Aaron Francis

Aaron Francis is here! We chat about open source projects, Fusion and Solo, his company Try Hard Studios, and his educational courses. Is Aaron an LLM? Maybe! He also tweets viral things sometimes. Enjoy! 00:00 Introduction and Welcoming Aaron Francis 03:23 Introducing Aaron Francis: Developer and Educator 04:53 Deep Dive into Fusion 19:43 Exploring Solo: Simplifying Local Development 29:05 Business Side: Try Hard Studios and Screen Casting 29:50 The Challenges of Creating Technical Courses 30:48 The Exhausting Process of Learning Databases 32:59 The Art of Screencasting 35:27 Balancing Technical Rigor and Personal Opinion 39:38 Starting a Business After a Layoff 42:00 Navigating the First Year of Business 45:49 Cool things Links: - Aaron on X https://x.com/aarondfrancis and Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/aaronfrancis.com - Fusion https://github.com/fusion-php/fusion - Solo https://github.com/soloterm/solo - Try Hard Studios https://tryhardstudios.com/ - Mastering Postgres https://masteringpostgres.com/ - High Performance SQLite https://highperformancesqlite.com/ - Screencasting Course https://screencasting.com/ Cool things: - superwhisper https://superwhisper.com/ - lex.page https://lex.page/ - Sesame AI https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice - Rocket League https://www.rocketleague.com/en

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Transcript

Josh

00:00:00 – 00:00:11

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Josh and Austin figure it out. We've got another episode for you. Believe it or not, we've got another guest. So we're just thrilled to have, Aaron Francis here.

Josh

00:00:11 – 00:00:12

Welcome, Aaron.

Aaron

00:00:12 – 00:00:16

Yeah. Aaron Aaron figures it out too. I have nothing figured out,

Josh

00:00:16 – 00:00:16

so this is a

Aaron

00:00:16 – 00:00:19

perfect spot for me to be in. I'll figure it out with you.

Josh

00:00:19 – 00:00:23

That makes three of us. Gosh. How how are you all doing today? How are you, Austin?

Austin

00:00:24 – 00:00:41

You know, I'm doing well, Josh. Well, I I shouldn't say it then enthusiastically, though. We've had a sick a sick household. We've been a sick household this past couple weeks. And this is our first experience of, like, the, the sickness bouncing around to the different family members.

Austin

00:00:41 – 00:01:05

Like, one gets it and then they start to recover and then pass it to the next one. That, like, that classic experience of of late winter, in a house with with small kids. So I think we're on the other side of it, but it's amazing how sick you can get of sitting in one spot under a blanket, in just the course of a few days. But, you know, other than that, I'm I'm doing okay. How about how about yourself?

Josh

00:01:06 – 00:01:22

I am doing pretty well. I had, some lunch with friends today at an Indian restaurant, so that was fun. I haven't had Indian food a whole lot before, so that was that was a a fun experience. We're pretty healthy here, thankfully, but, expecting a large blizzard tomorrow, maybe. Maybe.

Josh

00:01:22 – 00:01:24

Maybe not. We'll see.

Austin

00:01:24 – 00:01:27

Something we'll have to explain to Aaron. Yes.

Aaron

00:01:27 – 00:01:29

Yeah. What that is. First time I've heard that word.

Josh

00:01:30 – 00:01:32

Aaron, you're down south. Right?

Aaron

00:01:32 – 00:01:43

I am. Yeah. I'm in, Dallas, Texas. And while we don't get blizzards, a few we do get snow. And a few years ago, we got Snowvid, which was in the middle of COVID.

Aaron

00:01:43 – 00:01:59

We got all this snow, and then our electrical grid fell over. And so we didn't have power for a week. And my wife was pregnant with our first set of twins, and it was like, this is the worst thing ever. So I am familiar with snow even if we, don't get it terribly often.

Josh

00:02:00 – 00:02:00

Right.

Austin

00:02:00 – 00:02:06

Yeah. So something unique that you just said right there is your first set of twins. That's not something

Aaron

00:02:06 – 00:02:08

not a phrase that's uttered very often.

Austin

00:02:08 – 00:02:12

That's not that's not a common phrase. So I think you have more more than one.

Aaron

00:02:13 – 00:02:25

Yeah. We have two sets of twins. So we have two, three, almost, what is it, March? Almost four year olds. And then we have two, one year olds who just turned one in November.

Aaron

00:02:25 – 00:02:37

So they're one and a little bit. So we've got, two sets of boy, girl twins that are two and a half years apart. So we had four kids under three at at one point.

Austin

00:02:37 – 00:02:44

Wow. Wow. That's, that's great. So you're very familiar with, with the sickness conversation.

Josh

00:02:44 – 00:02:44

Oh,

Austin

00:02:44 – 00:02:50

yeah. It's probably an easier question of when when are you not sick, which kid is not sick at any given time than than the other day. Yeah.

Aaron

00:02:50 – 00:03:10

I'll I'll spare everyone the gory details, but, I had a, you know, a non vomit record for a long time, and it just you know, that record is just obliterated now that I have, four children. Yeah. It's not great. Not great. But, unfortunately, I haven't I haven't gotten sick in, from them probably six months or so.

Aaron

00:03:11 – 00:03:15

So knock on wood. That's pretty good. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Josh

00:03:16 – 00:03:22

That's awesome. Yeah. You'll you'll take the win, when you can. So Mhmm. Yeah.

Josh

00:03:23 – 00:03:47

So, Erin, we I I wrote a little intro for you for the listeners, who are who may not be familiar with you, like my, my family and friends in Iowa. But, let's see how we did. Erin Francis is a developer, educator, open source aficionado, screen caster, dad, and all around good guy. He's the cofounder of TryHard Studios, which has launched three screencast series. Three?

Josh

00:03:47 – 00:03:47

Three?

Aaron

00:03:48 – 00:03:51

We've launched four now. Three of which I I have been the instructor

Josh

00:03:52 – 00:03:53

for. So Nice. Okay. For that. Yeah.

Josh

00:03:53 – 00:04:15

Off by one error is fine. Mhmm. And, he's created some really cool open source tools for Laravel and JavaScript communities. Most recently, the, the fusion and solo, projects, which we've both seen, on Twitter and enjoyed from afar. So we're just really excited to have you here and to chat about, some of that stuff and and some other stuff too.

Aaron

00:04:15 – 00:04:19

That's a great intro. I'll take it. I Yes. That's awesome. I appreciate it.

Aaron

00:04:19 – 00:04:23

Hello hello to Josh's friends and family in Iowa that don't know me. It's nice to meet you.

Austin

00:04:23 – 00:04:27

We we forgot to tell you that the the main listenership of this podcast is immediate family.

Aaron

00:04:28 – 00:04:29

That's great.

Austin

00:04:29 – 00:04:32

People people we pass on the street that we can hand out our card to.

Aaron

00:04:32 – 00:04:36

If that's the case let's talk about family drama. Who's the family member you like the least?

Austin

00:04:36 – 00:04:40

This is perfect. Yeah. We don't need to get into that. Right? That's for a private podcast.

Aaron

00:04:43 – 00:04:44

Private feed.

Austin

00:04:44 – 00:05:05

Yeah. That's a patreon only episode. So, Aaron, let's, man, we got so much we wanted to chat about. Let's let's chat about something, something recent though, something that you launched recently, which is Fusion, Mhmm. Which you which you chatted about, I think, at Laracon EU.

Josh

00:05:05 – 00:05:06

Mhmm.

Austin

00:05:06 – 00:05:12

So just a a quick context, before we get into it. I am a JavaScript guy.

