Pre-K orientation

Me reading a chapter of "Hidden Multipliers" by Jason Cohen

The PHP Podcast 2026.09.02

PHP Podcast – September 2, 2026 Hosts: Eric Van Johnson & Joe Ferguson John’s out, Joe jumps in at the last second, a brand-new intro gets debuted mid-flight, a new PHP Foundation podcast gets announced, Frank’s database issues (not production), and somebody’s selling 37 elePHPants to fund a startup and open-heart surgery. New Intro, New Scenes, and a Last-Second Co-Host Eric kicked off the episode still tinkering with a brand-new intro and scene setup live on air, complete with a fresh montage that (thankfully) still includes Duck Nizzle. With John unavailable, Joe Ferguson jumped on at the last second to keep the show moving, and the two spent the opening minutes wrestling with scene sizing while Joe appeared comically small on screen. The pair caught up on client work: Joe pulled off an Elastic Beanstalk environment flip that nobody noticed (which is exactly how you want those to go), while Frank got thrown right under the bus for deleting the wrong database. Fortunately, it wasn’t production, and the conversation turned into an appreciation session for point-in-time recovery on AWS RDS and DigitalOcean’s managed databases, both of which have saved plenty of bacon during cowboy-hat coding sessions. The PHP Foundation Community Podcast Joe announced a brand-new podcast launching on the same PHP Architect channel, hosted by Elizabeth Barron and focused entirely on contributing to PHP. The first guest is Matt Stauffer, who recently published a fantastic post on the Foundation site about contributing to PHP, with recording set for September 10th. The plan is one Foundation Community Hour per month, plus the Joe, Holly, and Sarah show on weeks when Eric and John aren’t around. Eric and Joe used the moment to clear up a common misconception: people often conflate PHP internals with the Foundation, but they are not the same thing. The Foundation pays people to work on internals rather than steering the language itself. Its whole reason for existing is to get structure and funding around an old open-source project that billion-dollar companies have built empires on while contributing little back downstream. They also touched on recent Foundation board turnover: Roman’s term ended, and he’s rotating off, with Brent Roose joining as JetBrains’ representative — a great fit given Brent’s reach and the volume of PHP content he pushes out. Unlocking the PHP Architect Magazine Back Catalog The hosts made a pitch for the magazine, noting that an active subscription unlocks the entire catalog going all the way back to the very first issue — December 2002, which covered PHP 4.3. Eric got nostalgic about first discovering the print magazine right when PHP 4 came out, when knowledge was scarce, YouTube didn’t exist, and you had to buy O’Reilly books and beg your manager’s education budget for a subscription. Big news for existing accounts: John has opened up everything published before 2022 to anyone with an account on the system, even without an active subscription. Log in, head to magazines, and check what you now have access to. The team also reminded listeners that the magazine pays every contributor, that they’ve built a solid roster of regular columnists, and that PHP Architect is a consulting group available to augment teams, evaluate systems, and more. Where Developers Fit in an AI World Eric put Joe on the spot with a big question: What does a developer’s role look like going forward, given where AI is? Joe leaned positive on the tooling — Claude is excellent at parsing logs, spotting anomalies, and navigating large legacy codebases he isn’t in every day. He described real workflows like running AWS bill reviews for clients and comparing “what does your Claude say” with Frank to catch ridiculous bugs, all while distilling the output down as the human in the loop. But Joe was candid about his concerns too: AI feels force-fed in a way CSS or JS frameworks never did, with a real fear of being replaced by “a bunch of Claude agents in a trench coat.” He raised ethical and environmental concerns, pointing to accusations about his own city’s AI data center and the ripple effects on hardware — RAM prices spiking 400–500%, with Apple reportedly paying far more for iPhone RAM, a cost that always flows back to consumers. Eric compared the AI moment to crypto: a genuinely good technology released to the masses too soon, leading to misuse and eventual regulation. He shared a concrete win, though — using Claude to single-handedly bring a Laravel project shelved since COVID up to date, then using it to generate effort estimates (roughly three years of work) that helped set realistic expectations with a client who didn’t want to hear it. The pair debated whether those estimates accounted for AI-assisted velocity and stressed the importance of guardrails — especially for juniors, since even skilled devs leave S3 buckets open and AI is dangerously confident in its word guessing. TypePHP: Interesting, But Not for Everyone Eric dug into TypePHP, the ahead-of-time compiler from the Swoole team that translates PHP source into C++ and then native machine code. On the surface, he likes the idea — it’s something he wanted decades ago — but he questioned its relevance today: the compiler’s habit of catching bad code before it runs matters less now that PHPStan, linting, and a strong testing culture already fill that gap. Joe pointed out the bigger practical problem: there’s far more talk about TypePHP than actual code being written in it, and it’s clearly geared toward long-running CLI processes rather than web requests. That excludes the kind of PHP most developers actually write, and as Nuno noted in the chat, it isn’t going anywhere until it works with Laravel and the rest of the ecosystem. The hosts agreed the real value would be extracting any gains and folding them back into native PHP, à la HHVM/Hack, and noted transpiling already solves the “I want a different syntax” itch. Joe also pushed back on the “runs everywhere” selling point, arguing that Docker and Podman containers already make PHP CLI tools trivially portable — better than PHARs ever were. Eric landed on a mature take: he wants PHP everywhere and is happy to see it evolve, but he’s come to terms with the fact that he won’t personally use every direction it grows, TypePHP included. ElePHPants, Laracon Archives, and Free Talks A Reddit post caught the team’s attention: someone is selling their 37+ elephpant collection to fund a startup and help offset the cost of upcoming open-heart surgery. Joe noted the PHP tech elephpants are wildly undervalued compared to others in the listing — you can grab an OG PHP Architect orange Archie for under a hundred bucks. Eric showed off his own big Elvis (a gift from Sarah) and eyed the coveted Star Trek elephpant that John once nabbed in a trade at Longhorn. Eric also highlighted the new Laracon Archive project, which collects Laracon conference talks across regions (US, EU, Online, India) with a clean year-by-year interface — great work for anyone who tries to manage conference content. He closed by plugging phptech.tv, which hosts PHP Architect conference talks, including a batch of free talks and even a full free conference this year, with the same back-catalog-unlock model as the magazine. Links from the show: Longhorn PHP 2026 — October 15–16 PHP Foundation — Contributing to PHP blog post PHP Architect Magazine — Subscribe & unlock the back catalog PHPTech.tv — Conference talks, including free ones Host: Eric Van Johnson X: @shocm Mastodon: @eric@phparch.social Bluesky: @ericvanjohnson.bsky.social PHPArch.me: @eric Joe Ferguson Mastodon: @joepferguson@phpc.social PHPArch.me: @svpernova09 Streams: Youtube Channel Twitch Connect & Hire PHP Architect Website Twitter/X Mastodon Hire PHP Developers Looking to hire PHP developers? Email support@phparch.com – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review. Partner This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners Displace   Infrastructure Management, Simplified Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease. https://displace.tech/     OurCVEs Your security posture, on autopilot with OurCVEs   CodeRabbit   Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.     PHP Architect Consulting   Your PHP codebase deserves a partner, not a contractor PHP Architect provides long-term technical partnerships for organizations that need senior-level PHP expertise that you can depend on https://www.phparch.com/consulting/   Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/ Join Us Live Next Week Youtube Channel Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com The post The PHP Podcast 2026.09.02 appeared first on PHP Architect.

