Andy Hinkle (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of The Midwest Artisan. I'm your host, Andy Hinkle.

Dalton McCleery (00:05)
And I'm your co -host Dalton McCleary.

Andy Hinkle (00:08)
So together we are both from the Midwest and we talk Laravel tech and anything else happening in the web dev industry. So Dalton, how's it going?

Dalton McCleery (00:17)
Hey man, it's going pretty great for me. I know it's going to be stellar for you because of Laracon this week. I mean, mine was super boring. I didn't go. I know you went, so I want to get to it.

Andy Hinkle (00:31)
Yeah, man, it's been such a really good week. I've just coming back on such a high from Laracon. The community is just, it's just the friendliest community there is, you know, just with the, and then like I personally think that, but I am also in this isolation of being in this community. But then we have people such as Primeagen such as there's developers come from the JavaScript ecosystem that come in and they're like,

Dalton McCleery (00:41)
Agree.

Andy Hinkle (00:59)
blown away just by how friendly everyone is just by. They almost could just give you the shirt off their back, you know, some of that kind of friendliness. And so, it's just so good to have that kind of really tight knit community. So, yeah, it was a fantastic conference. Everyone brought it. Like every talk was just like there and it was so, so good.

Dalton McCleery (01:05)
Mm -hmm.

Andy Hinkle (01:19)
Everyone had great feedback. I got with the podcast idea, which we'll get into, like have an update on that. I just felt like by the end of it, my brain was just like short circuiting just from all the different conversations I was having. I was just going one person to another,

Dalton McCleery (01:35)
You

Andy Hinkle (01:39)
I, you know, and then talking to some vendors and it was such a great conference.

Dalton McCleery (01:43)
Yeah, so not like last year where we kind of sat by ourselves at a table and just watched the conference. You like actually talked to people. Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (01:52)
Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. Yeah. Last year, I talked to the people that I knew from previous conferences, Aaron Francis, had a really good talk about just putting yourself out there, just making great connections, just talking to people. And, that really just resonated with me. following these people for a number of years on Twitter, it's just like, it's kind of awkward to go up to somebody you've never met, but you followed.

And maybe you've interacted with a few other tweets and you had just a small conversation, but going up and meeting some of them, they're just so friendly and, Last year I did get an opportunity to meet Caleb for the first time. I just, had some small conversation and,

I've been following over Twitter. We've been listening. would listen to his show and I was what he called a reply guy and I'd kind of reply, you know, some things that from the show, he has two podcasts. He's no plans to merge and then notes on work and listen to it. Both, both are great shows and he, really gets vulnerable on notes on work and just some of the talks there's more personal life stuff and just some great tidbits. So when I got to Laracon, we actually met up and like we got in line at the same time.

And we talked for 30 minutes, maybe we talked for a long time. just Caleb. of course we got, I got a picture with them, but the entire time we didn't talk shop. We, we talked just life. both have kids. And so, we talked about, our love for, Tim tracker, which is like a Disney YouTuber. So, yeah, it just, yeah, it just so didn't by the end of it, like,

Dalton McCleery (03:00)
Did you shake that man's hand for me? Yes.

Aww.

Andy Hinkle (03:23)
I didn't even talk about flux or live wire, all the things that, know, I love that use all the time. You know, we just started talking about, we realized like our wives are practically like the same person or, you know, same type of personality. it's just wild how, there's nowhere on, in this universe of like, other than Laracon for me personally of like,

These are all people that are closest to my personality than anywhere else. it's such a good conference. can't say keep, just feel like I keep saying that, getting to, or did you see the basketball game? The Null Star, one of the wild century.

Dalton McCleery (04:00)
I yeah I watched I was watching the live stream and it was boy it was something wasn't it it started off pretty pretty good and then went downhill really fast

Andy Hinkle (04:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah terminal took the win home on that one, but david hill david hill he comes from terminal He's now the design guy a really nice dude. I got to talk to him for a short bit at lara con he has a really good basketball game and I was talking to him and he's like I haven't played since I was 13 So he's tall as me but which he's about six six six seven somewhere in there He had a really good jump shot

Dalton McCleery (04:31)
No.

Andy Hinkle (04:38)
And, yeah, he really helped the terminal team take it away. So, I got to, talking to Jake Bennett and he was telling me that, he was sitting on the sideline and he had in advance weeks in advance, he had a message Taylor and said, Hey, if you need anyone else to, for help on the basketball game, he said, I'd be happy to help. And so it was halftime, you know, let the Laravel team was down pretty significantly.

Dalton McCleery (05:04)
Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (05:04)
Taylor goes up to him. goes, Hey man, you're in. Like, let's go. So Taylor grabs like some, some subs and he's like, we will just take whatever we can get. but unfortunately they still did not come out with the win but it was, everyone seemed to love it. I really hope they'd do this again. It was so cool. I wish I could have been there. I was on the way there to Laracon when all this was going down.

Dalton McCleery (05:07)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (05:26)
but it was so cool to see. Yeah. Just see that.

Dalton McCleery (05:27)
for sure, they need to play stuff like football or soccer or some other just off the wall stuff just to see, I just wanna see developers running around in their unnatural habitats. You know what I mean? It was really fun to watch.

Andy Hinkle (05:40)
Yeah, yeah, it was a, yeah, there were some that were really good and some of them you could definitely tell they haven't played in a while and, and, and I, me personally, I wouldn't be any better than any of those people out there. So yeah, it was, it was just so cool to see a really nice event like that, that Sentry put on. So yeah.

Dalton McCleery (05:48)
Yeah, yep.

Yeah, I really like it.

Andy Hinkle (06:05)
So getting to Laracon was very interesting. I had quite the experience.

Dalton McCleery (06:11)
Yeah, I want to hear about this because you went you came from Indiana to Dallas and it should have been a pretty quick flight in a quick short run to the hotel. So I am am very curious on how wild this story is going to get. You've you've hyped me up for it. So I'm curious. Let's hear it.

Andy Hinkle (06:20)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah, I messaged Dalton and I said, I got quite the story to tell you about how I got to yeah. So, I, I've been to, this would be my fourth Laracon and I've been to Chicago, took the train. I've been to New York, took the subway, all great experiences. And so I flew from Louisville to Dallas and growing up in Oklahoma, I have been to Dallas numerous times, baseball games.

