The Laravel Podcast

Hello and welcome back to the Laravel
podcast season seven.

I'm your host, Matt Stauffer, CEO of
Tighten.

And this season, I'm usually joined every
episode by a member of the Laravel team.

But today I'm cheating because I just had
I had to have some of my oldest friends

in the Laravel community, Michael Dyrynda
and Jake Bennett,

on the podcast. I'm using Laracon as an
excuse,

right? Because these guys are the host of
a podcast.

We'll talk about it a little bit and it's
about news and stuff like that.

So yeah, Laracon's a thing, but really,

I just wanted to have them come hang out
with us.

So before I do anything else.

Guys, can you introduce yourselves on my
screen?

Michael's first. That doesn't mean he's
any better or anything like that,

but we'll have Michael get started and
then Jay,

can you introduce yourself as well?

Hey, I am Michael Dyrynda, as Matt said,

a co-host of the Laravel News Podcast,

but also the organizer of Laracon AU
because he mentioned Laracon.

That's yes. That's probably what most
people,

I guess, if they know me already,

will know me for. And if not, that's what
I do that's most relevant

to this audience.

And I'm Jake Bennett. I co host both of
the podcasts that Michael Dyrynda hosts.

And so I will take that spot as co host.

Michael does all of the editing and all of
that stuff.

So I have gladly taken the co host title
rather than the host title.

And super glad to be on the show with you
today,

Matt. I honestly feel like it has been so
long since we've had

an opportunity to just sit and talk
because every Laracon that we see each
other,

it's like, hey, how's it going?

Let's let's catch up a little bit and we
should catch up.

We should get you know, whatever.

And so I'm really glad that this actually
worked out that we got a scheduled time

to just chat for a little bit.

So really excited to be on the show and
talk about Laracon.

Okay, so I'm very grateful for you guys
being here.

But the intro you just gave, I should have
given because actually what

I want is there's a lot of people who
people know in the community because

of the roles they play in the community,

right? That person organizes that thing,

that person maintains that thing,

but people don't actually know a lot about
them outside of the the role that they

play in the community. So you guys play
these roles in the community,

your podcasters, your educators,

your organizers, and like that.

But I don't know if people always know who
you are outside of that context.

So I

I

actually

Would

like to ask you guys to tell me first from
a business perspective,

but then also just from an outside of
business perspective,

who are you? What do you do? What are your
hobbies?

What's your day job? If you're comfortable
sharing your day job.

Absolutely. What sort of work do you do?

Your day job. So we're gonna flip it this
time.

Jake, you're first on this one.

boy, okay. So I'll start with the work
stuff.

So I work at a company called Wilbur.

We do insurance subrogation. I love that
Laravel is

so wonderfully capable of filling so many
different niche things,

right? It's what's so great about it is
you can kind of do anything with it.

And so while I work in the super niche
industry in the insurance space,

which is highly regulated and all that
stuff,

Laravel fits a lot of our needs and we use
it for 99% of the things that we do.

So

I've been working there for about 13 years
there.

Now I'm the director of IT and innovation
there.

And so handle a lot of the software
development team stuff,

IT side of things, a little bit of
marketing,

and really love getting to work with
Laravel every day.

That's my primary focus. I do the IT stuff
when I have to,

but software development is for sure my
passion.

And so that's that's the day job stuff.

I've got a family of four kids.

And my wonderful wife Laura, and they keep
us very busy.

Matt and I were just sharing stories of
our oldest.

And my oldest is turning 15, gonna be
getting his driver's license soon.

I mean, that's going on. We got kids
entering junior high.

I've got one still in elementary.

They all play sports, all that fun stuff.

So we're in a very fun stage of life,

but very, very busy. And so that's been
wonderful.

The summer has been great. Lots of family
time together.

And then hobbies. I've recently been
getting,

I I could say up of like

To a year ago. I don't really think I had
any hobbies.

My hobbies were chatting with Michael on
Monday nights.

Like literally, I just honestly didn't
have I feel like I didn't have time for
him,

right? And so recently it's been golf.

So a year ago, I was just thinking through
like,

what is something that I can do with my
kids until my old age,

right? Uh-huh. My son was starting to beat
me in the driveway in basketball.

I'm like, this cannot, this cannot be
happening,

right? And so we also do a foot race every
fourth of July.

And he beat me last year. And I'm like,

I've got to change something up.

So golf was the thing that I decided,

let's get into this. This is something I
can do even into my old age.

And so my oldest has been golfing with me.

And so we've been doing that a lot.

He just started on the golf team this year
and had his first meet today,

his first golf match today. So that's been
a lot of fun.

And me and Caleb Porzio have been talking
a lot about golf recently

on Telegram because this is a recent
obsession of his as well.

And so ~ it's very fun.

It's an obsession more than a hobby,

I think. You know, you kind of watching
videos all the time,

adjusting your swing and learning new
things.

And so that's me. That's my quick intro.

But yeah, if anybody wants to talk golf or
I'm trying to we we gotta

put together some sort of Laracon golf
thing again.

That was really last year when they had
that,

I was so I was disappointed I didn't get
to go on it.

But it didn't look like it was actually
golf.

It was more like fun golf. Right.

So yeah.

All all good. But anyway, anybody
interested at that,

please hit me up on Extra Telegram.

I'd love to love to chat about golf.

Yes, Eric Barnes. All right, Michael,

over to you.

Mm-hmm. ~ you you sound a lot like me in
that regard,

where when you find a new thing,

it doesn't just become like a background
hobby.

It becomes as as my darling wife Rhiannon
puts it,

becomes ~ I make it my whole personality

Ha ha ha ha!

for a period of time. And like when I came
back from Boston this year and

I was I was talking about, you know,

the golfing and that kind of stuff,

and she's like, No, like it will become
your whole personality.

It takes too much time. You can't like

'Cause I was l I was watching and I
started getting,

you know, you know how Instagram knows.

Like it started feeding me golf videos and
she's laying in bed next to

me and she's like, no, absolutely not.

So yeah, much much like I don't I don't
have a brood.

~ I've just got the two. I've got an eight
year old boy and a she'll be

six in like three weeks. Girl.

So two kids and my wife are holding down
the fort.

Soccer has overrun our life in the last
year and a half.

~ Eli, my eldest, has kind of picked it
up.

And so it was just school soccer last year
to see if if he would,

you know, this is the first thing that
he's kind of done.

So we wanted to know like, is he gonna
stick with it?

And so school soccer last year,

that all finished up around this time last
year,

probably a a month from now, ~ into
September.

And he he was like really disappointed.

He's like, I I wanna keep playing.

It's you know, when do I get to play
again?