Community Corner Podcast: Longhorn PHP 2026 with Ian Littman

 In this episode, Scott talks to Ian Littman about Longhorn PHP 2026, a 2-day conference in Austin, TX, on October 15–16, 2026, at the Holiday Inn Austin Midtown. Links: Our Discord – https://discord.gg/aMTxunVx Buy our shirts – https://store.phparch.com/products/community-corner-podcast-t-shirt Ian’s Links: Longhorn – https://longhornphp.com/ $25 off – https://ti.to/longhorn-php/longhorn-php-2026/discount/communitycorner Scott’s Links: Website – https://scott.keck-warren.com/ Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/scottkeckwarren.bsky.social LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-keck-warren-91689810/ Mastodon – https://phpc.social/@scottkeckwarren PHP Architect Social Media: X: https://x.com/phparch Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com Discord: https://discord.phparch.com Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/ Partners This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners. Displace Infrastructure Management, Simplified Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease. https://displace.tech/ PHPScore Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore https://phpscore.com/ CodeRabit CodeRabbit – Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit. https://www.coderabbit.ai/ Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/ #phpc #php #communityCornerPodcast #podcast #phptek The post Community Corner Podcast: Longhorn PHP 2026 with Ian Littman appeared first on PHP Architect.

A Laravel and Laracon Catch-Up With Michael Dyrynda and Jake Bennett

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer is joined by two of his oldest friends in the community — Michael Dyrynda and Jake Bennett, co-hosts of the Laravel News Podcast — for a Laracon-fueled catch-up that starts with golf, soccer, and adult swim lessons before turning to the framework.They dig into the Laracon US highlights that stuck with them: rediscovering the joy of building "silly software," using AI as an educator for your own codebase, and the new releases they're most excited to ship — first-party image manipulation, the Laravel AI SDK's OpenAI-compatible provider, OG tag management, and Blade support in Pint.Along the way, Matt talks rescue work and Laravel 5 apps in the wild, and Michael pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to run Laracon AU.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferMichael Dyrynda on X - http://x.com/michaeldyryndaMicheal Dyrynda on GitHub - http://github.com/michaeldyrynda  Michael Dyrynda’s Website - dyrynda.com.auJake Bennett on X - http://x.com/jacobbennettJake Bennett on GitHub -  https://gitHub.com/jacobbennettJake Bennet’s Website - http://jakebennett.net/  Christina Martinez's Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/2oUu9-jW6mg?si=rjckBIfr2wVCUKQAMatt Stauffer’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/au9bIQsrh8k?si=BNJBMFIGFZR5oUqJBoom Party - https://boomparty.party/Laracon AU - https://laracon.au/Laravel News Podcast - https://podcast.laravel-news.com/Mateus Guimaraes’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/Wb8qsfP2sJc?si=zSKc_EeVTv9wDA91Will King’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/TlQm1fiQUZs?si=Dk2uZBgBHRcawsUCKent C. Dodd’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/zZPV_ggx5F8?si=88JRgSZ518lQhhp_http://itch.io  - https://itch.io/Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoringLaracon AU - https://laracon.au

147: It's Orbin' Time

Ian and Aaron discuss the release of Solo v0.10, Aaron's trip to Boise, Ian's trip to the fair, why Ian's all in on Orbs, and so much more.Sponsored by Bento, DropInBlog, Valorin Security, and Typesense.Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical?  Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.(00:00) - Producer Steve Got Married! (07:53) - Aaron's Unifying Theory on Wedding Toasts (17:02) - Ian Went To The Fair (27:30) - Notion? (and Linear) (35:28) - Moats (40:40) - Solo's Huge New Release (55:41) - It's Orbin' Time (01:10:30) - Aaron's Credit Card Strategy (01:24:28) - Book Update Links:Aaron's wedding photo (Steve Tenuto's wedding)Steve Tenuto on XIan's tweet on moatsSoloAaron's Solo release threadAmp OrbsMatt Stenson on XAmex Gold CardAmex Platinum CardAwardWalletGreat Illustrated Classics

I hate everything after two weeks

Write better requirements or pay for it later

Have you ever handed off a feature request with barely any detail and expected the developer to just figure it out?In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we discuss why writing clear requirements is one of the most valuable things a business can do before development starts.We make the case that even imperfect requirements beat none at all because they determine where the discovery happens, closer to the finish line rather than somewhere in the middle of the country.We also cover why letting AI write your requirements for you is a trap, and how AI can help you review and cross-check requirements instead. And why the more detail you put in upfront, the less money you spend on surprises later.(02:53) - Good requirements let you build start to finish (05:10) - Imperfect requirements still beat having none (07:36) - Why AI should not write your requirements (09:09) - Using AI to cross-check requirements instead (10:46) - Silly bit Have a messy real-world project you're working through? Join the No Compromises community and talk it through with other developers.Subscribe to the Mastering Laravel newsletter for practical insights that help you communicate better with your development team.