Dalton McCleery (06:31)
I've been waiting.

Andy Hinkle (06:54)
concerts, et cetera. So growing up, I knew it was very clean. I've, I've seen Chicago, I've seen New York. You see a little, you know, a few interesting things here and there, but there's, there's a lot of locals, like a lot of people that live in the city. but for the most part, everyone's in the hustle and bustle. You're, you're in as the mix with everybody else. Right. So.

Dalton McCleery (07:04)
little rough around the edges.

Andy Hinkle (07:15)
In advance, plug in, just trying to figure out how my hotel. I plug in Uber and it says like $65. And I was like, whoa, okay, that's a little steep. So I was like, we'll just see, you know, it was in the evening. so I was like, we'll just see when we get there what the price is gonna be like. So flight was great. Once we land,

I pull up Uber and it was like $70. And I was like, who is this? Everyone else during this time, know, people are coming in from Laracon from Europe all over the United States. I imagine everyone's trying to get on an Uber. I look at trying to just Google taxi services and it was just, I don't know. There was, wasn't any taxis outside the airport or anything, you know, like you would see in big, big cities, like bigger cities like Chicago, New York, like I was talking about. So didn't see anything like that. So

Dalton McCleery (07:47)
no. no.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Andy Hinkle (08:12)
I did know about the train.

I looked at the map in advance and saw that the train, you know, was attached to the airport. I walk over to the train station and it was pretty clean. It was quiet. It was probably about nine o 'clock at night. I would say, there was a few people there with their luggage and things like that. I did notice a few homeless people, but nothing out, you know, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to be. Nothing to be.

worried about.

I go up to the ticket machine and it's, you know, $3 for, for the train ticket. I get my wallet out and then I notice, right. Yeah. I get my wallet out and I noticed there's a sticker on it says cash only and cash only in 2024 is a kind of a rarity these days. You exactly. I usually don't have it, but luckily, you know how I was ready in case.

Dalton McCleery (08:47)
Okay, much more reasonable.

Yeah, what is cash?

Andy Hinkle (09:06)
You know, need something for this exact situation, but you kind of know maybe you know, restaurants or something, maybe you're not cash only, but for actual machine cash only, it's kind of a rare thing or for these days, but happy to pay cash. Get out my wallet, insert $20 for that $3 train ticket, expecting, you know, to train ticket and presumably my, $17 back in a dollar amount.

So train ticket comes out and the receipt comes out. And here I am waiting for the, you know, my train to get back. And I hear this like, cling cling cling cling cling cling.

Dalton McCleery (09:45)
no.

Andy Hinkle (09:48)
It's like I just won the jackpot at a casino. It's like, clean, Mind you, there's these homeless people. Like I'm at this ticket then there's these homeless people kind of sitting all around, know, just kind of. this is so much change that I can't put it in my pocket. I'm carrying, like I have my hand full of coins. I can't put it in my pocket. So I'm like scooping it into my bag.

Dalton McCleery (09:57)
Yes.

no...

Andy Hinkle (10:14)
So I quickly board the train after I my casino winnings, my jackpot winnings.

I look at Google maps. This is 15 stops. I'm happy to wait. I'm happy to save what $60 Uber cost. So happy to wait there. I don't have children. I don't have to entertain. I'll just relax. I'll get on telegram Twitter and you know, talk to people, maybe hopefully find someone that's on this train, you know, on, on the way in, et cetera. So. Trans clean. There's just people that have just got off the airport with me. you know, nothing, nothing too bad. We get to the first stop.

mind you, 15 stops, we get to the first stop and about 75 % get off the train. And then what I realized is that that first stop was like a, it's like a cheaper option to pay and then you take the train in, probably save a lot of money doing that. So probably like a little Dallas hack, you know? Yeah. So we continue, we have 14 more stops. go, and this is from Dallas Fort Worth, we go by all the subdivisions, et cetera, colleges, that's pretty clean.

Dalton McCleery (11:12)
Mm -hmm.

Andy Hinkle (11:25)
Then we get to love love airport, love airport, pick up a few more. Same thing kind of happens. The next stop we drop them off. So we're about 10 stops left, right? We get closer into the city and it just gets more and more interesting by each and every stop. and at one point it was me and like just a few others, but they're on the very back of the train car, but mostly just me. We lost just about all the rest of the people with now I figured out why people don't take the train.

So as we as we approach the city, there'd be people, you know, like you go to the baseball games or people let off the side to try to sell you water and stuff like that. And I understand they're really trying to make things trying to make ends meet. they people like that get on. There'd be a guy who, you know, there'd be a guy coming through the train car and have like a little cup out and just go, you know, just walking through train train car by train car, holding out his cup, asking for money. And here I am with my.

Dalton McCleery (11:59)
Mm

Andy Hinkle (12:19)
casino jackpot earnings, you know, and just my backpack just like clinging around and which by the way, if you can hear that, but it's right on my desk here. The coins are still in my bag.

Dalton McCleery (12:27)
You

Andy Hinkle (12:30)
So if I move all these coins, you know, I'm starting to make a noise. So yeah.

Dalton McCleery (12:33)
Yeah, you can't shake your hand no at him because he's going to jingle.

Andy Hinkle (12:36)
Yeah, you're right. we finally get to the final stop and I get off the train and there's probably 30 homeless people at this train station and I'm the only I'm the only one as far as I was aware. I had tunnel vision at that point just because I was kind of just kind of in a fight or know, die motors, you know, or what they say. What's that saying? Flight or

Dalton McCleery (13:01)
Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (13:02)
But yeah, was kind of, was very just like tunnel vision of my safety, just full 360 watching all around me. Cause I get off there and I'm just completely surrounded. I have the train to my back completely surrounded. just, all I see in my peripherals is people sitting in the benches and just, you know, though it just wasn't good. This is the hour train right in. Now it's about 10 30 at night and I'm like quick to get out of there. I just start booking it, you know, out of the train station. So.

get out of the train station and there is no one downtown Dallas. figuring, you know, I understand it is like what? A Monday night? I understand it is kind of quiet. You know, it's for Monday or, you know, versus weekend. No one around. And so I just start booking it quickly, you know, to get to my hotel where need to go. At this point, I don't even have time to like stop and try to get an Uber because...

