's not even remotely true.

Here's an uncomfortable truth about the programming world: we all want to sit at the cool kids table. It was true in high school, and it remains true today. It makes you wonder how this might be reflected in the tools we choose.