Like, well, buddy, soccer doesn't start
again until March next year.

So we found out one of his

schoolmates they played for a local club
so we went got in into the trials

for that and he he tried out and he made
the team.

So he's he's been playing club soccer this
year,

which he's been excelling at and he's
getting better and better.

Has the ups and downs, you know,

if he if he gets like knocked over,

it's not it's not just that it was an
accident that he's been targeted.

Like it's like genuinely the end of the
world any time that he gets hit.

So yeah he's gotten really good and so
I've

I've started to get more involved in that.

And when you're training twice a week,

he's playing on Saturday, he's playing on
Sunday,

he's like always kicking a ball around the
house.

You you kind of have no choice because I
do not have a soccer bone in my body.

I've never followed it. I've never been
interested in it.

And now that he's so into it and he's
found it by himself,

it's like, Well, okay, we've got to foster
this for as long as he's interested

in it. So I don't have

The knees to play the sport, but I've
wherever I can,

I'll kick the ball with him. I'll get out
there at soccer training,

you know, before they start. All of the
kids line up and they start kicking

the ball at me while I'm in goals,

which some of them kick the ball.

They're only seven and eight, but some of
them kick the ball.

Uh-huh. So yeah, that's that's a big part
of it.

I run. I used to play basketball,

but again, my knees kind of dictated that
that was no longer possible.

So and whilst my orthopedic surgeon has
said you shouldn't run,

I have

taken that under advisement and continue
to run anyway.

So those of you who saw me on on Twitter
or about the place in Boston saw that

I had like mapped out my runs and I was
running

yeah.

five K's along along the river there in
the common and and whatever else.

So I run, I swim. The swimming was kind of
do this instead of running because it's,

you know, less impact, better,

better for the body. Because I've been
running for such a long time,

it's very difficult to transition into
swimming because the breathing is
different.

W when you run you breathe in through the
nose and out through the mouth.

When you swim, you breathe in through the
mouth and out through the nose.

And so this interesting

Yeah.

made things very difficult for me to to
kind of transition.

Cause you know, in swimming you want to
get as much air in as possible,

but you want to let it out over a longer
period of time.

So I took up like adult swim lessons
'cause I hadn't been swimming for twenty
years.

So it was a matter of yeah, getting the
swim coach and saying,

like, there's there's no risk of me
drowning when I run.

Like when I'm running, I can if I get
tired,

I just stop. There's no like, whoops,

I swallowed water. So

Yeah, that's that's the the the main
thing.

And then like now on the back of Laracon
US,

at the time of this recording,

Laravel Live Denmark is happening at the
end of this week.

And then Laracon AU's the the next cab off
the rank ~ in November.

So we're kind of getting into the the
final stages of that,

Matt, you'd be aware, as a speaker at this
year's event as well.

So Yeah keeps keeps me very busy.

And my day job, you know, because I talk
so much about soccer.

I work as a principal engineer at loan
market group asset finance,

where ~ we our customers are mortgage
brokers that want to diversify into asset

finance. We work with asset finance
brokers.

And so we build the platform that those
brokers use to then capture data from
their

customers, people that are looking like
they want to buy a car

or debt consolidation or or whatever else.

~ so it's it's a platform that allows them
to capture that information

and then quote against.

different lenders and then, you know,

find the right lender for that that
customer and then submit the loans

~ all through like a single pane of glass
effectively.

So that's what keeps me going during the
day.

Yeah. I can't believe how much you
description you just gave of soccer your
kids.

Soccer is mine. I played soccer for like a
year and you know,

when I was six years old or something like
that.

And my kids are now both in club soccer,

which means we have between three and
three and four no,

I guess total of five practices a week
between the two of them.

my god. There's also goalie practice for
my son.

And once he moves up a level, it's gonna
be an extra practice a week.

And like just last weekend we had

Tournaments, so there's three games for
each of them spread out halfway across

the city. One of them was an hour and a
half away.

Yeah. Love my children. my God.

Don't love club soccer. But like you said,

it's like they came to it independently
because none of yeah,

nobody was here was pressing them into it.

So

That's right.

Is your son tall, Matt?

Yes, he's hoping he's gonna be as tall as
me.

I'm six two and he's probably five,

ten, five, eleven or something like that,

if I had to guess.

His age, he's tall kid, so good goalie,

I'm sure.

Yeah. yeah. They they love him as goalie.

He's also been working really hard on it
for a couple of years.

He just they just both switched to a new
club this year because they had kind

of big fish in a small pond at their their
old club.

So they moved to a new club, which means
you have to start at the very bottom.

They say they'd let you try out.

They're No, everybody gets put at the
bottom.

But they're they're both impressing people
a lot right now.

So I'm like, That's good. That's great.

I love it.

This.

Good for them. That's great.

Okay, so while I want to just hang out
with my buddies,

the justification for this being on the
Laravel podcast and not just a Zoom

of the three of us is the two of you guys
run,

among other podcasts, the Laravel News
Podcast.

And one of the things that is distinct
about the Laravel News Podcast

as compared to the Laravel Podcast is that
you keep the news going.

And yes, it is the podcast officially
associated with Laravel Dash News dot com,

the website, but also it is very focused
on what is new and what is up and coming,

you know, in the framework.

Whereas Laravel Podcast is a bit more like
kind of interviews

and long-running kind of things.

Laravel news is what is happening this
week?

Packages, projects, you know, that kind of
stuff.

And so that really makes me think that you
guys have an approach to something like

a Laracon that's a little bit different
than the one I have.

And of course, part of my approach to
Laracon is being a speaker and

a sponsor and all that kind of stuff.

But also, I unfortunately don't write a
ton of Laravel on a day-to-day right now.

Like I write some, right? But you guys are
like looking at

releases like my my most prolific time of
creating content around

the Laravel ecosystem was when I read
every single line of every single commit

and every single Git repository and then
wrote it on my blog,

right? And you guys are still doing a lot
of that to a degree,

you know, through also together with
Eric's work of and the other writers

at Laravel News, of course. So as people
who are coming from that background,

but also have, you know, a decade each of
of working in Laravel applications.

What was most exciting to you,

whether announced from the stage or talks
or sponsors or things,

like kind of what caught your attention at
Laracon US this year?

Yeah, I can jump in on this one.

Michael, you're gonna have to help me
remember the girl's name,

the silly software girl.

Christina.

Christina, my gosh. Okay,

so I thought this is a different talk.

I when we got to this talk, I was like,

this is a different talk. I was I'm not
really interested in this one.

I won't say what talk it was that I wasn't
interested in,

but I was gonna skip out. I was gonna skip
out,

and they had somehow switched the
schedule.

And somebody one of my buddies was like,

no, it's gonna be this other one.