I just need to focus on where I'm going, because if I'm looking at my phone, trying to get that arranged, you know, I just need to pay attention for sure. So I get down the street. find it. see a club. There's some like young people there. I'm like, okay. Well, at least a bit of civilization. And I just start booking it to my hotel. but yeah, it was like for a little while. I was the only one just, walking around. Yeah. It was a little sketchy. Made sure to take the Uber back home after that.

Dalton McCleery (14:17)
no.

You pay the $70.

Andy Hinkle (14:22)
but right. get to my hotel and where the venue is, it's kind of, it's on the Eastern side of Dallas and looking in hotels in advance, was a really nice hotel that Laravel actually recommended to do it. And it was like $450 a night. And mind you, I pay for Laracon all out of my pocket. And so this is all expenses paid for myself. but $400 a night is a little steep, just like,

And I haven't known from previous layer cons. just go to a hotel just to sleep and get back up and just get back at it. Right. I did see there was a hotel, called a micro hotel. And I knew, I knew going in what a micro hotel was. It's like, you know, just exactly. It's small room. And they made it very clear. your hotel room is fairly small. And I go in and it's just nothing, but like a bed, a TV and a.

In a bathroom and it felt like a almost like a prison cell The you don't realize how small a hotel room is until you don't have windows in the room. Well, and so it was fine. It was good. Yeah, it was it was good, but it was just like I probably wouldn't do it again yeah kind like a cruise ship, but you know, sometimes a cruise ship you have like a window But yeah, i've been in those interior rooms, but they when you don't have a window in the room It just feels so much smaller But it was just a place to sleep. It was fine. but

Dalton McCleery (15:26)
Like a cruise ship.

Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (15:43)
It was just like, dude, I probably should have did a little bit more research going into this trip. was just thinking, you know, going as a kid, I went to Dallas all the time and I was just like, be fine. And, and talking to the Uber driver on the way home, he was telling me about how the homeless population has gotten really bad, but I still recommend Dallas. Dallas was great. Don't get me wrong. I would recommend going there at a great time, but I didn't do my homework as much as I should have done Dallas.

Dalton McCleery (16:10)
Little sketch. You didn't tell the wife this story, did you?

Andy Hinkle (16:11)
But man, yeah, I did. ended up telling her in the moment she was like, she kept asking me for updates on the train. And I was like, yeah, everything's good. Because in the beginning, like when I got on the train, it was good. I was with all those people commuting from the airport. It was good. And I got to love airport and yeah, I was like, I'm not, yeah, I don't, not going to give you updates right now.

Dalton McCleery (16:20)
Ha

Andy Hinkle (16:35)
So, I ended up, once I got back home, I ended up telling her, yeah, so, yeah.

Dalton McCleery (16:36)
You

What a crazy way to start off Laracon. Just the most insane. Because last year when we rode together, you drove to Nashville and it was just smooth. Not a thing went wrong. Easy peasy. Our Uber driver was cool. And then this time you win the lottery and have to basically run as like a jingle boy. You're like one of those coin purses that runs and you're jingling.

Andy Hinkle (16:44)
Yeah.

Mm

Dalton McCleery (17:08)
I was afraid you were going to tell me you got like a pod room and the pod is, you know, they're not built for people six, five plus, you know what I mean? So you had to sleep with your legs crunched up to your chest all night.

Andy Hinkle (17:21)
Yeah, it was quite the experience, dude. So yeah, Nashville is good because they have that vibrant at, you know, nightlife. Any day of the week you go to Nashville, they are rocking on that. think Broadway, it is, it's so much fun. And, but yeah, Dallas on a Monday night. Watch out. Just watch your back.

Dalton McCleery (17:27)
Mm -hmm.

they are

no. Yeah, don't run around with 15 plus dollars of quarters in your pocket.

Andy Hinkle (17:48)
For sure, yeah. All right, yeah, yeah, getting into Laracon.

Dalton McCleery (17:52)
man.

Yeah, I'm very curious, just upfront, just like off the top of your head, don't even think about it. What was your favorite talk at Laracon?

Andy Hinkle (17:55)
man, I -

It, I had to, yeah, it's so hard to, I'm thinking about it. It is so hard because every, everyone brought it even the technical talks were amazing. Somebody flew a drone on stage with web sockets?

Dalton McCleery (18:11)
Yes.

Yup, yup. Well, we were slacking about that. My mind was blown when that came out of the box. was like, this is awesome.

Andy Hinkle (18:25)
Yeah, Laravel cloud very excited about that. everyone just brought it. when I was watching the talk, I was trying to consider like, you know, to talk to more, like try to find time for vendors because during breaks, I was talking to people, the different developers.

And I just never got a time to actually go up and talk to vendors. talked to a lot of people at Tighten and a lot of people at Vehikl but never got to really go do the whole bingo card thing or it was just nonstop talking and, it was so good. But as far as the talks go, I it's so hard to give a favorite because that was actually the first time I got a little teary eyed at Larry con. you know, there's been some hard talks over the years, but, cap,

Dalton McCleery (19:04)
Mm

Andy Hinkle (19:06)
She has a husband, if we get her last name, she's amazing. developer and a community member. She's comes from a JavaScript background, react background, her husband has a Laravel background. And so she kind of got her love just from checking in what her husband is doing. She kind of tells her backstory about where she started and she overcome, like they showed like sexual harassment and stuff like that.

Did you see that talk and how, and how especially if you are a parent, it was just like, it just pulls on your heartstrings. Like they had, I think it was a two week old, two week old baby. Yeah. That they struggled with, but yeah, it was just so powerful about building your tribe, making sure that you, the people around you are supportive and, and finding that right.

Dalton McCleery (19:45)
Mm -hmm. Something like that.

Andy Hinkle (20:00)
finding that right tribe. It was so good. So that's actually one of the big highlights. But all of them were spectacular. Daniel Coulbourne had the best event sourcing talk I've ever heard. Like it was actually something that happens at our work or that would happen at our workplace, like how you would handle a situation. And it's, I've heard all of these practical or all of these like theoretical talks on.

