Design patterns can be very useful, but can also be weaponized as a way to "prove" that someone is doing something the "wrong" way. Mary has been thinking a lot about the good side of knowing design patterns, so we sat down to chat about them.By Chris Morrell

Joe Tannenbaum is thinking about starting a podcast about side projects. So we took an afternoon to talk through what that might look like.By Chris Morrell

Ben Holmen started his Pair-amid scheme as an experiment in meeting new people and experiencing new code. He shared his calendar with the world, and booked pairing sessions with 15 complete strangers. The outcome? A bunch of new friends and new experiences. In this episode, Ben and Chris talk about pair programming, side projects, and how to find f…

ReactPHP is a low-level library for event-driven programming in PHP. It lets you write code that's much closer to the async/await style of JavaScript in PHP. In today's episode, Chris and Len talk about our experiments with ReactPHP. Links: ReactPHP Whiskey Community Prompts Conductor DawnBy Chris Morrell

What set two developers on a quest to build custom tooling to enforce their code style preferences? Today's episode is a story that starts with two independent projects—Tighten's `tlint` and InterNACHI's `laralint`—but meanders to all the right places, including the future of PHP itself, the intersection of bikeshedding and art, and so much more.…

Today we take a break from over engineering to talk about burnout. Both Chris and Ian have been working on the same products for multiple decades. We sit down to talk about that and what to do about the kind of burnout that comes from working on the same thing for so long. Links: Brent is Leaving Twitter Join the RTSN.DEV mastodon instance…

Steve McDougall (aka JustSteveKing) is known as the "API guy" on Twitter. In today's episode we start with the question, "what if the best option is just a single page app with a good, RESTful API?" Links: HAL - Hypertext Application Language JSON:API Spec Laravel Sanctum API Versioning Blog Post Steve on Twitter (follow for updates on upcoming cou…

The internet has been talking (yelling?) about full-stack javascript a lot lately. In today's episode, we sit down and talk about what it means to be "full stack" and whether there are really any truly full-stack javascript frameworks out there (spoiler: there are, but maybe not Next.js or Remix). Links: Sails.js The Boring Javascript Stack AdonisJ…

Jess Archer took something that was quite good—the Symfony console output features—and built something that was absolutely great: Laravel Prompts. In today's episode, we dig into some of the gnarly details around building prompts and working with ANSI escape sequences in the terminal.By Chris Morrell

Taylor Otwell has been finding ways to improve Laravel for over a decade, but has only more recently set his sights on the front-end side of things. In today's episode, we sit down and talk about the current state of building UIs in Laravel, and what the future might hold. Links: Laravel Volt Aire Form Builder Laravel “Context” Feature Hooks Packag…

Joe Tannenbaum took the internet by storm with his incredible SSH CLI "experiments." In today's episode, Chris and Joe sit down to get into the messy details of parsing ANSI escape sequences and dealing with multibyte strings, but spend as much time talking about programming as art and life as an actor. Links: Joe Tannenbaum on Twitter Joe's "Lab" …

What are the best processes for small software development teams with high trust? In today's episode the InterNACHI software development team sits down with John Rudolph Drexler to talk about whether or not we need to estimate tickets or even bother with sprints…By Chris Morrell

As the saying goes: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." So in today's episode we dig into all the ways Ian is taking on one of the hardest parts of programming in his rewrite of their decades-running helpdesk software, HelpSpot. We talk about caching, a little bit of Laravel history, and about…

Complex view logic can be hard to get right—particularly in server-rendered templates like Blade. We recently had to decide just how much a Laravel Blade component should do, and decided to hash it out on the podcast.By Chris Morrell

When applications grow—in scope, sheer lines of code, or the number of team members—how you organize things starts to matter a whole lot more. In today's episode, we talk with Mateus Guimarães about modularization: breaking your application into smaller modules. We explore some of the topics in his new Laracasts course, and talk about the decisions…

It's been said that web development is 99% forms and tables. Today we talk with Adam Wathan about all the decisions that go into creating a great form builder API. Adam and the rest of the team at Tailwind recently launched the developer preview of Catalyst—a React UI library with a robust form system. We take a deep-dive into the API decisions beh…

We all use our personal websites as an excuse for trying something new or over engineering what's usually a simple, low traffic site. In today's episode, Chris and Aaron talk about how to build a great personal website with "just Laravel" and imagine ways that static site generation, markdown editing, open graph, caching, SEO, and more could be imp…

In today's episode, Chris and Caleb sit down and try to imagine what the perfect "hook" implementation might look like. Laravel, Livewire, and the upcoming Verbs package, all have to allow for hooking into logic at specific points, and each package has to handle this in its own unique way. What if there was a canonical way to hook into the lifecycl…

And now for something completely different… In this episode, Chris and Daniel sit down to talk about a new event sourcing package they're working on called Verbs.By Chris Morrell