I'm like, I'll stick around for it,

I guess.

So glad I did because that was such a fun
talk.

It was awesome. Number one, the throwback
to the cut Tamagotchis.

Like so fun, feeding your inner Tom.

So the idea behind this was just like
learning to have fun writing software
again,

right? Like when you're starting to feel
that burnout of like,

I just feel like I've been writing this
same thing for forever.

And I'm just so tired of this.

And how do you reintroduce fun into it?

And her suggestion was just write
throwaway code,

just write fun stuff. It's like

Software for an audience of just you,

you know, just build those things and have
some fun doing it.

And all of the guys on my team said the
same thing.

They said that was one of their very
favorite talks.

She just did such an excellent job.

She was so well prepared. It was a
manuscripted talk.

You could tell just because every word,

every phrase was so concise and on point.

And so excellent job. Loved that talk.

If you didn't get a chance to watch that
one,

Would highly suggest going back and and
watching that.

It was inspirational for sure.

Absolutely.

I think, and not only like your favorite,

but as you said, your team's favorite.

But I don't have any silly software to
contribute myself,

but I I tweeted about it the other day.

And just to see the sheer volume of people
f on the back of that talk that have been

posting their things, you know,

people that have gotten started,

Sam Sappenfield at Laravel building the
the photo thing for Laracon US with Abby,

~ just the number of different people that
that talk resonated with that.

You know, as we're all going through this
existential dread as developers,

I think with everything else that's going
on ~ in the wider space,

to to be able to go, actually,

you know what, I can just build some fun
stuff that that's just for me that

I can throw away that, you know,

that we can use those tools to not not
even have to worry about the code,

to just build something fun. And I've done
more of that kind of stuff

in the last eight months, nine months than
I have in the last seven,

eight years. So

Yeah, just a again to shout out the work
that Christina did in putting that talk

together.

Yeah. Yeah. ~

One of the

things we really enjoy as speakers is
finding places where there's overlap
between

our talks. And so we're always kind of
connecting ahead of time,

being like, Let me make sure I'm not
stepping on your toes.

But once you're not worried about that,

then you're excited about, you know,

this is gonna lead into that, is gonna
lead into whatever else.

Yeah. But to that point, like the the
overlapping stuff.

Yeah, I felt like there was a good
especially on day one.

Kitsy talked about using AI well.

I feel like you talked about operating at
the edge of learning,

which very much like, you know,

dovetailed in with what he was talking
about.

Mateus talked immediately, you know,

really close after that to building a CLI
coding agent.

So one thing that I did really appreciate
this year that I didn't know

I was waiting for was how other really
smart people that I respect

in the community are using AI.

Well, like how are they doing it?

I know how I'm doing it, but how are they
doing it?

And I felt like the first

First.

half of day one was all about that
exactly.

And I was so excited about that.

I really did enjoy your talk.

I had so many screenshots and written down
notes.

And one of the one, you know, in my Notion
doc,

I wrote like a, you know, the point finger
up,

like rewatch this one again. But like for
those who maybe didn't watch or

Haven't taken notes. Some of the things
that I wrote down for here was,

you know, don't stack your unknowns,

learn one thing at a time. And so I
thought it's helpful for me because

the thing that you were giving as an
example was this game that you were
building.

And I'm also the my silly software right
now is I'm building this game called Boom

Party. So I'm actually resurrecting it.

It's a game that we used to play as a
team.

It's like a bomber man clone. And the
company that was hosting it,

like got

Purchased and then went defunct.

Like they just shuttered all of their
stuff.

Before they did so, they announced that
they were shuttering it.

And so I got on and tried to scrape all
the assets and music and sprites

and stuff off this. Then I went on this
hunt on GitHub to find is there

any original source code that looks like
what this JavaScript that

I pulled off looks like. And I found
something.

And so I've been using Claude to sort of
reconstruct and rebuild this thing.

So it's currently at boom party dot party,

if you care to look at it. But

In the process of I was like literally in
the middle of doing that when you're

talking about this. And so I'm like,

this is super helpful to me because as
I've been doing it,

it's like I really don't have any idea
what it's doing.

How do I get into a process where I'm
actually using this not just for fun,

but also for my education? Right.

And that was a big part of what you were
talking about.

You know, you don't just surrender your
knowledge.

Like, I can't just like give up.

You you can offload some of it,

but as you do that gap between your
knowledge of your system and

the actual systems like capabilities and
and the complexity of it,

that that gap only grows larger.

And so how do you manage that gap?

And so that was really, really helpful for
me.

And again, just one of those talks I'll
for sure watch over and over again.

And one of the ones I think I'll reference
far into the future for my friends,

for teammates, you know, just one of those
ones like,

Hey, if you're using AI, this is the way
to use it.

So really liked that talk too.

You did a great job, Matt. as always.

I really appreciate that. And it's fun
that you you said those things because
what

I wanted was for people to come away with
the skills to work with AI in

a way that really keeps our humanity and
keeps us involved and keeps

our finger on the on the mouse or whatever
it would be.

But also one of the things that I was sad
that I didn't get to time

get time and energy is there was a slide
at the end where I had this picture

of little Minecraft guy looking out at
this big beautiful world and like,

here's all the things you can do and how's
other things you can create.

In the beginning, I sort of talked about
how

Making video game, you know, using AI and
3JS was helping me rediscover some

of the joy of creating. And then
Christina,

and I I knew she was going to,

but she goes and gives her talk about,

you know, like silly software.

And that was to me, that was one of those
beautiful moments where I was just like,

You did a whole chunk that I wish had been
a part of my talk.

There's no way I could have fit it in.

But in a part of my favorite part of the
talk was that last slide at

the end where it's like, go out and create
things.

And then it just goes, you know,

not directly, but basically

Spiritually directly into Christina's
talk,

where she's able to say, ~ you know,

create these fun things. And she even
reached out to me.

She's like, Hey, can I do a silly software
thing in Voxicon?

So we made this little goose world where
you and so it's just I love when

our hearts and minds are all kind of like
moving in similar directions.

Like it's it's really great where there's
there's intellectual,

you know, connections like, build on this.

But it's also just really fun where it's
like spiritually,

like we're moving in the same direction
and we are all.

Wanting it. And one of the things that I
think that was strongest

was people just saying, I feel a lot of
fear right now.

Yeah.

I feel anxiety about the future of the
industry.

And so a lot of the strongest responses I
saw to my talk and to hers were just like

we can re recapture like joy and recapture
fun and agency.

And I was just like, That's that's a
really cool thing to walk away with,

especially from multiple multiple
speakers.