Dalton McCleery (20:09)
That one, I liked that one a lot.

Mm -hmm.

Andy Hinkle (20:24)
event sourcing like if you have this situation like a to do list and then it changes statuses and then something messes up but then you can replay the event and just like okay yeah but this is way more practical about this you about the way that they did it and what he did was a pyramid scheme game did you hear about this they kind of mentioned it right

Dalton McCleery (20:48)
I heard about the game and only through his talk.

Andy Hinkle (20:52)
It was wild. This game was wild. I think it was $1 And so it was supposed to be in a briefcase, but it was like a plastic bag because they couldn't get the briefcase to the Airbnb on time. And so he just came around this $1 all in ones, you know, all around the air con. Yeah. So yeah, the, the, the game was like incredible. it was like, you know, designed like pyramid, but the idea was that you, you get

Dalton McCleery (21:06)
Yeah, all in once. Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (21:19)
One vote every so often you can either up vote another player or down vote them. kind of similar to reddit, know, but other there's other things that happened in the game like at one point the scoreboard turned off and you couldn't see everyone else's score and so during during the event Yeah, it was pretty wild during the event. You could find like around the venue You could find these cards that would give you bonus points like they'll put them in bathrooms and stuff and

Dalton McCleery (21:32)
that's clever.

Andy Hinkle (21:48)
just different areas. on day two, I didn't really play it a whole lot in day one, but on day two, I was in line to get coffee and a guy came up to me and he was like, hey, I noticed you have five points on the pyramid game. He said, I'll buy them from you. I was like, okay. I was like, like, I'll just give them to you. was like, this is just, you coming to me is just worth the effort of you going through, yes.

It's like, that is like, thank you so much. He pulled out his phone. He has a spreadsheet of everyone he's been asking. then I saw him going around the room looking for like the little, like the card hints to see if there was any like hidden or tucked away, but he would, what he would do. I saw him doing this. He would type in the, their name, like he would go see their name badge and type it in to see what their scorecard is and then go off to buy his points. But he said, but he would tell me like, okay, don't play your points. Like, don't give me your points until like four 55, like right before the end of the game.

It was like just wild stuff is scheming. So I went over and started talking to Daniel I told him him about it and then John his co -founder he came over and he said it came me a handshake but in his handshake was a With a bonus card for bonus points like thanks for the info So it's like got you some bonus points. I got to go tell the other guy I got you some bonus So I end up giving his points, but there was like there's all sorts of these little

Dalton McCleery (22:44)
Hmm.

Hey hey, hey hey!

Yeah

Andy Hinkle (23:07)
these groups and somebody else ended up winning it and it was a group that is a really cool idea he said he's gonna give use the money to to sponsor someone to come to Lair con next year to come and join our tribe you know so that was kind of a neat event but can't can't get upset with that yeah yeah I know yeah speaking of the love for with the layer of our community I keep going here do you what do you have for me like I just I feel like I'm just I could talk all day about Laracon I've had a great time obviously

Dalton McCleery (23:18)
Aww. Aww. Come on, Laravel. Community.

That's sweet.

Andy Hinkle (23:37)
Do you have anything for me so far?

Dalton McCleery (23:39)
Well, I mean, because I didn't go this year. We went last year. I didn't go this year.

Andy Hinkle (23:43)
Yeah, well, we talked about what we talked about talks, right? I didn't give you a chance. I apologize about that. What was what was probably your some of your favorite talks or your your highlights that really resonated with you?

Dalton McCleery (23:57)
Yeah. So, so since I didn't go, was watching the live stream and unfortunately the live stream went down several times and, and I did have some meetings that were scheduled during other talks. Like I missed, I missed Caleb's Flux Talk. And that was the one I was the most excited about. I got to watch it, but I didn't get to hear it. So like I had, I had the meeting on one hand, I had my, my webcam turned off and I had his talk pulled up on the other hand.

Andy Hinkle (24:03)
dead man. Yeah, foreign shit.

so good. Yeah.

Dalton McCleery (24:25)
and I was just watching it. It was great from what I saw. I haven't listened to it yet, but the ones that I did get to watch in full and listen to were Daniel's. I liked his a lot. I like him. He was almost kind of like Willy Wonka. His talk was very Willy Wonky.

Like it was almost on the edge of just complete disaster, but you knew that he had organized it to be that disaster and he was always gonna fix it in the end. Really, really liked that talk.

Andy Hinkle (24:52)
That was the best.

funny because you said Willy Wonka and we actually had a Willy Wonka, Jack McTay. That was such a good design talk. Yeah. But maybe think of that.

Dalton McCleery (25:04)
Yeah, I saw a little bit of that one because he came out and he was after Caleb right on the second day. He was the second talk of the second day. Yeah, I saw a little bit of his, but my meeting was still going on during that time so I didn't get to listen to his talk.

Andy Hinkle (25:18)
Highly recommend that one too. If you get a moment. Yeah, that one is really good. It was kind of like a design for developers, but yeah, man, sorry to catch up. Yeah, go ahead.

Dalton McCleery (25:25)
Saw I saw some of the like his his slides They were very goofy looking but Yeah Yeah, yeah I Liked the drone talk that one was really cool that that one blew my mind Completely like I think you slacked me I'd like are you seeing this and I was like, yeah, I'm captivated like like this is insane to see at Laracon

Andy Hinkle (25:32)
Very Jack McDade, yeah.

Dalton McCleery (25:48)
My favorite talk is probably a tie and this might be the fanboy in me, but I really liked Taylor's talk on Laravel, obviously. Some of the stuff that's coming out is really great. We talked about what we thought Laravel Cloud was gonna be and that's sort of what it was, Versel for Laravel. But I also really liked the Primeagen's talk because how could you not?

I mean, they seem to always end Laracon on one of those types of talks. Like last year was Aaron Francis, this year was Primeagen. And it's just sort of those really nice, wholesome ones that you could end on and feel, you know what, I'm gonna go build something just for me. Like I don't need anybody else. I'm just gonna do this for fun, for me, because I like it and I want to do it. So yeah, my favorite talk's probably a tie between Taylors and Primogens.

with a very, very close second for Daniels because I love Willy Wonka. And that one gave me, his talk gave me anxiety. Like, no, he's ruined the production database live on stage in front of everybody. nevermind, he's got to fix for it.