I FINALLY CRACKED UNDERSTANDING CODE THAT AI WRITES

The PHP Podcast 2026.08.27

PHP Podcast – August 27, 2026 Hosts: Joe Ferguson, Sara Golemon & Holly Schilling Zero-downtime swaps that nobody noticed, 3D printers that refuse to calibrate, a nostalgia tour through the entire PHPArch back catalog, Go generics, TypePHP, and a very good reason to book a flight to Belgium. This one lived in the gutter and loved it. Zero-Downtime Environment Swaps in AWS Joe kicked off the show talking about migrating a client’s production, staging, and test environments to completely new Elastic Beanstalk setups in AWS — during one of the client’s biggest selling seasons — and nobody noticed except him. That’s the dream: a zero-downtime upgrade that customers never feel. He explained that this was actually the second full rebuild of these servers in two months. The first migration got them off an aging Amazon Linux platform, and once everything was captured in CloudFormation templates and supporting scripts, swapping to an entirely new environment for an SSL certificate adjustment was suddenly no big deal. Being able to swap whole fleets of application servers behind a CNAME or DNS record and have clients never know is, in Joe’s words, one of the coolest things about cloud computing that will never get old. It also spawned a new accidental buzzword: “infrastructure as cloud.” 3D Printing Trials, Tribulations, and Guitar-String Belts Sara got her 3D printer working and has been printing everything from QR codes to a donate-link plaque for the PHP Foundation booth (inspired by feedback Sebastian got at a conference), all using the tried-and-true multicolor technique of hitting pause at the right layer and swapping filament. This is Sara’s fourth printer that should have been her third — she detailed the multi-day kit assemblies, belts that had to be tightened like guitar strings before calibration would work, and a tiny plastic pulley holder that snapped apart. Apparently nobody in Lisbon has a working 3D printer to help print a replacement part, so she resorted to sanding wood into a makeshift holder before finally getting it running and printing spares of everything. Holly admitted 3D printing is another expensive hobby she’d never follow through on, and Joe confessed he’d want the “Apple of 3D printers” that never jams — the same reason flying drones didn’t stick for him, since what he was actually doing was crashing and repairing drones. Sara later shared her first real project: little blue printed brackets that consolidate her monitor’s power and Thunderbolt into a single clean cord. Old Tech Nostalgia: Radio Shack Kits, Punch Cards, and Hard Drive Platters The crew took a deep dive into computing nostalgia. Sara reminisced about Radio Shack electronics kits with big springs you’d push aside to hold wires in place, lamenting that modern kits just have you jumper a GPS to a single-board computer — something big is missing from that experience. Holly recalled hacking on a third-hand 8088 laptop from a garage sale because her parents wouldn’t let her touch the family 486, and spending a full year in 1997 trying to get DHCP working across three Windows 95 machines before giving up and hard-coding IP addresses. Sara topped it with serial null-modem cables running between rooms in her first apartment, back when your serial port was your network. Holly then held up hard-drive platters she keeps as wall decoration, prompting a genuinely fun tangent about whether you could manually write bits to a low-density platter with a needle and magnet — a “solvable problem” per Joe, complete with G-code and a printed robot housing. The group also swapped memories of building PCs when a video card was mandatory and Sound Blaster was king, plus punch cards still stacked in a university basement at the turn of the century. Go Generic Methods, the PHPArch Archive Vault, and PHP 8.6 Go’s newest release finally added support for generic methods (it already had generic structs and functions), which Holly noted is PHP-relevant since it ties back to her own generics proposal debates. Sara puzzled over why methods and functions weren’t just supported together, since the only declarative difference is that receiver parameter — leading to an impromptu live look at the syntax and the conclusion that “all of Go is weird, just in the opposite direction PHP is weird.” Eric dropped breaking news mid-show: anyone with a phparch.com account — even an old one from a lapsed subscription — now has