Yeah, 100% agree. And I think the other
part of it too was the piece that

you mentioned, which was like you can use
AI for more than just writing the code,

right? And so I've been doing recently too
is using AI to help understand

or explain to me parts of the code base
that I maybe haven't looked at

in a long time. Right. So, you know,

you had given this idea of like have it
build you a curriculum to say,

hey, these are the things I want to learn.

How should I go about learning this?

You know, give me the steps, give me the
curriculum,

and then let's pause at certain intervals
to make sure I'm understanding.

Give me a quiz, you know, help me under
make sure I get what's going on here

and to correct me if I'm wrong.

So using the AI for ~ as a mentor almost,

right? As like an educator for you,

specific to your code base, right?

You don't have time to come and you know
sit down and look at my code base with

me every every week, but AI can do that
with me every day.

And so just those concepts. I really,

really liked that and have been using a
lot of the stuff that you talked about.

In our daily workflow over the last couple
of weeks.

So it's been great.

you all I did not bring Jake on here just
to say nice things about my talk,

but I'm I'm I'm

It's been great. It's been great.

Yeah, we've loved it. Yeah. I love to hear
that.

Are there any new releases, features,

framework level things or tools or
practices where you're like this this very

technically is something that I'm walking
away from Laravel,

either using on day one or you know,

really looking forward to trying as soon
as possible.

Yeah, I would say the image manipulation
thing is massive.

it's cool. The fact that there's this
image manipulation first party built into

Laravel now is a massive benefit that
anyone who has

to do this now doesn't have to offload
this to third parties.

So, you know, we've used Cloudinary,

which is a wonderful service and it's it's
great,

but I have to store my assets over there.

It because it just gives me auto
transforms and it's really,

really simple to work with. But now I can
just do all of this on my app,

right?

And especially in the environment that
we're in,

a lot of times the things that we're
dealing with are quite sensitive.

We're not allowed to ship these things off
to third parties because of the the,

you know, contracts that we have with our
clients.

And so being able to now just handle these
image manipulations internally,

convert things from one, you know,

one to another, you know, format or scale
things down,

scale things up. It's been really cool to
see that I have not yet actually used

it myself yet, but that is a big,

big one that I thought was.

hugely beneficial, will be hugely
beneficial for a lot of people in the
community.

Michael, I want to give you a chance to
talk because I feel like I've been talking

a lot. So it was, you know, for your for
your side of things,

any items that were coming out in releases
that you were expecting?

In releases, like not specifically the
framework necessarily,

the the image manipulation stuff.

Anything that can I mean, it's never nice
to be Sherlocked if you have built some

of these tools in in the community,

but from a a whole of community
perspective,

anything that can kind of be pulled into
the framework that's that

one less dependency that you know is gonna
be supported over an extended period

of time by what is now the commercial
entity of Laravel Holdings Incorporated

is is always a good thing.

That's really good. I don't do a lot of
image manipulation.

Most of our stuff is just, you know,

capturing documents and crud stuff,

really. But the LSP, when they announced
the VS Code extension in Denver last year,

I think, the first thing I did was message
Jess Archer.

I So when you turning this into a Vim
extension?

Like when can I use this in Vim?

So it's nice to see that it's here twelve
months later.

I installed it. I opened up a file and
like made sure it worked.

And then I realized, like, I'm not in the
editor as much as I was twelve months ago.

So

The fact that that this kind of stuff is
can be exposed into your agents though,

that Claude can use LSPs to infer this
different thing.

It doesn't have to go and read a config
file.

It can get the config variables out of the
LSP is really useful.

So that was I thought was gonna be more
exciting longer term than than what it
was,

but it's just it's difficult. So but like
blade support that has been you know,

it's been asked for for I

Yeah, that was we're gonna.

don't care what it what it looks like.

I don't mind that it's using, I think,

Prettier or some variant of Prettier under
the hood.

Like I it doesn't matter. What I want is
for someone to make the decisions

for me and for everything to just look the
same.

The thing that I fight now is because I've
done a composer update and I've

got the newest version of Pint,

every time I go into change like a little
bit of a of a blade template,

it's now saving on right. And so the whole
thing gets rewritten.

I'm like, well, I didn't really want

The whole thing is nuked, yeah.

even just like the cloud stuff.

The the the team over there is cooking
constantly.

I think managed cues was sort of talked
about a little bit before Laracon,

but that that it announced and it was
launched,

like having managed cues, having all of
this scale to zero stuff is really cool

as well. For those of us who have got
either heavily cached applications

or just applications that don't get that
much traffic,

to be able to just like not pay for the
time that the compute is

not running is really cool. And then
sharing cloud secrets.

I cheated. I'm running through the the
blog post.

Like there's just so much stuff.

And like I think the the most recent
episode before us,

or maybe two before us, by the time this
this one comes out,

you sat down with Taylor and went through
all of this stuff.

So you've probably done the laundry list
already.

But it's just the amount of stuff that
Taylor gets through and that the team
builds.

And I think the image manipulation thing
is something that we kind

of we discovered because, you know,

the the editorial team at Laravel News

Paul, Yannick, and Eric and Harris that
they're like always going through what's

out in the community. They're always
looking at pull requests going in and
commits,

you know, these things that kind of just
might slip under the radar.

They always see this. And we found this
image manipulation thing.

And we like we were talking about it
before it sort of even quote unquote came
out.

Like it was in the tagged release of of
Laravel 13.

These things, for a few years now,

Laravel has worked really hard to
introduce.

Cool new features, some of them,

you know, bigger than others, some of them
more impactful than others,

but doing it in a backwards compatible
way,

that they can just release it in a point
release,

that it doesn't have to wait until you
know version fourteen.

It's not a big breaking change.

That, you know, organizations that are
building on Laravel,

they don't have to have this big,

no, every twelve months we need to do like
this big month long process

of upgrading the application and testing
it.

And there's all these breaking changes.

It just doesn't happen anymore.

You know, eleven to twelve, twelve to
thirteen,

there was like no known breaking changes,

which is always a fun thing to hear
because there's you can't account

for everything in every application that's
deployed across I guess millions

of applications at this point.

But broadly speaking, they've done a
phenomenal job of staying on

top of that backwards compatibility
promise for a number of years now.

To the point that, like, yeah,

most of the time you can just compose or
update and stay up to date

and get the latest features. You know,

you don't have to worry about something.

obscure breaking in some part of your
application.

So I think that over, as I said,

a number of years, like an extended period
of time,

has made the upgrade path and staying up
to date.

And we saw the, you know, the long term
support releases come and go.

We we had two of them, you know,

version six and version nine. And it was
like,

no, this is not actually the way that that
we want to do things

in the Laravel community. We just want to
stay up to date.