Josh

00:05:13 – 00:05:13

Austin

00:05:13 – 00:05:34

I've never written any serious Laravel, though I I'm a Laravel appreciator from afar. And Josh is kind of the the best of both worlds. He's a he's a he's a a a very smart JavaScript guy, but he also has built and sold, a SaaS built on on Laravel. So great. He he he knows he knows much more about what's going on there than than I do.

Austin

00:05:34 – 00:05:40

But why don't you just give me a quick overview of what Fusion is and why why did you dig into it?

Aaron

00:05:40 – 00:05:59

Yeah. One construct that I find very useful as, like, a thought exercise is what if we took something that exists and, we take it five steps beyond what is reasonable? And, like, what is that? Like, what does that open up? And so Fusion is the result of that question.

Aaron

00:05:59 – 00:06:21

And that question applied to, an existing technology which is inertia JS. And so for, Josh's friends and family that are listening, this part's gonna be very boring. But I will describe to you what it what inertia is. Inertia is a, inertia is basically like an adapter layer that sits between your front and back end. So you could pick Rails and React.

Aaron

00:06:21 – 00:06:42

You could pick Laravel and Svelte. You could pick, Django and Vue. Js. And what inertia does is it gives you like the power of a fully featured batteries included back end and the power of a modern component driven front end. And it kinda like binds the two together in a way that is, much more ergonomic.

Aaron

00:06:42 – 00:06:56

Now I looked at this and thought inertia's great. I love inertia. And then I partnered up, with my, now partner Steve at TryHard Studios. So we started this company together. Steve is like a proper JavaScript guy.

Aaron

00:06:56 – 00:07:04

He comes from the other side. I come historically from the back end side. He comes from the front end side. And so we see things a little bit differently. Right?

Aaron

00:07:04 – 00:07:23

Those communities are, similar in some ways but very very different in others. And so Steve and I are working together on all these course platforms and I'm like, hey, we're gonna use inertia. You're a Vue JS guy, I'm a Laravel guy, obviously inertia goes in the middle. He's like, that sounds great. We start using inertia, and he's like, I wish this was better.

Aaron

00:07:23 – 00:07:27

I'm like, this is better. What are you talking about? This is the best. He's like, no. No.

Aaron

00:07:27 – 00:07:34

No. Look at what I can do in Nuxt. And I take a look at Nuxt for the first time. I use Vue, but I've never used Nuxt because I have Laravel. Right?

Aaron

00:07:34 – 00:07:50

So I look at Nuxt and I'm like, oh, you know, that is kinda nice. I observe from the outside what the Next. Js community is doing. I see a lot of, in my opinion, mistakes, but I also see some very good ideas. And I'm like, that is also interesting.

Aaron

00:07:50 – 00:08:32

And then I look with fresh eyes back at inertia and I'm like, hey. We could we could go ham on this. Let's take this to, like, the logical conclusion. And so what I did was, I started from the idea of what if we could make Nuxt or Next, and have a lot of those niceties of, like, dancing across the network, what's front end, what's back end, but have the back end be Laravel, the front end be Vue or React, and have Fusion in the middle that kinda binds the two together in a much tighter way. And so something that Fusion, does is when you expose, like, variables or actions on the back end, they just become available on the front end.

Aaron

00:08:32 – 00:08:49

And that is a very, like, next or next style thing. Maybe React server components would be close. And so, that was the exercise. The exercise was what if inertia was for Laravel only, which is, like, scopes it down really far. And what if it felt more like next or next?

Aaron

00:08:49 – 00:08:55

And we could kind of compose across the network. That's kind of the gist of the whole thing.

Josh

00:08:57 – 00:09:36

It's really fascinating, and, I I love I love these experiments of jumping in and saying, like, what's the most, you know, extreme thing we could do? What what is something you would look at and be like, oh, that's a terrible idea, and then go off and do it and be like, I can I can do it because it's it's awesome? Yes. One experience I've had is trying to build, like, an early days React server components type of framework at at Shopify a few years ago, and it's it's eerie how, like, we ended up down a similar path, I guess, of, effectively parsing out some some code with Vite, I think, is probably similar to what you do. Right.

Josh

00:09:36 – 00:10:03

You're right. Taking some blocks that are in an existing file, sticking them somewhere else, and then doing something with them later on. And then, you have this integrated, like, authorship experience, but then the output is drastically different. I'm curious, like, what, was that, like, your first v zero approach? Like, oh, I know I'm gonna go and use v, like a v plug in, a a big v plug in to build this, or had you tried other types of parsing?

Aaron

00:10:03 – 00:10:17

I had I had, I was barely aware of the existence of vite before I did this. So let let that be an encouragement to anyone listening. You don't have to know anything. You just gotta Yeah. You just gotta start.

Aaron

00:10:17 – 00:10:46

So now the first, the first iteration of this was very, very different. In, in Laravel. We have the concept of like API resources. Right? So you can take a model and say like here's my podcast model and instead of like just sending the model out to the front end, you can say like let me put it inside of this API resource which is gonna define the shape, what fields should be exposed, how it should be serialized into JSON, that kind of stuff.

Aaron

00:10:46 – 00:11:21

And then we'll send that podcast resource out to the front end and that gives us kind of like this separation, this barrier between the model and the front end. And so that was my original thought was, what if I make super rich, resources that not only include state but also include behavior? And so that was similar to where Fusion ended up is state and behavior. But the original idea was what if you send out a podcast and the podcast on it, has like favorite, unfavorite, you know, listen later, that sort of stuff. And so I was like, I had gotten pretty far down that path.

Aaron

00:11:22 – 00:11:38

And then I started talking to several people, one of whom was Taylor Otwell, and I was like, hey. You know, I'd submitted to Lyricon EU. I got accepted, and at that point, like, the library was not even close to done. And I thought if I get accepted, I'll finish this library. So I got accepted.

Aaron

00:11:38 – 00:11:44

Taylor was like, hey. What what what's going on here? What are you building? And I told him and, you know, he was like, oh, cool. Cool.

Aaron

00:11:44 – 00:12:03

Thumbs up. Great. And Yeah. You know, later he came back and was like, you know, I've been thinking, if you can get to this level of DX, that would be really awesome. And the thing that he showed me was very much like a single file component, which is, I think Vault over in the Livewire ecosystem, which is Taylor's, you know, pet project is is Volt.

Aaron

00:12:03 – 00:12:35

He wrote that himself and he's like single file components for Volt or for Livewire. And so that kinda turned the course a little bit where he, like, sent me the screenshot and it was basically I mean, with some differences, it was basically what Fusion turned into today. And so what I did was I looked at that and thought, I don't know. I have no freaking clue how I'm gonna get there, but I believe that I can get there. And so I sat down and in a view single file component, I wrote a PHP tag and then dollar sign dollar sign name equals Aaron.

Aaron

00:12:35 – 00:12:57

And then that was like, now what? You've gotta figure out how to get this variable, this state into this JavaScript template. And that's where that's where I got led down the Vite, the Vite rabbit hole. And Vite is incredibly powerful, and I knew literally nothing. Not like, I'm not being hyperbolic.

Aaron

00:12:57 – 00:13:14

I knew literally nothing about Vite, and with the help of sheer force of will and a lot of AI, we got to, like, a pretty robust Vite plugin that does accomplishes a lot of the work. The whole process is relatively complicated, but Vite does, a majority of that heavy lifting.

