The Laracasts Snippet

Over the years, I've come to realize that, what folks advertise and say they do, often bears no resemblance to what they actually do. Consider the broke financial advisor, or the event sourcing evangelist who sticks to basic CRUD and Active Record for their own projects, or the TDD expert who secretly doesn't TDD. The truth is that folks advertise what they're excited by. And, too often, what excites us is what's new and undiscovered.

Over the years, I've been party of many programming communities. And in all that time, I've found one thing that is entirely unique to the PHP world...

At all times on social media, we are surrounded by folks at the top of their game. With so much genius and success circling us like hawks, sometimes it can get you down. Even worse, around this time of year, there's so much talk about "crushing it" and "10x'ing" it.

When it comes to open source code, how exactly should you decide what to build? Will anyone even care or want to use it? Who knows! But, maybe, a secret gold mine will reveal itself, once you ask a simple question.

It's that time again. I have six new community questions to answer, ranging from the most stressful thing about running Laracasts, to new content in 2017, to a developer's Christmas list.

I have no clue what I'm talking about, so listen to me discuss my marketing pet peeves.

In this episode, we're focused entirely on simple performance tips that anyone can implement right now. Every kilobyte counts, so try to implement at least a few of these, if you aren't already! Show Links https://www.cloudflare.com/ https://imageoptim.com/mac https://pngmini.com/ https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks

Today, we're exclusively discussing the new Laracasts refresh. I talk about what I've learned in the 3-month process, interesting techniques - both front-end and back-end - that I leveraged, as well as why I spent more time simplifying, rather than complicating.

In this episode, we'll discuss a basic, but incredibly useful technique that I use to write more expressive code.

We're all over the place today. If you're walking the dog or on your way home, tune in as I discuss everything from Turbolinks, to my annoying, broken bank. I also provide a few updates on the Laracasts refresh that I've been working on for the last few months.

My favorite sorts of people are the ones who allow themselves to get carried away over simple things. It's contagious. I dare you to listen to an incredibly passionate fan, of any possible thing, and not be pulled in and inspired by their excitement. Society refers to this as nerd culture, which I find a bit dismissive and critical. If "nerdy" translates to "someone who can't help but get excited," then count me in.

We're all aware of the notorious Twitter mob. Don't you dare go against agreed upon opinions, or you will be sliced to pieces. We've seen the wake of these viral slander campaigns countless times over the years - all the way up to the creator of JavaScript, himself. Why are we okay with this again? And are we creating an environment that encourages any person with differing views to remain silent, out of fear of losing their job?

Lately, I've been making more of an effort to focus on my energy levels, and how to maximize them. If your energy levels aren't where they should be, then any desire you might have had to finish up that side project goes out the window. This is paramount to our financial and happiness goals, so why isn't it at the top of our priority list?

Lately, I've been forcing myself to journal tiny dev realizations I have, as I work on various projects. How often have you hit a roadblock, switched to Stack Overflow, found a fix....only to completely forget it six months later, when you encounter the same problem again?

When you have a full-time job, it's far too easy to ignore that side project or business that you've had your eye on. Think about it: most projects never come to completion. How come? And, more importantly, what little steps can we take to ensure that we don't fall into that same trap.

A few nights ago, I was fast asleep when, all of the sudden, the building's fire alarm went off. It definitely woke me up, but I didn't respond in the way you might think. My instinct was to ignore it entirely. How come? And why is this also often true for the tests you write?

Whether in life or software development, I think a good approach is to push for as little as possible. The fewer lines of code you must write, or the fewer items in your bathroom cabinet, the better.

A decade ago, I was taught that the beauty of CSS is its ability to completely alter the presentation of a website without touching your HTML. Yeah... "you never have to touch your HTML again." Sounds great, right? Too bad it's BS.

"Fake it 'til you make it" is a great idea, just as long as you back it up behind the scenes with actual work toward the thing to which you're faking.

Sometimes, the appropriate and responsible thing is to throw it all out and start again. Now, of course, not everyone has this luxury. Business requirements and deadlines often make these sorts of things impossible. However, is this true for your own business, or your own open source projects? Sometimes, that muddy code or CSS you wrote three years ago is begging to be deleted. How much better could you write it, knowing what you know now?