And I think by and large, most people do.

Stay up to date with their applications.

I'm curious, Matt. Do you so you obviously
you run Tighten,

right? What is sort of the default for you
guys as far as how you update things?

Do you try and keep, you know,

is like a maintenance contract where
you're trying to keep people

or encouraging people to stay up to date
with the re most recent versions

of Laravel?

Yeah, we would recommend annual at
minimal.

It depends a little bit on how much custom
stuff they have going on.

It depends a little bit on how much
traffic they have,

how high the security requirements are.

But we tell every client you should at
least once a year either do

it yourselves or hire us to come in for a
little bit to just basically update every

dependency. And usually that takes our we
our our minimum bill is usually

a week and that usually that's less than a
week of work.

So we're like, hey, while we're at it,

we will, you know.

Kick the tires, write up some
documentation,

look at your tests, add an extra feature
there if you want.

But yeah, I I don't think there's ever any
reason not to just stay

in the latest version of Laravel.

And it I've always been a big fan of
supporting out of date applications
because

not everybody has that luxury.

So I'm not a big fan of people whose
packages only work with the latest
version.

But I think that the opinion I absolutely
share with clients is keep it up to date.

And it's especially easy to do.

If you start up to date and just keep
keeping it.

Like the further out of date you get,

the harder it is to get it out of date.

But I think the other thing that makes it
really difficult is if

you write unique hand rolled esoteric
things that could just be handled

at the system level. We've all said it a
hundred times,

right? Like if you stick with the way the
framework does things,

then it's gonna be easier for you to
update.

So most people who are listening to our
advice don't have that problem.

But most rescues do have that problem
because they're not listening

to people like us. Like there's

The vast majority of Laravel apps in the
internet are written by people who've
never

heard a episode of either of our podcasts,

never been to a Laravel Most

On the layer, kind of yeah, exactly.

of them have never even read the docs,

right? They just kind of installed the
thing and they cherry picked

a couple pieces of the docs that were
enough to learn the basic things they
need.

And so that is what ends up to our to the
situation where people are

in really rough shape. If you're writing
it like the idiomatic Laravel way,

keeping up to date once a year is not
painful and it saves you from a

lot of pain down the road. So

Do you ever you ever run into like Laravel
4 apps?

You ever run into like

I ~ we we run in Laravel five apps all the
time.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah. my gosh. Really? Tighten

Surprising.

I would say at least fifty percent of the
work we do is rescue.

So because there's quite a few of the
agencies that say Greenfield or nothing,

which is fine. I get it. And we like
Greenfield apps,

but we do an unbelievable amount of rescue
work.

And it was it's both something that we're
really interested in.

I love legacy applications because that
means it's been

working for years, despite whatever
shortcomings it has,

it's earned people money. And if they're
coming to us,

that means it's valuable enough to us that
it's worth spending even more money

and time and effort getting this thing.

You know, so I'm just like, yeah,

huge fan.

that's a great point.

So yeah, so we do tons of Laravel 5 apps.

I I I wanna I wish Keith so Keith is
usually involved.

The the older the app is the more likely
that Keith,

our director of engineering, is doing an
audit.

And so Keith can answer more specifically,

but I there's this part of me that thinks
that sometime within the last year we've

seen a Laravel four dot something happen.

Yeah. So I they're out there. I feel like

I feel we have to be unclear.

that that 4.0 to 4.3 kind of cycle went
very quickly.

And then most people I think would have
gone from was it 4.2 that went

to five or four three that whichever like
I think most people went

to five and that's where they kind of
stopped because five to six was a

bit of a journey. Six to seven,

seven to eight. There were kind of like
bigger you know structural changes

and lots of things move. So yeah I I feel
like

It makes sense to me at least that five is
where if anyone's stuck,

like that's where they're stuck,

or they're stuck on six or nine.

Well, a lot of the people in the past,

'cause we would get people in the past who
are on on four,

th if they were on four, it's not even
that they were stuck,

it's that they they didn't even know where
to start on the upgrade process.

So basically they were at whatever they
wrote it at,

right? And I think that's to your to your
point,

I think if somebody's tried an upgrade
then,

you know, they've they've tried and
they've gotten stuck somewhere in the
fives,

that's definitely the most common.

That was yeah, 'cause there was a lot of
like tailor riffing through four,

five and six of, you know, very large
changes that like I said before,

we don't we don't see that stuff.

Everything is pretty stable now.

The folder structure's fairly stable,

backwards compatibility is like firmly in
everyone's mind when these features

are being built. So

Yeah. Laravel Shift Claude and I have done
quite a few upgrades from either six,

seven, or eight on up to where we are
today.

And it's it's usually really smooth
operating.

So

Yeah.

when I was asking you guys about the
upgrades,

neither of you mentioned head.

And I dug the new head tag thing where you
can manage your

~

we just we just implemented that today.

We just used it today in an application.

I'm in love with this freaking feature
because I am the one on every project

I'm ever on that goes, wait a minute,

or we've launched this thing a prod and
somebody never turned on

the open and thankfully it doesn't happen
to our client projects because we've

got checklists and stuff like that.

But every open source project,

every side thing I've been on,

I'm like, wait a minute, our open graph is
not good.

And it literally happened today,

two hours before this call. I sent a a
project that Eric Barnes and

I are working on, and I sent a link to
somebody else,

and I was like, that's not the right
preview image.

But we've got open we've got the Laravel
tool,

so I'm just gonna go, you know,

it's gonna rather than hunting things down
and where did I put it in this

one and how am I passing the properties
back from the controllers or whatever,

I'm like, I just get to use this one.

So next time.

Mm-hmm. I actually had a blog post about
this like forever ago about about

OG tags and whatever. And like there was,

you know, I had a linked up site and all
this stuff.

This was back when you had what was it
called?

It was a blog platform. Gist blog.

Gistlog

Yeah.

user for sure. I love just log.

It was great back in the day. But I had a
whole blog post written up on that.

The one other thing I was gonna say
mentioned before we jump off this

was when Taylor's talking about the AISDK.

was the fact that they now have open AI
compatible provider for the Laravel AI
SDK.

So now we can hook this up to our internal
VLLM internal models.

Like so we have we have our own internal
open source weight models running

on these DGX spark boxes inside our ~

yeah.

inside our our sort of network,

right? So we've got four of these things
burning through tokens.

But now we can hook up the Laravel AI SDK,

whereas previously we had to use Prism

Shout out TJ Miller. We had to use Prism
to do it,

which was great. But now you can use just
the the Laravel stuff.

And the other part about that that was
really nice is you now have these human

in the loop approvals, which is great too,

because that was also something that we
had to,

you know, if you want to build that
yourself,

good luck. Have fun with that.