Josh

00:13:14 – 00:13:35

Yeah. It's really impressive. The the Vite API just seems very approachable because it starts off so simple, and you can kinda dip your toes in the water and do something here and there. And then all of a sudden, you're doing pretty magnificent things with, with what you're doing, with Fusion. And, you can go from zero to 100 pretty quick.

Josh

00:13:35 – 00:13:38

I've been really impressed by that project. Yeah.

Aaron

00:13:38 – 00:13:40

Yeah. Yeah. Vite's amazing.

Austin

00:13:41 – 00:14:00

Aaron, do you do you envision folks building, like, an entire app on Fusion? Like, like, you'll have to forgive my ignorance of Laravel because I've never obviously, I've never built anything real if I haven't used Laravel. But, like, how how do you envision folks, like, making a database call in there and, like, offing users and scheduling jobs and stuff?

Aaron

00:14:01 – 00:14:09

Yeah. So I I, I mentioned obliquely that I think Next has made several mistakes or React server components have made several mistakes. And one of

Josh

00:14:09 – 00:14:09

the mistakes and this is, of course, a

Aaron

00:14:09 – 00:14:32

preference thing. One of the mistakes I think they have made is making it very unclear where your code is going to be executed and where it's going to be exposed. Right? So we we even saw this week, I don't know if y'all saw it, we saw Upstash. They wrote, they wrote a tutorial on the Upstash blog by the Upstash DevRel person.

Aaron

00:14:32 – 00:14:50

They wrote a tutorial that exposed Upstash keys. And it was like, what are we doing? Like, why are we writing code that we can't really reason about? Is it gonna end up on the front end, or is it gonna end up on the back end? If a dev rel at Upstash can make that mistake, the normies don't stand a chance.

Aaron

00:14:50 – 00:15:07

And so that's one of the things that I think Next has really made a mistake on or maybe it's React server components. I'm unclear about the relationship there. And so something that Fusion takes a pretty hard stance on is the back end is PHP. I'm not transpiling. I'm not turning it into Wasm.

Aaron

00:15:07 – 00:15:26

I'm not doing anything. The back end is PHP. The front end is JavaScript, and ne'er the twain shall meet. So, like, they are separate. Now you do write them in the same file, but after the process is done, you end up with a traditional controller and a con a traditional view.

Aaron

00:15:26 – 00:15:59

And there's a little magic in between, but it's still PHP runs on the back end, JavaScript runs on the front end. So to the question at hand, do I expect people to do, like, build full apps? My point of view on that is, if you treat the fusion file, the the PHP in your fusion file, if you treat it as a thin controller, you can write a full application using fusion. If you're like, I want to write 400 lines of PHP code, I think that's a mistake. And you should either make a proper controller, which is fine.

Aaron

00:15:59 – 00:16:13

You can do that in Fusion. Or you should turn your Fusion component into a thin controller. And so my point of view is that, kind of on the edge of your application, you've got your ingress points. Right? So you've got HTTP.

Aaron

00:16:14 – 00:16:30

So maybe you've got like your web app. Maybe you've got API. Maybe you've got CLI. Maybe you've got background jobs or something that like kicks off. And so you've got all these ingress points into your application, right, of which HTTP with like web views and stuff is one.

Aaron

00:16:30 – 00:17:03

Now I think fusion and maybe controllers in general should basically serve the purpose of translating, HTTP input into the rest of your application. And the rest of your application is where that logic should live. So in the case of Laravel, that becomes something like a plain PHP class that is just like an action and you can execute the action. So you have like a podcast publish action. And sometimes that's, instantiated by a command line, sometimes by API request, and sometimes by a Fusion request.

Aaron

00:17:03 – 00:17:21

And so that's my point of view is that the stuff that you're writing in your Fusion file should basically call out to somewhere else after you kinda like take all the HTTP away from it. So you validate the user input. You make sure that, like, they have access to this resource, and then you hand it off to a deeper part of your application.

Austin

00:17:21 – 00:17:32

Yeah. So I know that that makes total sense even for someone that hasn't written a controller since, I did c sharp and in school. I love a controller. I love a controller in years.

Aaron

00:17:32 – 00:17:41

I'm trying to stay up to date with the world, but there's part of me that's like, give me MVC all day. Give me a controller. I love it so much. But, you know, I'm evolving.

Josh

00:17:43 – 00:17:49

Everything everything is controllers underneath. It's, it may may look like a fancy new technology, but, it's a controller.

Aaron

00:17:50 – 00:17:55

But, Austin, you're right. Steve is the same way. He's like, yeah. I don't really think in MVC. And I'm like Yeah.

Aaron

00:17:55 – 00:18:07

What do you think in then? If not MVC, what else is there? And I'm trying to come to terms with, perhaps I'm old now. So this is Fusion is keeping me young, at least. Nice.

Josh

00:18:08 – 00:18:23

Nice. How's the I mean, you just released it a few weeks ago. I mean, by the that's terrible thing to say on a podcast because then this this gets released a week later or whatever. But, what's the what's the vibe? Is it, like, making progress?

Josh

00:18:23 – 00:18:29

I know you were working with some folks to maybe add a React flavor. Mhmm. Yep. Do you feel like that's full speed ahead?

Aaron

00:18:30 – 00:18:45

I don't think the React one is full speed ahead yet. So I released it at Lyricon EU, which was several weeks ago. Who can say? Because when are you listening to this? It was, you know, at some point in history.

Aaron

00:18:45 – 00:19:12

And since then I've kinda been doing, I've kinda been doing some internal refactoring. And there's a community that's, like, already, like, pulling it down, trying it out, playing along, offering advice. And so the motion is happening, but it's a lot like, it's a lot of, pieces to orchestrate. And so getting the foundation set up correctly is relatively important. And so I kinda wanna crush that before we move on to React.

Aaron

00:19:12 – 00:19:31

Just get that Laravel view story really nailed down so that when we do move to React, we're not, like, fighting on two fronts at the same time. But, yeah, React is, is coming, unfortunately, for me. Because I don't know React, but, you know, React is obviously the biggest JavaScript player in the space, and so we gotta get there eventually.

Josh

00:19:32 – 00:19:38

Yeah. Cool. Well, I'm gonna keep my eye on it. It's it's really exciting and, keep keep pushing with it. Super pumped.

Aaron

00:19:38 – 00:19:40

Thanks. It's a lot of fun.

Josh

00:19:40 – 00:19:57

Yeah. What about solo? Do we wanna chat about solo? Because this is another another thing. And this is, like, where fusion is a you know, here's a here's an idea, of a new new way of writing code for frameworks.

Josh

00:19:57 – 00:20:18

Like, solo is, like, here's an existing idea of terminal user interfaces that goes deep down and says, what if we could do it, a little better? And Mhmm. So, like, if if I were to say, I guess, what solo is, no. You know, why don't you why don't you give us, like, your your your sales pitch of this? Because I'm pretty sure you're

Aaron

00:20:18 – 00:20:19

so close to seeing how

Josh

00:20:19 – 00:20:21

my marketing how effective it was.

Aaron

00:20:23 – 00:20:37

Okay. So, again, ignorance is a superpower, in some cases. Right? So in some cases, in the case of the author of SQLite. SQLite, most widely used database in the world.

Aaron

00:20:37 – 00:21:02

Trillions of SQLite database databases exist. Hundreds on my phone, hundreds on my computer. If you look in Google Chrome, you'll see SQLite databases everywhere. The author of SQLite who he wrote this I think in maybe the year February, very early, he said, if I had known you weren't supposed to write a database from scratch, I wouldn't have written a database from scratch. And that's I like I feel that in my bones.