Most teams have encountered this basic scenario: Your application sends out a periodic report to a specific person in the company. Then, at some later point, either another team member wants to start receiving a copy of the report, or you need to remove the original recipient and add a new one. With a standard Laravel app, you're probably going to …

In this episode we indulge in the purest form of Over Engineering—a 90 minute discussion of a completely different application paradigm/architecture. Our team has used event sourcing to some degree, and we're considering using it more heavily in the future. But before we do, we're going to step back and ask ourselves if it's worth it… Some useful l…

Over Engineered is all about those things that bug you but you never get a chance to "solve." Today's episode is about the dreaded "status" column. This is another topic that most developers will hit over and over. You have a model. You need to track the status. You add a status column, and then later a status timestamp "accepted_at", and then late…

Season 1 continues with a discussion of how to deal with special database records that need to be referenced directly in code. We've all been there before: you've got a specific vendor that you need to write a custom command for, or a certain category that needs special handling, so you either hard-code the ID or slug and shudder slightly before mo…

In the second episode of the podcast we talk with Tim MacDonald about a few other approaches to how you might manage other operations that happen before/during/after a database migration (or really any deploy step). Tim pitches a lower-level approach that spawns a whole new line of thinking. We also touch on some of the responses to episode one, in…

In the first episode of the podcast we explore the boundary between database migrations and other operations that need to happen when the database is being migrated. How do you seed or manipulate data after new tables or columns have been added? In migrations? In one-off commands that you have to run manually? Running seeders in production? In tink…

My friend Spencer joins me to talk about how where he grew up influenced the music he listens to and how he shares music with his family today. Featured Songs: My Blinded Heart - Mandolin Orange Misty - Caamp Murder in the City - The Avett Brothers Calling Long Distance - Matthew And The Atlas He's Fine - The Secret Sisters Father Mountain - Calexi…

Electronic musician FNGRNLS (Zach Shrout) joins me to talk about growing up a metal fan and expanding into other music with an edge as he developed his own craft. Featured Songs: Breathe - HAELOS KKS - Kool Savas Sister Electric - Saint Agnes Exhumed - Zola Jesus Say Hello - FuzzBy Sounds Good To Me Podcast

The band Wild Harbors (Chris And Jenna Badeker) joins me to talk about listening to music in the car as kids and stumbling upon new songs in different places. Featured Songs: Can't Help the Way I Feel - Lily & Madeleine Street Fighter Mas - Kamasi Washington I Just Wasn't Made for These Times - Kat Edmonson Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals Season's…

My friend and songwriter Carl Wayne Meekins joins me to talk about how he became a Country music fan and how the genre influences his songwriting and his life. Featured Songs: Postcard From Paris - Glen Campbell Thought About You - Tim McGraw Don't Forget To Remember - Bee Gees Stripes - Brandy Clark A Better Place - Glen Campbell…

Jordan of Apollo LTD joins me to talk about making and enjoying music that hearkens back to earlier days but still feels in-the-moment. Featured Songs: Grant Green - Mr. Jukes feat. Charles Bradley Forgive You - Leon Bridges Once In A Lifetime - The Night Game Everyone Acts Crazy Nowadays - Unknown Mortal Orchestra Goodbyes - Jorja Smith Heavy, Cal…

On the Season 1 finale, Ben shares a few songs discovered from Spotify's recommendations based on the songs played during the season. We'll be back soon with Season 2. Happy Listening!

Songwriter and producer Justin joins me to talk about influences from Big Band to Punk and shares some music used in films, television shows, and commercials.

Organizational consultant Tracy joins me to talk about ambient music and how he uses it as his soundtrack for the workplace.By Sounds Good To Me

Songwriter Paul joins me to talk about choosing music that fits your feelings as we listen to some of my favorite artists who are new to him.By Sounds Good To Me

Artist, songwriter, and music producer Caylea joins me to talk about listening as both a creator and fan and how certain music makes her feel emotion.By Sounds Good To Me

Music marketer Aubrey joins me to talk about the artist BØRNS and how his musical style and public image complement each other.By Sounds Good To Me

Fellow German-American Matt joins me to talk about how country and '90s alternative music have influenced his tastes, and I try to help him in his pursuit of finding time to actively listen to music in a busy world.By Sounds Good To Me

A&R man John Mays joins me to talk about growing up with ‘70s pop and how being a musician and record executive has influenced his listening habits. And John picks a mutual favorite for my “100 Albums Bucket List” selection.By Sounds Good To Me

Independent songwriter Alexander Wren joins me to talk about acoustic singer-songwriters and a little bit of soul. And Alex picks my first listen from the "100 Albums Bucket List" poster!By Sounds Good To Me

My good friend Alyssa joins me to talk about Dance and Pop music and how they intersect. We get a little nerdy and chat about “The Pop Drop!”By Sounds Good To Me