The Laracasts Snippet

So you're a developer planning to launch your first SaaS or subscription site? The business side of things get really complicated... really fast, right? In this episode, I rattle off ten tips and notes to be aware of, as you prepare for launch. We're less focused on code-specifics, and more the realities of starting and running a business. Your naivety is your greatest weapon. As soon as you make enough revenue to consider going full-time, get a good accountant fast. Many business books are irrelevant for this type of business. Be skeptical of their advice. Don't fake it. You're not CEO of a one-person business. Automate as much as possible. If you're doing it manually over and over, that needs to be fixed ASAP. The guilt is the hardest part. Eventually, you must schedule office hours, and adhere to them. When handling customer support requests and social media, be a human being, not a corporation. Think small - and then iterate. Decide the life you want to optimize for.

One of the things I've been tinkering with these last few days is a mechanism for performing Russian-Doll caching in Laravel. In addition to determining if I can even make it work, I've been pondering whether this truly has a place in your future projects, or if there simply isn't enough value to warrant its usage. Who knows - let's talk about it. Here is the series of videos mentioned in the podcast: https://laracasts.com/series/russian-doll-caching-in-laravel

An interesting question popped up recently. Should college be mandatory for your children? We all bring our own pasts and experiences to the table, when a question like that pops up. Here's what I think...

Remember, back in high school, when your English teacher prescribed countless rules and techniques for writing well? Remember how we all quietly applied these rules? Why not? Who are we to disagree at that age? However, fast forward a half-decade or so, and you start to realize that so many of these "rules" are simply...gibberish. Does that remind you of any other industry?

Even a site as innocent and helpful as Laracasts has had its fair share of malicious users. It's a simple fact of the business. Are you lucky enough to have built a relatively popular product? Excellent! Now, get ready for the attacks.

Particularly when building open source tools, I think it's important to remember that the 100% goal is wrong. Or, in other words, when you repeatedly make compromises to make everyone happy, it might just turn out that you've made no one happy.

Rather than big New Year's Resolutions, I prefer to make three simple lists. Prioritize the things you love to do, incentivize the things you need to do, and optimize the things you hate to do. It's cheesy as hell, but stay with me...

There's no two ways about it: taking things too far is simply a rite of passage. Whether it's developers over-evangelizing microservices and command-oriented architecture, or guitar players forcing newly learned modes into their solos, we all take it too far...before finally pulling back.

So my wife and I recently took a trip into Nashville to see Amy Schumer perform. And wouldn't you know it: the moment we arrived, Bugsnag began sending me error reports. No laptop, and two hours from home. ...Crap.

90% of developers don't test their code. Made up percentages aside, I think you'll find that this is fairly accurate, when you gather the entire development community. How come? With so much evangelism across the board, what's the reason behind this hesitation?

If we're being frank, in the last month, I've felt somewhat burned out. As developers, it happens to us all at some point or another. Let's talk about that for a bit.

The concept of mental debt is something that developers never talk about. We're obsessed with pointing out technical debt, but isn't there value in worrying about our limited mental energy? There's only so much complexity we can take in.

Making the transition from employee to business owner is, to be frank, scary as hell. If you're not careful, you'll freeze. The "what ifs" will quickly assume command, and you'll once again fall back to the safe path. But, if you can fight it, there just might be something better on the other side.

I'd love to tell you about the most dangerous app I've ever built. To say I was in over my head...is the understatement of the century.

After over a decade of working in this industry, I've come to one undeniable truth: nobody knows what the hell they're doing. Let me explain...