Aaron

00:21:02 – 00:21:18

Like, if I had known that you weren't supposed to reinvent TMUX in PHP, I wouldn't have done it. But I accidentally did it because I didn't know. Like, I don't I've never used TMux. I've heard people say TMux. I looked at the docs once, and I was like, this looks complicated.

Aaron

00:21:19 – 00:21:40

I'm not smart enough to get this. And so, solo basically is a, it is a single command that you can run that inside of it spawns, a configurable number of commands. So imagine you're developing a web application and you need to run, Vite for example. Very common. You need to run Vite.

Aaron

00:21:40 – 00:22:01

You also need to start perhaps your PHP HTTP server which is separate from Vite. Maybe you also want to tail your logs. Maybe you need to start your queue worker. Maybe you need to start your WebSocket server. Now we're up to five things five things where you have to go like spawn all of these processes just to develop your application locally.

Aaron

00:22:02 – 00:22:18

It gets a little bit annoying, and it makes it hard to like onboard team members. Right? And so you're in this situation where it's like I've got all these things that are required for my application to run. I could make everyone use TMux. Again, don't really know what TMux is.

Aaron

00:22:18 – 00:22:28

I could, we could spin up Docker, but it's like I I don't wanna do that. I don't like Docker. I don't wanna use Docker. Docker's great. I don't like it.

Aaron

00:22:28 – 00:22:47

So Same. Where does that leave us? Right? And so where that leaves us or where that left us before solo was, there is a, NPM package called concurrently. And so Taylor noticed this problem in, in the life cycle of a Laravel application.

Aaron

00:22:47 – 00:23:13

Noticed this problem and wrote basically a thin shim for npx concurrently and like shipped it with, the Laravel application starter. So it's it's like you can download Laravel, start a project and run composer run dev and npx will actually spin up concurrently and you've got like four processes running. I looked at that and I thought this is better. This is a step in the right direction. However, it leaves a little bit to be desired.

Aaron

00:23:13 – 00:23:38

Primarily what it leaves to be desired is it's very hard to read the munged output. Right? So you've got HTTP requests coming in and logs and your web sockets and your queues and you're like, I just I can't see anything. It's all munged together and you can't stop one and start one and so I saw this and I thought, boy, we could do better couldn't we? And knowing nothing, I thought this will be easy.

Aaron

00:23:38 – 00:24:05

Why don't I just do this? Famous last words. And so I wrote a, I wrote a single command that that spawns and it gives you this nice little crow, like this nice little box in on your command line. So it's a terminal application, but it gives you this nice little ASCII art of like, hey, here's all your logs and you can like hit the right arrow and tab over. And so now we're at a place where solo is a configurable process runner for your local Laravel development.

Aaron

00:24:05 – 00:24:35

And so you can say, here are the 14 commands that I might run-in developing this Laravel application. I'm gonna put those in a config file. Here are the three that I want to auto start when I run solo. And so you can start solo and like Vite your server and maybe your logs start, but you also have the option to like arrow over to Reverb or to your queue worker and say like I'm working on that part of the stack now. Let me start that command.

Aaron

00:24:36 – 00:25:05

And so it gives you a nice interface into, running your application locally and it gives you some niceties around, you know, starting, stopping, restarting, pausing, all of the commands. And then when you quit solo, through great pains, it goes and kills every underlying process to make sure that, like, it cleans up after itself. And that took a lot of work because that's not a level of system I'm used to dealing with. And so I'm like, how do I keep track of these processes? But we finally got there.

Aaron

00:25:05 – 00:25:12

And so now we're at a spot where it's a pretty robust local development aid for your Laravel applications.

Austin

00:25:13 – 00:25:26

Yeah. It's it's a really cool project. And I I I think the first thing the first thing I thought of when you were chatting about, like, when you're developing, you gotta start your queues and your web sockets. You're I'm like, maybe in Laravel. In JavaScript, those are all SaaS that we're paying.

Austin

00:25:26 – 00:25:27

Yeah.

Aaron

00:25:27 – 00:25:30

In JavaScript, you gotta get your credit card out

Josh

00:25:30 – 00:25:30

and then you gotta get your

Aaron

00:25:30 – 00:25:32

credit card out and then yeah.

Austin

00:25:32 – 00:25:36

But we're not running any of those things locally. I'm paying someone to do that.

Josh

00:25:36 – 00:25:37

That's funny.

Austin

00:25:37 – 00:25:53

But yeah. Yeah. Besides that, it it's really a cool project, and I like how obviously, you mentioned it before with with fusion as well, but, like, having these ideas and being like, I don't know I don't know the journey. I don't know how to get there, but I know what I want to end up with. I know where I wanna go.

Austin

00:25:54 – 00:26:17

And it's literally put one foot in front of the other, figure out the next thing you have to do, then figure out the next thing. And when you look back, you've built an entire two way application with all these all this crazy functionality, and and it's it's really a cool story. Again, similar to fusion. Cool story again, similar to fusion, but also another really, really great and useful package that I think the Laravel community is gonna find, exceptionally useful. So kudos again to you.

Aaron

00:26:18 – 00:26:31

Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. It's like a a it it very much is figure out one problem after the next, and sometimes it feels like running through a wall only to discover there are more walls behind it. That's that is what it feels like.

Aaron

00:26:31 – 00:26:49

I have sat at this desk and literally banged my head on the desk. Like, literally bent over and banged my head on the desk because I'm like, I am out of my depth here. I don't know what's happening. I don't understand. I've never been here before.

Aaron

00:26:49 – 00:27:07

I'm incredibly frustrated. And you know what happens? You just keep going. You just keep pushing and eventually all the problems fall over. And it it is incredibly frustrating, but it's matched by the satisfaction of getting out the other side and realizing like, I did that.

Aaron

00:27:07 – 00:27:26

And that's that's incredibly empowering. The next time you run into that problem or a problem of similar shape, you think, I've been here before. I broke through that wall. I can do this again, and it's gonna suck, but I can do this. And that's like that builds up inside of you, and it it it pays dividends in the long run.

Josh

00:27:26 – 00:27:43

Yeah. The mental fortitude. So, like, if you go to the gym and you're you're, you know, doing something that's challenging and it's super frustrating the first couple times, and then you start Yep. Getting past it. And then all of a sudden, like, it's it's still hard, but it's not, it's not defeating anymore.

Josh

00:27:43 – 00:27:47

And so Yes. It's not it's ruthless. Right. Yeah. You build up a confidence to it.

Josh

00:27:47 – 00:27:52

And, yeah, it's a it's a really good skill to develop and a a good practice, I think.

Austin

00:27:52 – 00:27:58

But when when do you think you'll be raising, a seed round for solo? Man, I don't know.

Aaron

00:27:58 – 00:28:12

If I was in JavaScript, I would have done it already. Exactly. I don't know. Like, I know it's mostly in jest, but I look at, like, these dev tool companies, and I'm like, man, y'all are raising a lot for a little. Like, you're I don't understand why this is even a business.

Aaron

00:28:13 – 00:28:25

And that's something Steve and I have talked about is, like, hey. We're playing in the dev tool space. Does this ever make sense? And it doesn't yet. But, you know, Steve and I have always joked that, like, we are 100% for sale.

Aaron

00:28:25 – 00:28:37

Like, people always say, like, I would never sell my company. It's my baby. We would sell immediately for the right amount of money. So if you're rich and you're listening, yes, we would sell, but we're we're not there yet.

Austin

00:28:37 – 00:28:51

Yeah. No. I I get that as a I'm I'm a former employee of a of an ORM that raised multiple series of, multiple rounds of funding. So I'm I'm familiar with that world and have some thoughts we can put in the Patreon only podcast.