Andy Hinkle (26:46)
Awesome, man, yeah.

It's going off the rails.

I love that because everyone thought it was like actually what there was some actual issues in there. like the, migrations were the migrate. would delete it. That was actually a real issue that he didn't expect, but the rest of it is all kind of a skit. And it was like perfect. Cause everyone like was falling along with that. We'd all thought it was real and like, Whoa, is the way that was presented. It was the, the best, event sourcing talk I've ever heard.

Dalton McCleery (26:59)
real.

Yeah.

I liked that one a lot. Very close second for me.

Andy Hinkle (27:21)
I had goosebumps just in so many talks, just from like you said, the, the, like the prime engine and, one of my favorite quote by his, by him, I'm not going to get this exact, I should have wrote it down ahead of the show, but it was like, if everything else is against me, then just keep doing this thing. Like just keep coming in and showing up and giving it your all. And, you know, and eventually something amazing will happen. You'll get there. And I, I just.

The whole talk just resonated with me how he just it was just so casual he walked in no presentation. No laptop He's such a natural. I know he's been streaming on twitch for a while, but Really good, dude. I got to talk to primogen for for a little bit and so it's so nice and first thing you know anyone else that or anyone that meets me like my gosh, you're you're incredibly tall, you know and stuff like that, but

Dalton McCleery (27:58)
Yeah, I

Andy Hinkle (28:09)
yeah, he was just such a nice dude. he has hundreds of thousands of followers and just for him to spend the quality of time to understand my story, like coming from, you know, like being a carnival operator or working at a theme park, know, and where I'm leading up to, learning and becoming a developer cause I know his story and his story is just a lot more.

There's just a lot more to it than that. had like a, got involved into drugs and just like really changed his life. And my story is just not that great, but he just takes the time to understand and, talk through my story and just ask me questions. He just such an incredible dude.

and it was so nice to meet him. we talked previously about the podcast idea I had. for listening to the show that I have not heard, I've had this idea for a podcast

before the show an idea of interviewing Laravel developers. The tentative name for the podcast is Artisan's Journey. And what I would be doing is I would be interviewing Laravel developers and understanding their story of where they come from. Similar, I just talked about Primeagen's story. Even though he's not a Laravel developer, but I would.

Dalton McCleery (29:26)
Semantics. I consider him now. After the laracon I consider him now.

Andy Hinkle (29:27)
Maybe, we might get him. He's...

Yeah. Yeah. We, I would interview Laravel developers. People have been at Laracon or just in the community and understand their story of how they got into Laravel or how they got into development, their story is from.

but just understanding their story of where they started and how they got into Laravel and what keeps them passionate, what keeps them excited about writing Laravel today in hopes of helping others on their journey in either becoming a Laravel developer if they're new or if you're an experienced Laravel developer, bettering your skills

yeah, so that's kind of the idea of show as we talked about, talked briefly on show about, have kind of a list of like 50, 60 people and I started talking to some of these people at Larry con and just kind of getting their stance. They're ecstatic. They are all about it. And it, it's it's so nice to just have their feedback and have their blessing, some of them told me they wanted to be on the show before I even asked them.

Dalton McCleery (30:21)
Hey! Alright.

Andy Hinkle (30:34)
it was just It just felt like you know to me it was just so incredible just you know we have all these great shows out there that we want that we hear To be completely vulnerable and could be completely honest. This really scares me of doing this show Because I want it to be a good show

if I'm tuning into the show or if I hear about this show and There's somebody interviewing somebody else. I Want that to be like a good professional experience. That's a show that people Resonate with that it's impactful to them. I just don't want to be some other show that's half done or You know or just like a show that's not

Dalton McCleery (31:13)
Mm

Andy Hinkle (31:17)
Professionally sounding I guess that just comes in the perfectionist mind of me, just hearing the sound of my own voice just gives me anxiety When I interview when I think of the thought of idea of interview people gives me anxiety if I have a scale and if I'm deciding the

power of interviewing people, would say I'm below average. And, but that's just a lot of imposter syndrome setting in and that just a lot of things that are in my own head because if I see this show, or somebody advertises it, I'd be like, exact, just to listen to some people's story and understand where they come from and hopes of helping my own journey of becoming a better level developer. it's so hard to get out of that.

Headspace I talked to Aaron about this and He said there you're gonna hear a lot of that and he said I just want you to do it like no matter who tells you No, or those voices in your head that tells me no I I don't care if people say that's a bad show or if I hear something or somebody says that show is terrible. What I care about is the people who actually do listen I want it to I want to resonate with them I want it to feel like they learn something from it that they can take something away

I don't care if somebody just, you know, there's people at my hated or something totally fine. But, but some, the ones actually do care. You know what I mean? So, yeah. And I talked to a lot of like Aaron was one, Aaron was one of first people to tell me like, I want to be on the show. he didn't say like, want to be on the show, but he said, if you want me to be a show on the show, I am one I've risen in. Like this is great. I love it.

Dalton McCleery (32:28)
Hmm.

That's it.

That's, yeah, that'd be a great episode number one. Just, I mean, come on. Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (32:51)
He even said that I was like, if you want me to be your first one, he's like, just don't, he said, don't reach out to me this week. said, Aaron, we're nowhere close. This word months away. Yeah. Talk to Matt Stauffer, Matt Stauffer had a season three of the Laravel official podcast. did that fit similar show. Like I talked about in the previous, previous show and asked some of his ideas. And he said, this is great.

Dalton McCleery (32:56)
Right. Yeah.

Mm

Andy Hinkle (33:15)
Learn, you know, he said if on his show we picked a particular topic and kind of ran with it But kind of understand what their origination on that topic versus this is like a story and he said I just love that idea and we got to talking about there's there's all these wonderful people in the community now of we hear their technical talks. We see what they share on Twitter, but Understanding how they got to where they are. it's such a powerful story of how they got to

Learning and what keeps them passionate what keeps their drive going, Matt definitely gave me the blessing on that. He's like I love to help you with that I'd love to be on the show. So Matt Stauffer Daniel Colborne said he would love to be on yeah, it was such a Such it was so cool just being able to get their blessing from each one of these people

I'm curious on your thoughts on that.