But ~ of course the Laravel team does such
a good job with those sorts of things.

So excited about that portion too.

If you want to be using that for with your
local,

your own models, you can do that,

which is pretty, pretty sweet.

You got me distracted on the DGX part
'cause I had seen one of those.

Somebody in the internet posted one of
those and I'm like,

that's a cute little box. And then someone
was like,

You have four of those? Like that and they
were like sh absolutely shocked.

And I was like, Okay,

Yeah.

four little boxes, not realizing four of
those is equivalent to basically buying

a brand new car.

Yeah, they're we're trying to get we've
been on the wait list for like their

the DGX, I think it's I can't remember
what we have the Spark,

but there's like a DGX studio,

I think is what it is, something like
that.

Okay. And so it's supposed to be this
really massive base,

you know. Yeah, it's with it's a very,

very nice car. Yeah. And so ~ but yeah,

it's been working really well for us.

And and like I said a little bit earlier,

the contracts we have with our clients
don't really allow us to send anything

out to these third party

You know, AI providers. And so if we want
to do anything AI related,

we kinda have to do this. And it's been
good.

It's been really good. But we haven't been
able to use the layer of

AI SDK because it didn't have a provider
that was compatible with this

VLM structure. So anyway, now we do.

So pretty cool stuff. Excited about that
one.

I want stop real quick to thank our
sponsors.

And our first sponsor is Spatie.

And Flare by Spatie is all in one error
tracking and performance monitoring

for your Laravel application. You can find
them at flareapp.io.

And if you want to check out their
performance monitoring,

check it out at flareapp.io slash
performance hyphen monitoring.

And our other sponsor is Laracon
Australia,

run by Michael Dyrynda, today's guest.

Laracon AU returns November 4th to 6th in
Brisbane with deeper learning.

Practical insights and ideas that will
stretch how you think about building with

Laravel. Get your tickets now.

And really, get your tickets now at
Laracon.au.

I do remember where I was going.

I was going to say, speaking of Laracon,

Michael, you organize an entire conference
on top of being a loving

and present dad and you know, having a day
job and everything and several podcasts.

I want you to tell us about the
conference,

but first I want to ask you actually how
do you do it?

Because Laracon AU is among the either two
or three best

run conferences I've ever been to my
entire life.

Not only best run in terms of it's smooth,

I'm a as a speaker, as a sponsor,

as an attendee, it's just easy and clear
and everything's just going

the way you want it to. But also it's just
lovely people with incredible vibes

in a great venue and a wonderful location.

I really honestly mean the question of how
do you pull it off?

How do you do it?

It's been refined over a number of years.

You know, the first year we did it was
like,

just can we do it? Like, can we get people
to come to this thing and who

can we get to speak at it? And like it's a
journey.

So people will say to me, can you get
Taylor to come?

I'm like, Yeah, I'll just I'll just force
Taylor from Arkansas to jump

on a plane and fly twenty-eight hours
across like I it's you know,

so there's there's definitely a lot that
has to go into it to make it happen.

And so I think what I've tried to do

Mindful of the fact that the whole reason
that I started it was because

I went to Laracon in Louisville in 2016.

I went, man, this is a long way to go for
two days.

And I was fortunate enough to be in a
position to be able to go,

but not everyone can. You know,

some people cannot make the journey from
one side of Australia to Brisbane

to attend Laracon. So we had to become
very comfortable with the fact that like
this

is Laracon for Australia. And by and
large,

it's Australian speakers.

it by and large it's an it's Australian
attendees and we just had

to be comfortable with that and make it an
event that fits that demographic.

~ you know, you're you're coming to speak
this year.

We we try and bring in people,

but like we try and bring in people that
wouldn't otherwise have

the opportunity to speak at Laracon.

You know, it's it's very difficult to get
into Laracon US.

It's de difficult to get into Laracon EU
to say nothing of the travel requirements.

It's like

Those are the flagship events for our
community.

And so the speakers are at at the top
echelon.

And so we we want people to be discovered.

And so we've had a number of people that
we've presented with

an opportunity and they've taken that bull
by the horns and they have ended

up going to speak in Europe and they've
spoken at Laracon US and like you know,

not not to I always bring her up,

but like the Jess Archers of the world.

There's not many of them, but like
discovered at our little little event,

you know. So

But yeah, it's a matter of of finding the
venue where,

you know, it's not too big, it's not too
small.

But one thing that I'd I'd spoke to a few
people about in ~ Boston is that

the venue there was fantastic.

But I think in Australia, for whatever
reason,

as as geographically dispersed as we all
are as a nation,

people won't walk 20 minutes from their
hotel to the conference venue.

I don't I don't know what it is.

But if people can't find something that's
like very close by,

they won't do it. So

Trying to find this Goldilocks situation
of a venue where the hotels are close,

where it's easy to get to those hotels
where you don't have to go far to

get to the venue, where you don't have to
get far to the,

you know, the networking events.

~ networking events are difficult.

Where do you take 400 people? Where do you
take 900 people?

You know, in in the instance of Boston.

And it's like, what do you do with 900
people?

That by and large, you know, developers
are not the most social of creatures.

So, like, what do you do?

For us it's bowling because, you know,

lots of us like playing games.

Many of us will make a fool of ourselves
bowling.

It's it's just a a a good fun activity.

So it's, you know, all of those things
kind of factor into it.

And then this year, la last year,

we got to this dinner with a few people
and I like go to say,

you know, we're here and they're like,

We don't have a booking for you.

I said, What do you mean you don't have
like it's and for for five,

six months that I thought I had this
booking,

I had the wrong day.

So it was a day early. And and
fortunately,

like we've been to this location a couple
of times before.

And so they were like, look, just give us
ten minutes,

go and have a drink, we'll sort something
out for you.

And they they got us a table. We ended up
in a in a nicer spot than

we would have been on our actual booking a
day later.

So it but it was at that point that Rees
said to me,

like, I think you need to start sharing
the load of some of this stuff.

So Rhiannon has taken over all of the
social aspects this year.

So so Ree

Is organizing all of the after dark,

all of the like speaker sponsor dinner,

all of the bits and pieces, ancillary. She's
done all of the accommodation stuff

for me this year. So Ree is doing that.

Historically, I had always like I was
responsible for the speakers.

I would pick all of the speakers,

I would liaise with all of the speakers,

I would make sure that all of the speakers
spoke to each other,

that that there was like I I've always had
this firm belief that

a conf the conference is better when there
is some

Whether loose or otherwise connective
thread from start to finish.

That, you know, in your example with your
talk and Christina's talk,

that like there is a a connected point
between the end of your talk and

the start of her talk, or that someone
speaking on day two can say,

by the way, such and such said something
the day before.