Aaron

00:28:52 – 00:28:58

Yeah. So we'll talk we'll talk crap about your family and then talk crap about, ORMs. I love it. That sounds great.

Josh

00:28:58 – 00:29:01

Yeah. This is something we need to make a reality, I think.

Aaron

00:29:01 – 00:29:03

Yeah. It's a spicy pod. Yeah.

Josh

00:29:05 – 00:29:28

Cool. Speaking of the, the business side of things, TryHard Studios, your screencasting, or your screencasts, your series. But then also there's a series about screencasting, which is so fascinating to me. And, I love to know, like, like, what out of so it's Postgres SQLite screencasting. And what was the fourth one?

Aaron

00:29:28 – 00:29:34

High leverage Rails. So we had a guest instructor come teach, SQLite and Rails together.

Austin

00:29:34 – 00:29:34

Mhmm.

Josh

00:29:34 – 00:29:50

Cool. What's been your, I guess, the your most enjoyable one from start to finish of building those out? Because I know it's an incredible amount of work to not only research the source material, but then also, record and and write and and edit all that stuff.

Aaron

00:29:51 – 00:30:03

Yeah. It's, it's just a tremendous amount of work. And the shape of these courses are very different. So I'll speak to the ones that I was an instructor on. The high leverage rails one was great because I didn't have to teach it.

Aaron

00:30:03 – 00:30:21

So maybe that maybe that's my favorite. It's the best. So of the courses I've done, you mentioned Screencasting.com, SQLite, and Postgres. So SQLite and Postgres are both, flavors of databases as you well know. I've also done at a prior employer, which will save for the spicy pod.

Aaron

00:30:21 – 00:30:44

I did a course on, MySQL which is also a database flavor. So I've got three databases under my belt. And then I did a course for Laracasts on an open source library that I wrote. And then the very first course I did was financial accounting for sophomores at Texas A and M University and that course is still alive. And so these are all disparate, right?

Aaron

00:30:44 – 00:31:06

They're very different, and some of them group up together. So like the database courses, are incredibly difficult for me to make because, I'm a self taught developer. I happen to know databases very well. I happen to love them. I find them that they like they fit into my brain in a very satisfying way.

Aaron

00:31:06 – 00:31:27

But when it comes time to be a database educator, I felt that I needed to learn a lot more. Right? So I had a lot of real world experience. I didn't have a lot of like formal education on it. And so, right or wrong, I thought, I need to go learn this stuff.

Aaron

00:31:27 – 00:31:46

And so MySQL, SQLite, and Postgres were just massive slogs of learning, like, tons and tons. I have, I have some documents here. I don't know if this is a I don't know if this is the video podcast or not, but here's You're getting a prop. Yeah. Here's thousands of pages.

Aaron

00:31:47 – 00:32:05

And this is just this is just SQLite only. To say nothing of the books, this is just the documentation and the blog post. And so that's like a ream of paper, literally, like thousands of pages. And those those are, those are grueling. It is it is very difficult.

Aaron

00:32:05 – 00:32:14

You go through the trough of sorrow. Who am I to do this? I'm not qualified. What am I gonna say? You go through that whole process.

Aaron

00:32:15 – 00:32:45

And I think the reason is the, the shape of this content is extremely technical. There is often, a right answer and a wrong answer. And that was like that's a lot of pressure. And beyond that, there are times where the right answer is wrong and the wrong answer is right. And like, you have to know all of that stuff, and so you have to gain this, like, massive breadth of knowledge and then compress it down into something that is consumable by somebody that hopefully has way less expertise than you.

Aaron

00:32:45 – 00:32:55

Right? And so you're like, hey, I know about the entire universe. You you know nothing. How do I distill this and still be technically right? So those are, like, exhausting.

Aaron

00:32:56 – 00:33:11

Very, valuable in the end, but very exhausting. Screencasting, on the other hand, screencasting.com is vibes only. There's no right answer. It's it's it's like an art form. It is what is Aaron's personal preference.

Aaron

00:33:11 – 00:33:30

Of course, there are a lot of technical things in there, and I teach a lot of technical things about, like, here's how I believe you should set up your screen. Here's how I believe you should set up your camera and your lighting. But at the end, nobody can argue. Right? Nobody can say, you shouldn't set your screen up that way.

Aaron

00:33:30 – 00:33:43

You people can say, I would set my screen up differently. That's fine. I don't care about that. You bought the course because you want me to tell you my opinions on screen casting. And so that's super vibey.

Aaron

00:33:43 – 00:34:14

That's just like Yeah. Hey. I will do I'll do a little bit of research, but not very much. But the point is I'm gonna write down everything that I believe in, and I'm gonna turn that into an outline, and then I'm gonna turn on the camera and start teaching you my personal preference way of doing things. And so the, the breakdown between, like, hard, computer science and kinda like art, like, vibes only, it's like the vibes only courses are way, way easier and a lot more fun, frankly, because it's just like, here's what I believe.

Aaron

00:34:14 – 00:34:23

Don't really care if you don't. Here's why I believe it. Go and have fun. And so those those are they those just take way less out of me.

Josh

00:34:23 – 00:35:04

Yeah. I think that's interesting the the vibes stuff too, but also just your personal, take on things is a lot of times what I'm looking for when I go out and I'm Mhmm. Whether it's looking at open source code or buying a course, it's I want to know what this person thinks is the best, the best approach, you know, the trade offs involved rather than, like, giving me all of the world's information about a thing. Like, show me what you think, and then I can take that in and and form my own opinions. And so that there's a lot of value to that out there, and it's kinda it's nice that you're able to to have something that's more based on that rather than having to go and learn a deep deep dive into database software for sure.

Josh

00:35:04 – 00:35:04

Yeah.

Aaron

00:35:04 – 00:35:06

That that part gets a little bit tiring.

Austin

00:35:06 – 00:35:16

Yeah. I think it's funny, Aaron, when, like, listening to you describe your your process of of the database courses, it's like it sounds like you're you're an LLM training

Aaron

00:35:17 – 00:35:18

training itself like

Josh

00:35:18 – 00:35:18

I am.

Austin

00:35:18 – 00:35:24

Trying trying to absorb this enormous amount of information then distill it into this Yes. I read it

Aaron

00:35:24 – 00:35:36

all, compress it to vectors in my head and then regurgitate it. Yeah. And even even in those, Josh, you said something that I think is true. Even in the hard technical courses is people still want my opinion. Right?

Aaron

00:35:36 – 00:36:01

So, with enough, force of will, they could go do all the same stuff that I have done. But at the end, they want my opinion on what they should do, what's best, what's like optimal here or there. They want my experience. And so that part comes that part comes easily. There are databases that I couldn't go out and research and then teach because I've never actually used them.

Aaron

00:36:01 – 00:36:28

And so, like, could I do Mongo? Not really because I've never used Mongo and half of the value or more, but at least part of the value of even in the hard technical courses is here are all the facts. Now knowing those facts, here's what I recommend. And I feel like that is what, that's what separates, hopefully, what separates an instructor from a proper LLM is I can say, I've seen this. I've seen that.

Aaron

00:36:28 – 00:36:33

Don't do this. Yes. Do that. And beware of this, based on my experience.

Austin

00:36:34 – 00:36:40

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It goes without saying your contributions are far more valuable than than that of an LLM.