Dalton McCleery (34:05)
So it's like you're gonna do it now, right? Like you have to. You almost have to. I think you should. If you've got Aaron Francis on board, I think you got something. Especially if he's number one. Like he would be a great number one. let's say you recorded it and you ended up not liking it. Still probably should put it out because it's Aaron Francis.

Andy Hinkle (34:10)
Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

Dalton McCleery (34:28)
because he's just a great dude. And you're a great dude too. you're a good friend of mine. I consider, I consider you one of my good friends. We've been buddies since, I don't even want to do that math, seven or eight years. So I mean, you've got the experience, right? You've been in the Laravel community for a long time. You've been to several Aragon's. You've got great ideas. And I think it's great that you might have.

Andy Hinkle (34:29)
Yeah.

It's been a long time. I appreciate that dude. Yeah.

Dalton McCleery (34:52)
Other people want to share their ideas with you specifically like just this little midwestern boy Talking to some quote -unquote big wigs of the larval community just to see what makes them Human, know, they're You you could see these guys and gals on stage And they're sort of like these larger than life almost like celebrity personalities But if you get them in a room by themselves and just ask hey, where did you come from?

They're a lot more human. So I think you should.

Andy Hinkle (35:21)
Aaron Francis is probably the greatest example of that, of how vulnerable he can be, you know, and I'm not, I'm not asking for it was phenomenal. And I'm not asking for every guest to be the vulnerable, maybe if their story isn't that like, if it's just the typical, gotta a cs degree and continued on.

Dalton McCleery (35:28)
His talk last year was crazy.

Andy Hinkle (35:40)
which is not very standard, then from there it's just like, keeps them excited? What keeps their drive going? what gets you excited about Laravel development and what keeps you going today? yeah.

Dalton McCleery (35:41)
Mm

Yeah, and you don't need hot wings or any of that weird gimmicky stuff. Like you could just have one of those deep conversations without hot wings, without naming a particular show, but you know what I mean. No gimmicks.

Andy Hinkle (36:04)
Dave, what's his name? Yeah, yeah, that's good, dude. Yeah. Yeah. And I go into the interview. I plan on doing the style of the interview is just like, plan on doing a lot of bit of homework. I cause like Aaron, for example, so many people know the story of Aaron, how he started up. He was accountant and then, he kind of led up to becoming a Laravel developer.

I don't want to get into the bare bones of how did you get into the computers, but so much of just what is already out there and connecting the dots. I know you're reading, you're an accountant, and then where you are today, what was that experience like to get to where you are?

just kind of set them up for success. And I might send them some questions ahead of time or just trying to figure out the right format if I want to do it that way. Or if I just want to keep an open book of like, how'd you get started? You know, yeah. So, yeah, I have a lot of good ideas, but yeah, it's, terrifies me, dude. It just, yeah.

Dalton McCleery (36:59)
I mean, yeah, I would, I'd be honest with you. If I was in your shoes and I had like Aaron Francis or Caleb Porzio on a call and I was supposed to interview them or ask them questions, I would be, my pants would be full because I would do the number two in them. know, I'm trying to keep this PG. I would not be okay. So I understand the anxiety around here 100%.

Andy Hinkle (37:23)
I hear ya.

Dalton McCleery (37:28)
100%.

Andy Hinkle (37:28)
Well, to to your point, I've been thinking about this for a long time, you know, and I knew coming into Laracon, this is kind of where I was going to ask these people that I would want to be on the show for their idea. And as I'm talking to them in my I'm in my head thinking like, this is it. This is the moment. And I got to like get out of that head space of just being in the moment versus like because you have a lot of lead up into the moment. And then once you're actually in it, you're in your head of like, whoa, I'm talking to this guy.

This is the moment that I've been waiting for and then just trying to escape that headspace into actually just being there and actually connecting with that person. Cause you could get a lot of, there's a term for it. Just being, like when you see a celebrity, like just getting super excited, just a starstruck. Yeah. I don't know. It just lose my mind. Yeah. I'm brain fried from Blair. Yeah. But being starstruck from meeting some of these people, just trying to just have a, you know, be, have a human conversation with these people. So.

Dalton McCleery (38:26)
Mm

Andy Hinkle (38:26)
Yeah, a lot of social anxiety with that, but we'll get through it. yeah.

Dalton McCleery (38:30)
That's the developer way right there. Social anxiety, but you do it anyway because why not? You should. think you should. I know you talked about doing this podcast for years and then just all of a sudden you're like, let's do it. And here we are episode four, you know, four weeks in. And I think it's going pretty great. I like talking to you. We normally talk about this stuff anyway, just through Slack. So we just, recorded it. in case anybody else wants to hear our ramblings about Laravel.

Andy Hinkle (38:37)
Yeah.

Mm

Dalton McCleery (38:58)
And I think it works out great. Even if nobody really listens, still fun to just talk to you.

Andy Hinkle (38:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I appreciate the feedback and all that. So thanks for that. Let's get into cloud. I really like the idea of Laravel cloud. We personally been battling at the agency of things like this of where we have a production environment.

Dalton McCleery (39:18)
Agreed.

Andy Hinkle (39:26)
We have a staging environment. They're set up great. They're working well. We have something in staging that people are testing out. We have this possible feature, this questionable feature that we may be even looking to AB test or et cetera. we don't want to put in staging yet because staging is kind of that it's near ready to go to production. like we're going to put up the staging in hopes of making it to production. We don't even know if we want it to be there.

Dalton McCleery (39:47)
Hmm.

Andy Hinkle (39:51)
So we have this feature, this questionable feature branch, and we have to go into forge, create this like random server, can get it all set up and exactly. Yeah. So the idea of just creating a PR and, and then it fires off like a, a request to cloud and then create, and also you have this layer of a cloud link and you could just share it with whoever. So that just sounds amazing to me.

Dalton McCleery (39:59)
DNS, you gotta set a subdomain or some other thing.