Now that can happen organically at the
event.

Don't get me wrong. ~ those things can
happen organically through the event.

Like if the speakers are paying attention,

but it's difficult.

Because a speaker on day two is usually
anxious.

They're in their hotel room hiding,

they're preparing, they're rehearsing,

there's like getting ready to give that
talk still.

So they don't see that something that Matt
said on day one could apply to day.

So we get all the speakers together.

We just did the first one last year.

Like we try and connect the speakers so
that they kind of land.

And it's not like, you know, an awkward
hello.

It's like I know, I feel like I know you
because I've spoken to you three

or four times in the lead up. We've got a
few speakers that are like,

cross-pollinating ideas because there's
there's elements of one talk that

fit with another talk or there's Dr.

Jasmine McDonald, Tim McDonald's partner,

is the honorable. She's ~ she has a PhD in
psychology.

So there's there's connected threads
between what her specific talk

is and some anecdotal discussion in some
of the other talks.

And so the the speakers go off on their
own and they start connecting these
threads

together of their own accord. So

You over the years we've gone,

okay, we need to get the attendee
experience right.

And then we need to look ~ I spent a bunch
of time with like what do I have

to do with sponsors? Because I don't like
it's that's a very hands

on thing that that we're connecting with
sponsors,

that we're doing all of these things.

So how do I improve that experience?

That was a focus for one year.

Then the focus was on attendees.

Okay, we've moved from Sydney to Brisbane.

What do they need for this to be a good
experience coming to a new city with like

a bigger scope of attendance? You know,

we've got to figure out where it

accommodation is with doing cater like the
first time we did a catering,

the the cost of the ticket basically
doubled because catering was everyone says

it it'd be nice to have catering.

It's like, okay, you need to understand
that you have to pay for the catering now.

And it's and it's very difficult.

Like we saw in in Boston that like there
was all this vegetarian food left over.

It's like, okay, what happened there?

Because either the caterer sent too much
or there was,

you know, not not to say that anyone did
anything wrong ~ in in preparing,

but it's like these kinds of things will
happen.

And and sometimes you learn this through
experience.

Anyone that went to Laraprom would know
that there was a weight.

We had the same weight at our networking
event because we let people

do beer off tap. Well, the next year we
went back and said,

No, don't do beer off tap. It takes too
long to pour.

People will line up. We don't want them to
be standing in a line for

an hour waiting for a drink or whatever it
is.

Just hand them whatever you've got in
bottles and cans that is in your standard
men,

you're like, that's what it is.

Just open it, give it to them and and move
them on.

You know? So

It's sitting down and and looking at the
feedback,

you know, and understanding where where
you have gaps.

And there will always be things.

I I said to Abby, there there are things
that you will have seen,

you will have observed, you will have
written down that like will ire you,

that will upset you, that nobody,

none, out of nine hundred odd people that
came to Boston,

no one would have seen that except for
Abby.

But she's gonna want to fix that for next
time.

And the next time people come to the
conference,

they won't even know, but they'll be like,

~

You know, that was different. That was a
pleasant change,

you know, th these tiny little things.

Yep. ~ it's just like having your finger
on the pulse for these kinds

of things year on year, to understand that
there is feedback out there,

to solicit that feedback, to look through
some of the people can

be very honest online, particularly when
their their names are not visible.

But we solicited feedback last year.

I emailed people and I said, This is my
email address.

If you reply to this email, I will get the
feedback and I will reply to it.

And we had

probably forty or fifty people that I went
through over the course of four

or five weeks getting back to them and
saying,

you know, thank you for the feedback.

We and I and I think we tried very hard to
kind of address lots of feedback

and and like just just tweak things.

No and there was nothing like beyond some
things that like you it's like that's

a very specifically you thing.

Like I can't do anything about that.

But to to look through and and see like
what what is there and and just,

you know, tweaks, tweaking some dials and

And pulling some levers here and there to
just do it.

So and the other thing, the speakers this
year,

the historically it was me. I would pick I
got very distracted from I did

all of the speaker selection for a long
period of time too.

So so this year I I

So cool

approached ~ some former speakers.

So I spoke to Kath, who has spoken
previously.

I spoke to Dave as like a member of
Laravel.

Not because he's a member of Laravel,

but because he's kind of on the fringe of
technical and has been in

in the product space for a long time.

I reached out to, you know, members of the
audience that had provided some feedback.

I said, I think, you know, you would have
a very useful contribution

to helping us put together a different
program this year.

And so we put together a a panel of of
four people that we all reviewed every

one of the 150 talks that came in this
year.

We all came and then collaborated on that.

And the

The program this year was the result of
literal like probably a day's worth

of work of discussions, but you know,

hours and hours of of everyone pouring
over all of the submissions

and and figuring out how we piece together
a thing.

So yeah, it's just delegation has been
this year's theme,

you know.

I was gonna say it was really funny sort
of hanging out with Michael this year
after

listening to him talk about all this,

because there would be things where he'd
be like,

I don't know, those lines, it's like
whatever,

whatever. And I'm like, I literally didn't
even think about it at all.

And it's like Michael's brain is
constantly on like host mode.

You know what I mean? Organizer mode.

And so you'd see him like sort of like
working through a problem,

like, ~ this, you know, or he'd be like,

Wow, like the check-in lines really went
fast this year.

And I'm like

Yeah, I guess so. Like I like it's just
not even on my radar.

And like Michael is constantly like
evaluating,

analyzing. So looking back on it,

like, that's what that is. Michael's
thinking through like his brain,

sort of how does this work for their
stuff?

And so yeah, that's pretty cool.

I th you're right though, Michael.

There's all these invisible things.

~ I felt like this year's Laracon was
absolutely one of my favorite,

like one of my absolute favorite.

And I'm sure

It's just all those little tweaks.

It wasn't even anything material I could
put my finger on that was like this

is why it was so good. It just was.

And so I'm sure it's a lot of work from
the team and Abby just making sure

all the I's are dotted, all the T's are
crossed,

and it it paid off. It really

Yeah,

it was it was the vibes were immaculate
across the board.

Like day zero that you know, whether
people were participating or they were
just

watching, like the fact that they could
could come in and just watch and

be part of that was amazing. The Lara Prom
was great.

After dark was you know, that that first
night was really,

really good. That venue was perfect.

The fact that it didn't rain, considering
that we were expecting rain all day,

like food was very good. Everyone I think
got,

you know, and the I didn't see or hear
anyone complaining there wasn't enough
food,

like it just kept coming.

And and having the networking

No, there was plenty, yeah.

after day two as well, 'cause like day two
is always a really weird one.