Aaron

00:36:40 – 00:37:13

I feel like an LLM, though. And, of course, like, I fear, that's the existential fear is right or wrong. Are people going to assume that LLMs can hold all the answers? And it doesn't matter if I believe that the best way to learn is from an experienced instructor on video, and it doesn't matter if that is the objectively correct way to learn. If everyone believes that they can just learn from an LLM, it doesn't matter what is true.

Aaron

00:37:13 – 00:37:26

It doesn't matter what I believe. And so there's a part of me that's like, how can I continue to lean into my humanness? Because that is the thing that LLMs cannot do. And so we're always exploring, like, what do we do here?

Austin

00:37:26 – 00:37:49

Yeah. No. I think that's a great point. As as someone who, has watched through through a couple of your courses, which are very excellent by the way, everyone go out and spend your money or your company's money buying Aaron's stuff. That's someone who's done both watched Aaron's stuff and has chatted a lot with LLMs, specifically about database, questions.

Austin

00:37:50 – 00:37:53

I I think I'm gonna pick Aaron. I'm gonna pick Aaron

Aaron

00:37:53 – 00:37:53

most of

Austin

00:37:53 – 00:37:54

the time. So That's

Aaron

00:37:54 – 00:37:55

good. That's good. That's good.

Austin

00:37:55 – 00:37:56

You you have so

Aaron

00:37:56 – 00:37:57

I still have you for now.

Austin

00:37:57 – 00:38:02

You have you have one point in in Aaron's camp so far. Yeah.

Aaron

00:38:02 – 00:38:29

My my hope my hope is that, everything I teach makes you a better LLM user. Right? So if I can lay a foundation, if I can teach you some fundamentals and help you internalize some truths about complicated technical content, you can then go and ask better questions or realize when it's hallucinating or say, like, hey. I remember this technique. Is this applicable here?

Aaron

00:38:29 – 00:38:35

And it's gonna say, wow. Great point. Yes. Definitely. And it's like, well, you should have told me that up front.

Aaron

00:38:35 – 00:38:41

So my hope is that, like, we're laying a foundation that makes you more effective at using LLMs in the long run.

Austin

00:38:42 – 00:38:55

Yeah. Yeah. %. I I also think it's funny that we spent, like, the first thirty minutes talking about essentially your side projects before we mention that you have your own business sell selling courses,

Aaron

00:38:56 – 00:38:58

and doing all this other stuff on top. And

Austin

00:39:01 – 00:39:09

and, Aaron, I think we're right around has it been right around a year since you and Steve have been doing Mhmm. Try hard? Has it been Mhmm. Has it been over a year now?

Aaron

00:39:09 – 00:39:14

No. I think, like, I would have to look at our texts, but I think it's, like, this week or next

Austin

00:39:14 – 00:39:24

where it's been a year. Yeah. Well, congratulations on making it this far. Thank you. I'm I'm curious, like, what what's your post mortem on year one?

Austin

00:39:24 – 00:39:30

Have has it been great? Has it been challenging? Has it been both? I'm sure. What what Yes, ma'am.

Josh

00:39:30 – 00:39:31

Been the

Austin

00:39:31 – 00:39:36

what what have been the highs and lows this year? What what things did you maybe wish you had before you started?

Aaron

00:39:36 – 00:39:52

The the lows are too numerous to recount. So for for the audience, for Josh's family, I got laid off. Me and Steve got laid off. So it wasn't like, hey. Let's plan and then go out on our own like these, you know, fearless conquerors.

Aaron

00:39:52 – 00:40:05

It was like, f. What do we do now? So Steve and I were working together, and we both got laid off along with the entire marketing team, the entire sales team, and so it was, like, brutal. Right? Everyone got laid off, half the company.

Aaron

00:40:05 – 00:40:24

And so Steve and I Steve was my video editor at that company, and I was doing a lot of video content. Turns out Steve is, like, way overqualified to be a video editor. He does literally everything. So he's now producer Steve instead of editor Steve. So we got laid off, and it was like, what are we gonna do?

Aaron

00:40:24 – 00:40:38

We could we could go play the same song again. Like, we could go to another dev tools company, do the same shtick where we do videos and, you know, futz around on Twitter. And, like, I don't wanna do that. Like, I I just don't I played that game. I think we won.

Aaron

00:40:38 – 00:40:52

We had massive success at this company, Then they changed their strategy and it didn't matter. Right? So we were getting users that were correct until they changed their strategy and then said we don't need those users anymore. Bye. And I was like, oof.

Aaron

00:40:52 – 00:41:00

That doesn't feel good. Like, I did my job. What the heck? And so we decided, you know what? Let's, let's give this a go.

Aaron

00:41:00 – 00:41:14

Let's go out on our own. And, it was it's very it's very hard. It's very, very difficult. When we got laid off, I was on paternity leave. So I was on paternity leave with the new set of twins.

Aaron

00:41:14 – 00:41:29

So we had two two and a half year olds and two, at that point, three month olds. I'm the sole breadwinner in, in our family. My wife, works very hard, but she works at home. Right? And so I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Aaron

00:41:30 – 00:41:43

I've got a million kids, and then I developed rheumatoid arthritis at the same time, presumably due to stress. And so I'm just like down. I'm super down. This is hard. And so Steve and I were like, you know what?

Aaron

00:41:43 – 00:41:55

Now or never. Like, we're either gonna do this right now when we've got this momentum. Like, I feel like we had the community on our side of like, boy, y'all got wronged. And it was like, alright. Let's ride this wave.

Aaron

00:41:56 – 00:42:19

Coming out, we had all this attention. And so we decided we would give it a go. And we set out with some lofty ideas about, like, being consultants, video consultants for companies that didn't really pan out. And what what we landed on was in house courses. And so we busted it to to get two courses out last year, the SQLite course and the Postgres course.

Aaron

00:42:19 – 00:42:42

And we got those courses out and they did fantastic in terms of sales. And I think, near the end of last year and the beginning of this year I had kind of assumed like, hey, we're on solid footing. We we're like we are a going concern. And it's become clear to me in the last month or two that, like, we are in a very launch driven business, which is fine. We're good at launches.

Aaron

00:42:42 – 00:43:13

But we have not yet nailed down, like, the operational mechanics of being a business. Like, we have these two courses out there, you know, the two database and then screencasting I brought into the company, and we have the rails one. And those are selling, but we've not yet, like, honed the engine to make those things sell more durably over time. And I feel like that is what we're trying to learn right now is, hey. You guys are great at creating courses, great at being instructors, and great at creating spectacle.

Aaron

00:43:13 – 00:43:26

Like, I can create a spectacle. What we need to learn now is how do we create a durable long term business engine. And that's the part where it's like, I don't know. Let's figure that out. And so that's kind of the phase we're in right now.

Josh

00:43:27 – 00:43:36

Do you have people to help you figure that out? Do you do you talk to any, like, coaches, or do you have friends who who are in similar industries who give you tips or is it

Aaron

00:43:36 – 00:43:36

gonna be

Josh

00:43:36 – 00:43:37

feeling blind blind?

Aaron

00:43:38 – 00:44:00

Yes. Both. I mean, we've got I'm I'm fortunate that I am, like, friends with a lot of people that that do this type of thing, at least similarly shaped businesses. And so I'm always kinda talking to them and bouncing ideas off of them. Steve, like I said, is is a multi talented, multi faceted person, and he's like he's he he has a guy for everything.

Aaron

00:44:00 – 00:44:09

He's like, oh, yeah. I got a buddy I worked with ten years ago that does this. And I'm like, yeah. How do you have a buddy for everything? And so I feel like he's always talking to somebody about this.