I'm a big fan of, of everything about it specifically because it seems like it meets that, that like middle ground between forge and vapor. Like forge it's sort of like, Hey, here's some, here's some tools to help you with server management and vapor's like, okay, we'll sort of hide some of the server management behind our, UI and Laravel cloud just like, we're going to do everything for you. And I've been super, I've been super happy with Vercel recently. I have all of my like.

personal sites. This is going to sound so weird because it's a Laravel podcast, but I have my personal sites in Next .js on Vercel for that reason, because I like Vercel's hosting. So I'm super, super excited for what Laravel Cloud is going to be. As Taylor was talking about it, obviously I was like, the domain already has to be there. So I typed in cloud .laraval .com. Boom, it popped right up. So as he was talking about it, I signed up for the wait list because obviously.

Andy Hinkle (40:54)
Mm

Dalton McCleery (41:13)
I've got stuff that I'm gonna launch here soon that I really want. I would love to be on Laravel Cloud specifically for That hibernation feature. So I had apps on Heroku before that were, know, they automatically put them to sleep after X amount of time, but you have to like manually wake them up. With Cloud, it hibernates when you're not using it and it just wakes itself up. So you only pay for what you use. And I'm like, yes, please, please let me in.

Andy Hinkle (41:21)
Mm -hmm, I love that.

Yeah.

Dalton McCleery (41:39)
I'll pay for it now. I don't even care.

Andy Hinkle (41:42)
We're talking about the atrocity of setting up a Forge temporary server, but how many times do we, we poke the client for days to like, go check this out. Hey, go check this out. And we don't hear back. then we get the bill at the of the month and there's an extra little like cost in there and like, we forgot to turn that server off, you know? hibernation is so key. And I was talking to Taylor, at the after party and I was asking him about the hibernation wake up time.

And he said, at least from like a base level app, they're seeing like a four to five second cold start. So if your database is off, if your application off, he said, if your database is off, does take more time. but that that's actually what takes the majority of it. that just so nice because even if you do get a visitor, you just have that one little blimp and then you're so good. if they, or if that client does eventually realize they need to check this out.

Dalton McCleery (42:25)
one time.

Andy Hinkle (42:29)
So it's super nice. I also talked to him about Postgres. Did you see all the love of Postgres?

Dalton McCleery (42:35)
Didn't know.

Andy Hinkle (42:36)
Okay. So traditionally, you know, Laravel is, MySQL they're, they're kind of diverse, any of the analytics and any of the, surveys MySQL is the the leading database provider and, Laravel cloud, they promote postgres a lot of, and I got to talking of

what you know, what's If he prefers Postgres over MySQL and something like Laravel Cloud and he said that They do offer MySQL as well, but it's more of like a fixed size. And so But then he got to talking about like Postgres just offers more features and stuff like that. So like

I sure remember already, but I know just top of my head, I know they have like data branching and stuff like that of, replicating. if you need to replicate, staging to another environment, something like that. So, so that, that, that made sense to me of like, I've actually never used Postgres. everyone who uses Postgres loves it. So I'm like, yeah, give it a try. So.

Dalton McCleery (43:25)
Okay, okay.

All right. Well, I guess I'm going to add that to my list to try. I'm curious then if, so I mean, is, is MySQL one of the reasons why it takes longer and Postgres just takes shorter amount of time to boot back up from cold? Or could you do like how Laravel does their like local development now and just have like a SQLite file database? You know, cause I think they said something about Laravel cloud was going to have disk space. You know, it's not like vapor where it's, you know, completely serverless.

Andy Hinkle (43:37)
Yeah.

Mm

Dalton McCleery (44:05)
So could you just have an SQLite file database and then your cold starts, you know, only a second or two.

Andy Hinkle (44:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Right. You can, as far as I know right now, you can bring in what you want. You can bring in your own logging driver, different services. what I was curious of is of like a migrational path from Forge. If I wanted to migrate a Forge client over there. And he was telling me that the databases would be really tricky because in Forge, there's just some very diverse setups. And you don't know what the database is going to be. You don't know if it's connected to a remote.

Dalton McCleery (44:23)
Yeah.

Andy Hinkle (44:38)
SQL server, some something like that, or if it's just on file or what the case might be. he said for probably at least starting out for some of very large Forge clients, if they are interested in that, they would probably manually do that with their team that they have. But at least that's something he didn't have at least starting off with, you know, the whole V1 release.

But yeah, it'll be kind of interesting. honestly, it's just, it would be probably so easy to set it up anyway. If you have, if you start comparing the, the two, could just replicate it on, onto cloud and, cause you're already going to have, your applications already, if it's already super easy to deploy on cloud, you could just have it all. Yeah. All set up on there. Yeah, that's great from like just co -poser installing Laravel just to having it live on a domain.

Dalton McCleery (45:17)
A minute, less than a minute. Did your head explode when he said that too?

What's cat's gonna think?

Andy Hinkle (45:28)
Wild.

Dalton McCleery (45:28)
I was, I thought he was going to say like 10 minutes. So was like, 10 minutes is pretty good. know, for cells probably about five minutes. that.

Andy Hinkle (45:36)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, one minute. It's crazy. Yeah.

Dalton McCleery (45:41)
Insanity.

Andy Hinkle (45:41)
at the end he hinted that Laravel is doing the thing I've been talking about. So they said, if you want to understand, well, he kind of halfway through, he threw it out. He was like, for what we're looking to build, we, need these kind of, this kind of setup to be this flexible, to handle a lot of data.

Dalton McCleery (45:47)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Andy Hinkle (46:03)
Then at the end is that if you want to understand how to track your exceptions, I'm trying to remember his active wording. If you want to track your exceptions and data in your Laravel application, stay tuned for a lyric on AU. I was like, ding, ding, It's like, okay, I got my predictions a little right. We'll at least see how, how correct it is, but it made me a little sad because I had that little entrepreneur spark in me of like, want to build this thing, but I know Laravel would be.

build it, leaps and bounds better what I could ever do because I've been like, I've been battling this for a while now, just like understanding exceptions, understanding requests that come in. was just looking at this early this morning about looking into some user account and, figuring out how, how they got to the exception of where they are. there's, I got to talk to some developers on this and they mentioned like Sentry's playback. I've actually had some issues with that because there's been like, if they have a blocker or depending on

but browser they use sometimes it's just not there. Like I'll go look at their century and the recordings and it just doesn't exist. You know, and just like, well, if I had it logged in, like something where an AWS where I know it's there, it'd be easier. somebody else mentioned a log rocket, which is kind of a similar thing of century. So I'm just like, I just like, and then when Laravel said they're looking into it I was like, okay, I think I can at hold off.