It's a weird one for us. We kind of like
you get to the end of the

day and it's like, Yep, I guess that's it.

See ya later And then, you know,

everyone gets ~

We've

just been together nonstop for yes.

From an organizer perspective,

it's like a very difficult thing to to
capture.

And like with the lens of an organizer as
opposed to just the the attendee,

I think Laracon US had the vibes right
this year across the board.

Yeah, I'm very hopeful. I'm very hopeful
that they keep the day zero thing.

That was hugely beneficial. Like everybody
lands and usually that first night

is everybody making a mad dash to sort of
figure out who can I connect with before

the night is over. I wanna see people,

I wanna see my friends, like where can we
go to dinner?

But it's like if you have too big of a
group,

there's not a place you can go.

So LeraProm was great, but also the day
zero dodgeball thing.

Like you said, like a couple of years ago
it was the basketball,

but it really wasn't able to be
participated.

By everybody. And so this year it was.

Plus our team won. That was awesome.

That's what you're excited about,

really. Yeah, that's really what was
actually excited about.

So but yeah, no, I I hope that they take
what they did this year and you know,

not not exactly like clone it for next
year,

but man, it was so good. I really hope
that next year's is very similar as

as far as the events, the days of,

you know, the days before the days leading
up to the actual conference.

It was great.

Lots to be proud of, I think, for the
Abby in particular this year.

Yeah. Guys, I just looked up and I
normally cut this thing at 45 minutes

and I was it was going so smoothly I
didn't even think to check the time.

I was like, yeah, we're 20 minutes in.

~

Like a

Yeah. Convinced we hadn't even hit the
half hour mark.

Okay, so that means I need to start
wrapping it up.

So from the two of you, is there anything
else going on,

whether it's Laracon related or technology
related or projects you're working

on or anything else?

That you just think is really fun and
exciting you wanna talk about real quick.

Anything you wanna share, anything you
wanna link to,

anything you wanna shout out, any way
that,

you know, anything you wanna brag on?

And the answer could be no. I didn't
prepare you for this.

But is there anything just you're like,

you know what? Like, I gotta get this in
before you do.

Before we go. Michael, you want to go?

You have anything on top of your head?

I don't I don't have anything specifically
other than ~ Laracon AU?

Tickets, early bird tickets are still
available.

If you are thinking about coming,

if you're listening to this and whether
you're in Australia or or beyond,

I discovered, I think I knew this before,

but it occurred to me that the Foo
Fighters are playing on the night of

day one of Laracon, which is amazing.

Nice.

It's a great coin. It's really also very
frustrating because

it means that accommodation is a real
problem.

pain because everyone like comes in and
the hotels get booked up.

So if you haven't you're still thinking
about it,

please like book your accommodation.

We've got discounts available.

Last year it was Metallica. This year we
went a week earlier and this year it's

the Foo Fighters. So I mean and when we

Something two years ago when I was there
last as well,

I don't remember what it was. There was a
concert on our second time.

There was something on

the Friday night. Yeah, at the at the
Riverside ~ stage that's directly next

to where we were. So yeah, it's ~ like we
picked the dates in December,

we had them locked away, and then we were
not planning on announcing

our dates until March, and then the Foo
Fighters come in in February.

And we're like, Well and okay,

great. Well, it's the Foo Fighters.

So ~ we we planned as best we could
anyway,

if you if you're still thinking about it,

Laracon.au

The all the speakers up, the full
schedule,

all of the talk details, everything is
there.

So check that out. And also check out the
Laravel News Podcast

if you haven't already. ~ we we stay on
top of that stuff thanks

to the amazing editorial work of Paul and
Yannick and Harris and Eric as well.

He's doing tons of work on the site.

And you mentioned him before, but also
just shout out to TJ Miller.

Like just follow him because he's a great
person.

What a good

Person. Yeah.

Called Prism. He's working on some like
markdown note taking apps.

He's working on a transcription

And

tool at the moment. Like he just if you
want to look at and not even silly
software,

but like the kind of stuff that is you
would probably want to look at these days,

he's he's building all of it. So shout out
to T J.

All right, I got a couple things here.

Number one, I wanted to give a quick like
shout out to some of the talks that

I didn't go into any sort of detail about,

but I really liked it's I think it's
Mateus.

He talked about building a CLI coding
agent.

That was really good because it was
talking about how you can take outputs
that

are typically non-deterministic and how
you can sort of make them deterministic,

how you can use an AI to still get
deterministic outputs.

That was really good talk.

Will King, best slides ever. That dude is
a rock star.

my gosh, his slides were so good.

And then Kent Dodds, who I think broke my
freaking toe during dodgeball.

But that dude had a great talk about
durable skills in the age of AI.

And so that was a really good talk.

So shout out to all those speakers.

They did a really, really great job as
well.

The only thing I have to talk about is
just this little game I've been working
on,

which is really fun, Boom Party dot party.

So we've been doing this as a team.

We do this every morning during our
stand-up.

We play this game and it's really fun.

So you should check it out, play it with
your team.

It's really enjoyable. And if you have any
tweaks or anything you want

to make to it, I'm probably just gonna
throw it out on open source,

honestly. Just you know, throw Claude at
it.

It's actually very well structured and so
really easy to make changes and stuff.

So feel free to have a play around with
that.

And then something I discovered recently
that has nothing to do with Laravel.

Any of that stuff, but it's just really
fun,

is this thing? I think it's called
itch.io.

And so there's a lot of these little games
on there.

There's one called like lock picking
today.

I don't know. There's like really,

really creative people out there making
these fun games.

And I think if you're looking to sort of
make a game,

there's some really clever ideas on here
that could maybe give you some
inspiration.

I know a lot of people have been looking
for like,

how can I get my kids into coding?

And man, games are a great way to do that,

right? Just have them build something
simple.

And so

There's a lot of fun little web games on
this itch.io that you could check

out if you're if you're sort of w looking
for some inspiration

or something like that. So amazing.

That's it. That's all from me.

Guys,

you're the best. Thank you so much for
hanging out with me.

And for those who don't know, these guys
didn't say,

What are we talking about? They didn't
say,

You got to give me an agenda. We need to
pre they're like,

you know what? We'll be there.

We'll be ready to hang. I don't know if
I've ever given any guests

as little preparation information as I
gave them to you.

And we we could have gone for another hour
here.

So thank you guys so much. Thank you for
your continued service to the community.

Thank you for being such wonderful
friends.

I'm so glad to call you guys friends.

And yeah, I really appreciate you guys.

Thanks for having us on, Matt.

It was wonderful talking with you.

Appreciate you.

Two.

And for the rest of you all, we will see
you all next time.