The Laracasts Snippet

In this episode, I offer a brain dump on the intricacies of raising two little kids, and fatherhood in general.

Too often, we hear politicians spew the tired "learn to code" slogan in response to difficult questions related to disappearing jobs in remote America. Let's talk about the logistics and practicality of a middle-aged coal miner making this switch.

I've thought quite a bit about types in the last year or two. I know - borrring - but I find it interesting to observe how intensely talented developers can disagree with one another on this particular issue.

Developers passionately disagree with one another on most programming issues. For every tutorial on class inheritance, duck-typing, naming conventions, and mutability, I'll show you another resource that argues vehemently in the opposite direction.

Every developer should develop and manage at least one project themselves. Doing so not only harnesses your discipline, but it also forces you to flex product-related muscles you've never used before.

One of the more frustrating aspects of front-end development stems from the fact that even the smallest of alterations has the potential to derail your entire week. In this episode, we'll discuss how to track browser-specific CSS performance issues.

That simple rule we all learned years ago in school may not have stuck properly. Why else would we, decade after decade, incorrectly and constantly draw "cause-and-effect" lines from one variable to another?

It occurred to me recently that I've likely recorded more programming screencasts than just about anyone. In that time, I've picked up a number of small tips and techniques.

Traditionally, there are three primary locations when most friendships are formed: school, the workplace, and church. But what if you're unable to tick any of these boxes, as is increasingly the case for remote workers.

A recent study found that a small percentage of individuals are largely responsible for the widespread sense that online interactions are hostile and toxic. Assuming this is true, is it possible that muting a handful of people will instantly remove the negativity in your feed?

In this episode, we'll discuss a series of performance improvements that you can apply to your own projects right now. You'll learn about everything from image lazy loading to inspecting the cost of an NPM package.

No, this isn't the last Laracasts Snippet. But we will be discussing PHP's final keyword and the arguments for and against applying it by default.

In the last few years, I've noticed that my eyes simply aren't as resilient as they used to be. After staring at a computer screen for so many years, the daily eye strain and headaches have been getting worse. Much worse. In this episode, I discuss the steps I've recently taken to improve my situation. If you're in the same boat, have a listen!

Each of us is born with a unique personality that defines much of how we view the world. Is it possible that this also cascades down to the code we write? Maybe!

Today, I have four completely unrelated topics to discuss with you today. As a (cheesy) way to connect the dots between them, we'll call this episode the four P's: Personal, Professional, Political, and Parental.

As part of managing Laracasts, I've been lucky enough to speak with countless developers. Whether newcomers or seasoned veterans, they too often seem to share the same insecurity: sooner or later, they'll be found out.

The subject of this week's episode is gamification. I'll begin by gushing over Outer Wilds, and then move on to discussing the pros and cons of general gamification elements in web apps and schools.

I recently made a bittersweet commit that removed jQuery from the Laracasts codebase entirely. Let's discuss how important the library has been to the JavaScript ecosystem as a whole.

Are you as annoyed as I am that there are five different points of entry, if you want to watch a movie you own? Is it a Blu-ray? Is it on your DVR? Did you buy it on iTunes? Or was it Amazon Prime? Recently, I've been trying to consolidate all of my purchased media to a Plex server I set up. If you're in the same boat, here are some things to watch out for.

After working with PHP for over ten years now, there's one question that continues to pop up - no matter what year it is: "Isn't PHP Dead?" Let's talk about it.