Aaron

00:44:09 – 00:44:35

But Steve and I talk we probably talk an hour or two on the phone every day just like brainstorming. We consume a lot of, the same types of media, and so read a lot of the same books, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, we we kinda get we kinda get ideas from all sides. But then there's also these things that's just like, dude, just pick up the money that's on the ground. And those are the things we're trying to, like, hey.

Aaron

00:44:35 – 00:44:49

Make YouTube videos about databases that lead people to the courses. Figure it out. And so those are the easy ones where we're we're not trying to invent the wheel. We just need to push the wheel downhill. And those are the ones where we're like, alright.

Aaron

00:44:49 – 00:44:50

We can do this.

Josh

00:44:50 – 00:45:04

It's exciting but scary too just to be on your own. Yeah. And to be like, there's there's opportunity, but you have to go get it and do it right. And, I applaud you for doing that. It's, it's it's fun to watch you do that, and we're rooting for you for sure.

Josh

00:45:04 – 00:45:04

Yeah.

Aaron

00:45:04 – 00:45:12

It's if nothing else, it's great content. Maybe, you know, maybe we don't make it, but at least it was good content all along the way.

Josh

00:45:12 – 00:45:17

Right. It's good for the the memoir you can write and sell eventually. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Josh

00:45:19 – 00:45:42

Well, cool. We're nearing the end of our time. I think we like to just kinda give a shout out to something that we're excited about or something we wanna pitch, whether it's a TV show or movie or, open source project. But we have you here and, like, if there's one thing that you could, like, shout out and tell my friends and family to go to or check out, is it do you have anything at the top of your mind, Darren?

Aaron

00:45:43 – 00:46:00

Like, like a cool tool or something I've been digging recently? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I like I mentioned earlier, I'm in this phase where I'm trying to wield AI, to prevent my own destruction.

Aaron

00:46:00 – 00:46:15

And so part of me feels like, AI is going to destroy my job and take the food off of my table. Okay. That sucks. Let me figure out how I can use the tools to make sure that that doesn't happen. Because if I just turn a blind eye, I'm gonna be blindsided.

Aaron

00:46:15 – 00:46:57

But if I can accurately and effectively wield the tools, maybe I stand a chance here. And so, been dabbling a lot with, these, like, AI tools. One that I have found super, helpful so far is, is a very simple one called Super Whisper, and that allows me to talk to my computer and it dictates. And so, it seems it seems very simple, but, like, if I'm gonna be doing a lot of, like, talking to LLMs where I I need to, like, ask it a bunch of questions, it's way easier to just hit option space and then dictate a full paragraph of questions into the LLM and then let it chew on it for a minute. So that's a that's a pretty low stakes one.

Aaron

00:46:57 – 00:47:15

The other one that I have found, increases my leverage, and that's what I'm always trying to do is increase my personal leverage, is one called lex.page, which, I think is real. Let me make sure that's the right URL. Insane URL .page. Yes. Lex.page, and it is a writing assistant AI.

Aaron

00:47:15 – 00:47:36

And I'm very precious about, like, my nontechnical articles. I want them to be, you know, written by a human. But lex. Page is sort of my writing assistant. So it helps me write things that I think are impactful or useful but it doesn't actually do the writing part for me which I think is still still requires a human.

Aaron

00:47:36 – 00:47:39

So super whisper and lex.page are my two my two picks.

Josh

00:47:40 – 00:47:50

I love it. The super whisper I've seen pop up everywhere too and I have the same sort of like oh is this just like normal dictation? But apparently it's it's worth it. Like I should check it out.

Aaron

00:47:50 – 00:48:12

I think so. I don't I don't think I pay for it actually. I think I'm using the free version but it's it's like universal and very accurate and very fast. And so I will just like click into a text box on any web page or the chat g p t desktop app, and then I'll hit option space start talking and then, like, let go and it, like, puts all the text in that text box. And so it's kinda awesome.

Austin

00:48:13 – 00:48:14

Yeah. That's cool.

Josh

00:48:15 – 00:48:18

Austin, what about you? Got anything on the mind?

Austin

00:48:18 – 00:48:39

Yeah. So I've got two. First of all, I'm as as a father and a husband, I don't have a ton of time for video games these days, but I recently joined an extremely amateur, Rocket League league. Have either of you played Rocket League? Have you tried the Just once.

Austin

00:48:39 – 00:48:41

Playing soccer with cars

Aaron

00:48:41 – 00:48:42

video game? I'm terrible

Josh

00:48:42 – 00:48:44

at it. It's a it

Austin

00:48:44 – 00:48:57

it's extremely hard, but I joined a free league that has prize money. So as soon as prize money was on the line, I'm like, I don't care if I'm gonna win $50 at the end of I'm putting in a hundred hours so I can win this $50 gift card to outpace.

Aaron

00:48:57 – 00:48:58

Makes sense. Yep.

Austin

00:48:58 – 00:49:18

And it it's it's, it's a lot of fun. It's it's bringing me right back to my middle school days when I would be cussing people out in Call of Duty lobbies, just bringing out the the inherent rage of being partners with someone that's terrible. Mhmm. All those fun all those fun things. I don't I don't know if it's a recommendation necessarily.

Josh

00:49:19 – 00:49:21

An anti recommendation? No.

Austin

00:49:21 – 00:49:53

Yeah. That's something I've been thinking about a lot. The second thing I wanted to talk about, maybe not a pick as much of a a topic that I wanted to bring up, is we have a couple very experienced dads on on the pod, and Josh and I have discussed potty training in-depth, on on a previous episode. And, Erin, I wanted to get your take because I I have one daughter, and she is almost two. And she recently had an accident in the bathtub, and I'm looking forward to to cutting down on those kinds of incidents.

Austin

00:49:53 – 00:49:59

So I wanted to get your take. What's your what are your potty training, magic tricks that make it all super easy?

Aaron

00:50:01 – 00:50:13

Steel yourself. That is that is my only trick. Prepare for this storm. We tried it twice, and it didn't work the first time. And so I think there is some aspect of it where it's like, I mean, just they just kinda have to be ready for it.

Aaron

00:50:13 – 00:50:38

Yeah. But the second time, it worked so much better. We still have an occasional accident here and there, but, we did the whole, like, basically be naked for a day or two, leave the potties out, leave books and stickers and, you know, stuff and have regular, like, alright. Let's go sit on the potty. But, yeah, the first time it was just, like, not even close to working, and I think that's common.

Aaron

00:50:38 – 00:50:58

So the the trick there is don't get discouraged if you try it when they're, you know, late to or middle to and it doesn't work. It might it might take a little bit more maturing until until they're ready. And I will say, I think our girl picked it up much better than our boys. So each set is boy girl. And so it's interesting to see the developmental differences between boys and girls.

Aaron

00:50:58 – 00:51:01

And I think the girl picked it up a a lot quicker than the boy did.

Austin

00:51:02 – 00:51:09

Yeah. Well, I was hoping you'd tell me there's just, like, a combination of words or snacks I could employ to to just make it happen really easy.

Josh

00:51:09 – 00:51:10

But

Aaron

00:51:10 – 00:51:19

Nope. I guess that's the only that's the only tip I have. Ungard theirs and gird yours because it's it's not super fun. I'll

Josh

00:51:20 – 00:51:40

I'll plus one I'll plus one that advice, Austin. And then I'll just say, like, the the bathtub accident, it's a rite of passage. It's it's like it happens in that every time for me, it's just like, oh, I should I should've seen that coming, but I didn't. And you're like, how did that how did it you let that slip out. But it happens, and then and then they move on.