access to the magazine archive going all the way back. Joe pulled up Volume One, Issue One, and dug up a November 2002 piece about PHP 4.3 RC2 — right around when Sara submitted her first PHP patch and gave the world unified streams. They also covered Eric Van Johnson’s blog post on the PHP 8.6 soft feature freeze. Beta 2 shipped with a lot more deprecations landing that weren’t in beta 1, and the hosts encouraged listeners feeling froggy to grab it and test drive. Holly griped that one of her merged 8.6 changes didn’t even get a mention — thanks a lot, Eric. TypePHP and Competing Runtimes The team dug into TypePHP, which compiles PHP down to a native binary. Sara was openly dubious of the speed claims — a 50% gain wouldn’t surprise her, but an 8x gain needs much better data — while Joe noted the only demos so far are CLI apps, not traditional web workloads, and worried the authors are writing a very different style of PHP than most people do. Holly framed it through history: the whole reason PHP, Perl, and CGI exist is to avoid the per-request cost of loading and launching a native binary, so she’s curious what tradeoffs a compiled approach makes — especially since people sensitive to raw performance often reach for Go in the first place. She also pointed out most PHP code is just reading a file, not running the billion-row challenge. Sara pushed back on the “competing runtime” framing, recalling HHVM as more synergistic than antagonistic — it launched with PHP’s own code inside it, and PHP 7 hitting the speed of PHP 5 was directly informed by HHVM’s research. The real test will be whether TypePHP can run real Laravel apps and WordPress sites reliably enough for ecosystem adoption, the same way HHVM eventually powered Wikipedia’s front end with just a single WordPress patch. PHP Foundation Speaker Accreditation & PHP BeNeLux Returns Joe covered today’s PHP Foundation Ambassador SIG meeting, focused on the speaker subgroup and a proposal James Seconde has been working on. The goal is a foundation accreditation program that builds a list of speakers who can carry a consistent PHP message, tapped by geographic region so events get local speakers, more diverse voices get on stage, and nobody gets burned out flying halfway across the world when four nearby speakers could do the same talk. The big excitement, though, was the announcement of PHP BeNeLux in Antwerp, Belgium in January 2027 — the first since January 2020 before COVID. Sara audibly lost it, partly because it lines up with FOSDEM and partly out of love for longtime organizer Michelangelo van Dam, whom Joe credited as a huge, welcoming reason he got involved in the PHP community in the first place. Both hosts are already thinking about submitting talks. Links from the show: PHP Tek 2027 CFP — extended through end of October PHP Tek 2027 — April 27–29, Chicago (tickets available) PHPArch Swag Store 3D Code Generator Export QR codes as STL for 3D printing PHPArch.com Magazine Archive — now available to all account holders PHP 8.6 Beta 2 — now available for testing TypePHP — PHP compiled to a native binary PHPBenelux — Antwerp, Belgium, January 2027 Host: Joe Ferguson Mastodon: @joepferguson@phpc.social PHPArch.me: @svpernova09 Sara Golemon Mastodon: @pollita@phpc.social Holly Schilling Mastodon: @TheCodeLorax@tech.lgbt Streams: Youtube Channel Twitch Connect & Hire PHP Architect Website Twitter/X Mastodon Hire PHP Developers Looking to hire PHP developers? Email support@phparch.com – Joe and the team are available for consulting, infrastructure work, Ansible playbooks, and code review. Partner This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners Displace   Infrastructure Management, Simplified Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease. https://displace.tech/     OurCVEs Your security posture, on autopilot with OurCVEs   CodeRabbit   Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.   PHP Architect Consulting   Your PHP codebase deserves a partner, not a contractor PHP Architect provides long-term technical partnerships for organizations that need senior-level PHP expertise that you can depend on. https://www.phparch.com/consulting/   Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/ Join Us Live Next Week Youtube Channel Got feedback? Join us on Discord at discord.phparch.com The post The PHP Podcast 2026.08.27 appeared first on PHP Architect.

I tried Amp and Claude desktop today to see what I'm missing

Meteors and space peanuts and identifying wrong-turns