About Me

Hello, my name is Aaron Francis.

I'm a software developer with a keen interest in processes and automation. I'm a developer educator at PlanetScale — a serverless MySQL database platform. I'm on Twitter all the time, and I livestream coding on Twitch a couple of times a week.

I'm also a CPA and former Big 4 accountant but I've gladly left that life far, far behind me.

I love making things and having lots of side projects going. I live in Dallas with my beautiful and perfect wife Jennifer and our year-and-a-half old 👦 👧  twins.

Open source software

I like writing software, so I do it a lot.

• Sidecar — Deploy and execute AWS Lambda functions from your Laravel application.
• Fast Paginate — A faster offset/limit pagination macro for Laravel.
• Airdrop — speed up your deploys by skipping your asset build step whenever possible.
• Pseudo Daemon — a Laravel package to mimic daemons via scheduled commands without having to change server configuration.

Places I've spoken

• MergePHP — I gave a talk called "Microservices in Your Monolith" at a virtual PHP meetup. (October 2022)
• Laracon Online — I gave a talk called "Database Performance for Application Developers" at a Laravel conference. (September 2022)
• Laracasts — I recorded a video series for Laracasts on developing serverless functions in Laravel (July 2022)
• RailsConf — My business partner and I gave a workshop on building query builders. (Not recorded. May 2022)
• Laracon Online — A live coding demonstration of Sidecar at a Laravel conference. (February 2022)
• Laravel Worldwide Meetup — This was my first live presentation and I presented on Sidecar, the open source library I wrote. (September 2021)

Things I've written

Turns out I write a lot! Much of it right here, on my site, and some of it elsewhere. Here are some that I've written for other people:

• Publishing your work increases your luck — I wrote an article for GitHub's ReadME Project about how simply hitting "publish" on your work increases the chances that more opportunity will come your way.
• Marketing for maintainers — I was part of a GitHub panel on how to market your open source project to both users and contributors.
• Modularizing to improve the developer experience — I wrote a piece for the folks over at Handsontable about how modularizing their library leads to a better developer experience.
• Enforcing Morph Maps in Laravel — I wrote a short bit for Laravel News about how and why you would want to enforce morph maps.

Podcasts I've been on

I'm the co-host of two podcasts. One is The Hammerstone Podcast, where my business partner and I talk about trying to build a business. The other is Framework Friends, where my friend Andrew and I talk about Laravel, Rails, and all the other web frameworks.

I've also been a guest on a few other shows!

• The GitHub ReadME Podcast Build your own luck — I was a guest on the GitHub ReadME Podcast to talk about how I built my own luck by publishing my work.
• Twenty Percent Time: Aaron Francis: Torchlight — I was a guest on the Twenty Percent Time podcast to talk about Torchlight, my syntax highlighting service.
• Art of Product: Half a Job You Love — I joined my boss Ben on his podcast to talk about my side-business (July 2022)
• Ruby on Rails Podcast: The Railsconf At Home 2022 Ruby Podcast Panel — I joined a bunch of Rubyists (which I am not!) to talk about our experience at RailsConf. (July 2022)
• Remote Ruby: Aaron & Colleen from Hammerstone — Colleen and I joined the Remote Ruby crew to talk about our company, Hammerstone. (June 2022)
• Startup to Something: How To Use Twitter Like An Actual Human Being (And Not Like A Grifter). This is one of my favorite episodes. I lay out why I like Twitter, and my strategy for using it. (February 2022)
• The Indie Dads Podcast: Balancing Indie Life with Twins, Marketing to Developers, and Growing Your Twitter Audience (January 2022)
• North Meets South Web Podcast: Riding Sidecar with Aaron Francis (August 2021)

Head over to the now page to see what I'm up to at the moment.