Josh

00:51:40 – 00:51:45

And they yeah. And then they're potty trained, and then you're like, oh, that was that that happened. And it and it's done now. So

Austin

00:51:45 – 00:51:48

And then it's and that's just

Josh

00:51:48 – 00:51:49

another fond memory you look

Austin

00:51:49 – 00:51:49

back on. Right.

Josh

00:51:49 – 00:51:50

Sure. Sure.

Austin

00:51:50 – 00:51:52

Yeah. Sure. Josh, what do you have?

Josh

00:51:53 – 00:52:22

I have, back to this sort of AI stuff, a, a new voice model dropped this week from this company called Sesame, which I had never heard of. Or at least it's it's one of these research papers, but it's a fully working thing. But it's you can click into the website and chat with one of two of the voice models, and it is it is uncanny. It feels like you're talking to a human. It's very, very human like, very low latency as well.

Josh

00:52:22 – 00:52:47

And so, it's the closest closest I've seen so far of a an AI voice being, being very human like. So I'll I'll drop a link into the show notes for sure, but I thought that was really cool this week. My I I pulled it up for my wife, Brie, and I, and we were just talking about things. And, we knew it was an AI, but but it's it's still pretty cool.

Austin

00:52:48 – 00:52:49

For the first few minutes, you thought.

Josh

00:52:49 – 00:52:52

For the first few minutes, and then we got lost in conversation and

Aaron

00:52:53 – 00:53:08

I will have to check that out. I thought you were gonna go a different direction because Eleven Labs just released a new, speech to text model that is supposedly amazing. So it's for transcribing stuff. But I have not heard of this sesame one.

Josh

00:53:08 – 00:53:12

Yeah. I hadn't heard of it either, but I saw it on Twitter. So,

Aaron

00:53:14 – 00:53:14

cool.

Austin

00:53:15 – 00:53:40

There there's one one more thing I wanted to to mention. Sorry, Josh. I guess we can call it a third pick of mine. I wanted to call out, old real time strategy games like Red Alert two and the Command and Conquer series and Age of Empires because Aaron recently had a a moment of Twitter fame or infamy. Not sure Fame

Josh

00:53:40 – 00:53:40

for

Aaron

00:53:40 – 00:53:44

a while until until big dog replied and then it was like, what do I do now?

Austin

00:53:44 – 00:53:48

Aaron, tell tell us the story of your your encounter on Twitter.

Aaron

00:53:48 – 00:53:58

Yeah. So I tweeted, you know, Red Alert two came out, I don't know, February or something. So I'm 11 years old. Red Alert two comes out, changes my life. Me and my brother play it all the time.

Aaron

00:53:58 – 00:54:25

So just recently, a few days ago, I tweeted, a picture, a screenshot of Red Alert two, and I just with the text, the world you were born in no longer exists. And it was like, I knew it was a good tweet the moment I wrote it. I knew that it was gonna work. I had seen that phrase before, the world you were born in no longer exists, and I was like, it was a gut punch. And then, I had long ago tweeted a picture of Red Alert two, and it did pretty well.

Aaron

00:54:25 – 00:54:33

And I thought, ah, put those things together, and we got a winner on our hands. And we did. We got a winner on our hands. And so I tweeted it. I got a million impressions

Josh

00:54:33 – 00:54:33

Wow.

Aaron

00:54:33 – 00:54:47

Which is, like, mega viral for me. And then, the next day and I don't wanna say I caused this, but, hey, might as well. Nobody's here to fax check me. The next day, Electronic Arts open sourced the code for that series of games. Games.

Aaron

00:54:47 – 00:55:03

Not that particular game, but that series of games. And so I was like, this is my second bite at the apple. So I quote tweeted my original tweet and said, like, hey. This thing that went mega viral yesterday, remember me? They just open sourced all of the code, like, for this series.

Aaron

00:55:03 – 00:55:19

I wonder who's gonna do the first remake. And that one went mega viral. That one got, like, 900,000 impressions. So the original tweet is up to 2,000,000 at this point. And then I'm sitting on the couch sitting on the couch, and I'm checking the replies because I had muted it because it was, like, annoying.

Aaron

00:55:19 – 00:55:29

And so I'm scrolling through some of the replies to see what I had missed. And I saw someone tagged Elon Musk, and I was like, why why would somebody tag Elon Musk into this? Like, leave him out of

Josh

00:55:29 – 00:55:29

this. Yeah.

Aaron

00:55:30 – 00:55:39

Like like him or hate him, he tweets too much. So I've I've had him muted forever. Right? Had his name, had Tesla, SpaceX, Elon, everything muted. And I'm like, god.

Aaron

00:55:39 – 00:55:51

Why is somebody tagging him in? And I and I clicked through to that thread and realized not somebody tagged him in. He replied to me. He replied to my tweet and said something silly like, cool. I used to play that game.

Aaron

00:55:51 – 00:55:59

I'm like, did you? But it doesn't matter. It's Elon Musk, you know? So he replied to it. Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, quote tweeted it.

Aaron

00:55:59 – 00:56:13

Sean Murray, the My First Million host replied to it. And so it was like, I don't know I don't know what good this is gonna do me, but I'm famous. And so it was kind of it was kind of a wild ride. Definitely a a fun Twitter viral moment for sure.

Josh

00:56:14 – 00:56:15

That's so cool.

Austin

00:56:15 – 00:56:18

Let let us know when you get the invite to the to the Oval Office.

Aaron

00:56:19 – 00:56:21

Yeah. I will. Yeah. I'm your president now. So

Josh

00:56:22 – 00:56:25

Your president now. Oh, boy. Alright, Josh.

Austin

00:56:25 – 00:56:26

We we can wrap it up there.

Josh

00:56:27 – 00:56:30

Cool. Well, thank you so much, Aaron. This has been a pleasure.

Austin

00:56:30 – 00:56:31

Yeah. This is fun.

Josh

00:56:31 – 00:56:41

Thanks for having me. Yeah. I I've been I've I've enjoyed watching your journey from the early days of the try hard. I think it was the try hard era. I I forget what that was.

Josh

00:56:41 – 00:56:43

Maybe a couple years back.

Aaron

00:56:43 – 00:56:43

Effort era.

Josh

00:56:43 – 00:56:54

Maximum Effort area. That's right. And, yeah, it's, it's a joy seeing you produce cool things, and, I encourage you to keep going. And thanks for chatting with us today.

Aaron

00:56:54 – 00:56:59

Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I don't know if you figured anything out, but it was at least fun. So thanks for having me.

Josh

00:56:59 – 00:57:00

Yeah. I think we did.

Austin

00:57:00 – 00:57:06

Yeah. If Aaron Aaron, why don't you tell folks where they can go to to give you money and and learn more about what you're up to?

Aaron

00:57:06 – 00:57:12

Yeah. For sure. You can go to Elon Musk's website, x.com. He's a friend of mine. You've you've probably heard of him.

Aaron

00:57:12 – 00:57:28

Right. Twitter, I'm Aaron d Francis, d for Daniel, and, same on YouTube. And then you can go to Aaron Francis, no d, dot com. Aaron Francis dot com, and you can find probably find links to everything. Honestly, Twitter's probably the best place.

Aaron

00:57:28 – 00:57:30

So Aaron d Francis on Twitter.

Austin

00:57:31 – 00:57:34

Okay. Thank thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate appreciate you hanging out.

Aaron

00:57:34 – 00:57:35

Yeah. Absolutely. Talk

Josh

00:57:35 – 00:57:37

soon. Talk to you later.

Aaron Francis: Building and Teaching Cool Things

Transcript

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