Dalton McCleery (47:13)
Mm

I've heard of that one.

Andy Hinkle (47:26)
put my brakes here and find out.

Dalton McCleery (47:28)
see, I would have the, I have the opposite reaction. I just looked it up and, and Larry kind of use in November. I'm like, so you have September and October to build your own first.

Andy Hinkle (47:38)
Is that Laracon? Laracon AU, right November? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so.

Dalton McCleery (47:41)
Yeah, AU, I think so. So I would like, you got two weeks to sort of build your own to see if what yours compares to what theirs is.

Andy Hinkle (47:47)
You

I have full faith in the Laravel team. have 30 plus people. had that shot on stage. That was just incredible. They called everyone up on day two to the Laravel team to take a group shot. it just like, they filled the stage. It was just left or right full of Laravel employees. It was just incredible. Coming from the days where it just Muhammad and Taylor, it's just wild to me.

Dalton McCleery (48:07)
It's Yeah. mean, what, what did he say in his talk that they did Laravel cloud in six months, And it's like, it's going to be ready by the end of this year. That's insane could even do that. I listened to a little bit of, of the, of the Matt Stauffer, like sort of behind the scenes with Taylor after his talk.

Andy Hinkle (48:24)
Makes you excited, yeah.

Dalton McCleery (48:32)
to try to just see how they did Laravel Cloud that fast.

I can't even build things that fast. know what I mean? Like, even if I had 30 people, I couldn't build that that fast.

Andy Hinkle (48:37)
Yeah, it's incredible that.

They have, they have some amazing talent and they come from different areas, different large companies and their drive just to make things that the Laravel way it's just so amazing. it's just so cool that we have all these other ecosystems are looking in like, Hey, you see what Laravel's doing? Like they're doing some really cool stuff. And, there's some people like considering making the switch or like they've been.

And, ecosystem, like where they've had a lot of frustrations that are saying, you know, those guys that use Laravel, they love it. I want to be a part of that, it's really neat.

Dalton McCleery (49:14)
Yes, come Symphony Debz, we welcome you with open arms. Join, join us.

Andy Hinkle (49:21)
yeah, it's really, it's just a really exciting time to be in Laravel. this is kind of a pivot point. Like I feel like this is like vapor. I, this is something I'm trying to realize in my head. when I saw a vapor be released, that was kind of a pivotal point as well for that. But now like cloud.

In my mind, like, I'm pretty positive. This will be like a moment in time where we look back. Like this is like a, like a milestone for Laravel. They hired all these new people there have this great new product. Like we're, I feel like five years from now, they're just going to be just this huge deal of like, we're that we just like, we're going to be like, Hey, look out, just big, it's grown and the community behind it. It's a, it's going to be really good stuff.

Dalton McCleery (49:42)
This is

Back in my day, we had to set up servers ourselves on Forge. I had to set up Nginx all by myself.

Andy Hinkle (50:05)
You

Back in my day, had cash tags on, yeah, cash tag, cash tag assignments.

Dalton McCleery (50:12)
I

man. to set up a Q worker by myself. There was no toggle and forge to set up the scheduler to run. I had to set that up myself.

Andy Hinkle (50:28)
for sure. Yeah. The toggle. Yeah. So, next show we will, I'd love to cover, do a deep dive on defer. I'd love to, I'm to look at that this, this week, probably, or this coming week about doing a defer versus a job. Cause usually anything I want to kick off to a background, I usually just handle it in a job process, but this defer sounds really exciting to me. New to Laravel 11. think it's going to be baked into that.

Dalton McCleery (50:29)
the times. How the times change.

Mm

Yeah, same.

Andy Hinkle (50:55)
Concurrency the flexible cash. I'm to be using flexible way more than like the remember forever or just remember, you So inertia to we didn't even talk inertia. and I was so pumped about inertia I got goosebumps when I saw the prefetching like yes, I've been wanting this for a long time. Yeah, because the it's gonna greatly speed up the You know how you hover over a link and it prefetches the next page. So yeah, clients gonna love that it's gonna

Dalton McCleery (51:02)
100%. 100%.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Andy Hinkle (51:24)
because there's some things that just want it to be extra snappy and for sure. And then Flux, I'm really excited for Flux. How many times have you copied like AppBlade PHP on your new app and just boop boop, okay, know, and.

Dalton McCleery (51:37)
Dude, yeah, I can't tell you literally the amount of times that I do that. Like we have a template repository that has all of that stuff in it because we got so tired of copy and pasting every single time.

Andy Hinkle (51:43)
And then

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Then the select box, I usually just pull one from telling you, I, and even then it's like, have to figure out how I want to work into a Laravel component. So the fact that you saw baked into Laravel, component names and the naming conventions, I don't even have to think about how I'm going to name a component. I spent so much time like, what am I going to name the select item? But then there's another component that has.

It's like a nested select item. So you might have multiple like iterations inside of select box. You know, you know, it's like, there's trees you say inside select boxes. Like it's just like, I only have to think about it. It just, it's all there. It's all named to just have to include it in. So we'll talk about next show. I feel like I'm very long -winded. I, I apologize. So I felt like you just gotten a couple words in. So I apologize. Do you have anything to say to the people?

Dalton McCleery (52:26)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

No, no need to apologize. You went to Laracon and I sat at home and did work meetings. So your week was way more exciting than my week. And I only saw half of the talks. I'm definitely going to go watch the rest of them this weekend for sure. And hope and pray that I see an email from Taylor Iwell saying that I got into the wait list for Larva Cloud. So please, please send me that link. I want to get in.

Andy Hinkle (53:08)
Yeah for sure All right, dude, sounds great. So you've been listening to another episode of the Midwest Artisan If you are listening or if you're still listening reach out tell us hi Tell us if you saw your laracon. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to the show All right, man anything else?

Dalton McCleery (53:29)
That's it. We'll talk next week.

Andy Hinkle (53:31)
Alright, peace, see ya.