Aaron Francis: Laravel Solo, Courses, Screen casting

Eric Barnes

Welcome back to the Laravel News creator series. Today, I have the one and only Aaron Francis here. He is I feel like everybody knows Aaron at this point, but, welcome to the show, Aaron.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Thanks thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. It's like it's like the one person that don't need any introduction is you and Taylor, because you're just kind of everywhere, all over my feeds.

Aaron Francis

That's the goal.

Eric Barnes

I'm curious. This is this we'll just start off before we jump into the code. Like Okay. How how did that progression start? Because, like, I feel like I didn't really know you until, like Mhmm.

Two years ago or three years ago, and then now you're just everywhere. It's like Mhmm. Was it just, like, instantly, like, you you hit something and then you were famous from then on? Or was it just a

Aaron Francis

I mean, it was it was it I think it probably was that discreet. It was like a moment in time. I've been using Laravel since, man, probably since 2014. And so I've been around, but then, yeah, a few years ago, I realized that I was doing all this, like, what I thought was interesting stuff and then just never talking about it, online. And so I started just talking about it online, and turns out that is what makes the big difference.

And so, yeah, that was a couple years ago, and, just have kept talking, and it keeps working.

Eric Barnes

I love that. You know, it's it's surprisingly hard to talk about stuff you're working on, or at least for me. Like, it's like, you know, throughout the day, I'm like, this is kinda cool. Maybe I should share it, but then I'm like, nobody nobody really cares about this at all. Like Mhmm.

So why even share it? You know? So you gotta get over that hurdle. Right? It's like do.

That's hard to do. Yep.

Aaron Francis

I

Eric Barnes

know I know you actually I think you just gave a talk on all this.

Aaron Francis

I did. Yeah.

Eric Barnes

But yeah. So it's like Yeah. So if if you wanna get better about sharing stuff online, go watch Aaron's talk, which we'll have in the show notes.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. And it was a it's a updated and adapted version of the talk I gave at Laracon Nashville, like, a year a little more than a year ago. And so that one that one's online as well, the Laracon Nashville talk. Same same idea, but this one this past weekend was updated to include all the stuff that's happened since then, which is a lot.

Eric Barnes

It was it was a whole lot. Yeah. It's, yeah. You've you you're super busy. Like, so we'll just jump into, like, one of your projects that you started recently.

It's called Solo. Mhmm. Like, give me when did you create this?

Aaron Francis

So, a few weeks before I started Solo, which I'll explain in a second, but a few weeks before I started that, Taylor released, a new, like, it's not even a package. It's basically like a script. So in the new Laravel skeleton, the framework like, when you download it to create an app, there's a new script in there. I think it's, like, composer run dev or something. And that composer run dev script, like, delegates down to an NPM package called concurrently.

And what concurrently does is it runs three or four process it runs as many as you want, but in our case, it runs three or four processes at once, and it kinda munges all the output. So it, like, puts all the output in together. So in the situation where you're starting a new Laravel application, you run composer run dev, and it starts goodness. What does it start? The Vite, dev server, the PHP HTTP, like, development server.

Does it start anything else? It does. The queues, maybe. I think you're right.

Eric Barnes

I think it I think it starts the

Aaron Francis

queues or something like that.

Eric Barnes

It might it might even run PHP artisan serve. I can't remember it.

Aaron Francis

I think it does. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. What's the And so he released that, and I used it.

And I was like, hey. This is really convenient. And then I thought, oh, the logs. It tails logs. And then I thought, wait.

This is kind of a mess because, you know, every time you, you know, every time you type a single character in a JavaScript file or a view template or something, you get this, like, this new output in your in your on your screen. And then your logs are kinda, like, scrolling off the screen too fast because your views or your Vite stuff is, like, taking up a bunch of space. And so I didn't like having it all intertwined. I didn't like it having it all mixed up, and I thought I could I could probably write something in PHP to do this. And then I remembered I remembered that our dear friend, Joe Tannenbaum, has a, course on Laracasts about, like, building command line interfaces, basically.

I think I think, technically, they're called two e's, which is like a textual user interface. I don't know. I made that up. And I thought, okay. Well, this is, like, this is a fun thing to learn.

And so I watched Joe's course, which is just fantastic as all Lyricast course are. I watched his course, and then I was like, sure. How hard could this be? You know, fame famous last words. And so in, like, two or three days, I had the the first, you know, the first prototype up and running.

And so what solo is is it is a, it's a Laravel package that serves the same purpose as concurrently does with over in the the node ecosystem. But, it provides you with a single process that you can run. So you just run php artisan solo. And what solo will do is it'll bring up in your terminal, bring up like a it's almost like a dashboard looking thing. It's got tabs across the top and hot keys across the bottom.

And then in the middle is a big pane of output. And you can run as many processes through solo as you want. So, like, in a typical setup, you would processes through solo as you want. So, like, in a typical setup, you would start the logs. You would start, you know, PHP artisan serve, and then you would start the key workers and maybe reverb and maybe some other stuff.

Right? Every team every team has their own stuff that they need to run locally. And so with solo, you can just configure it. You can there's, like, a solo service provider, and you can just configure it, such that when you start solo, it starts all these commands. And then you can, like, arrow between them.

So there's tabs at the top. You arrow between them, and it shows the output of each individual command individually. And you can, like, stop commands, restart them, clear the output. And then the thing that I have been the rabbit hole that I went down is interactive processes. So you can, like, you can run, basically, like, PHP artisan make, but you need to start typing some stuff in there.

Right? And so I figured out how you can, through much pain, figured out how you can, like, go interactive into one of your processes that's running in solo. So you can hit the I key and then start typing and then, like, actually interact with the underlying process, and then you can bail out when you're done. And so it has grown basically into, a process manager and I think very similar to TMux, but I've never actually used TMux. So this is maybe TMux for normies.

So that's kind of the the pitch for solo. And it's been it's been a ton of fun, but also I've gone deeper into, like, the command line and terminal stuff than I ever expected that I would.

Eric Barnes

Well, is there are you gonna have other use cases for all the terminal stuff you're learning or along with building the solo, or is this just sort of a fun, you know, secondary side project that you just thought would be fun to do?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So that's always the question. Right? Especially now that, you know and we'll probably get to this. Now that I don't have a full time job, there's always a question of, like, what's the ROI here?

And some of that I try not to worry about upfront, but I do have, you know, a business partner, and I'm like, hey. I'm spending my time on this. Here's why I think it makes sense. And so I think, you know, just, like, the biggest reason I'm doing it is because I wanted it I just wanted it for myself. And I think it's good I think it's a good, like, gift to the community as DHH talks about open source.

Like, it's just a gift. You can take it. You don't have to, but I made this, and I think it's nice. Here you go. Everyone have it.

Now now that we're so deep into it, there are, there's a good argument that there are a couple packages that I've written inside this single solo package that I should, like, kinda carve out and make, into the solo namespace. One, for example, is I've written a full, like, a full terminal emulator in PHP. And so that's one of those things that I could, like, carve out, and it could be its own standalone package that could potentially be helpful for other people. And then there's, there's the actual solo process one. There's the, screen emulator, and then there's a bunch of, like, antsy manipulation stuff that I've written because in the terminal, like, to turn some text red, you type in these crazy characters that are invisible, and it turns the text red.

And so I've done a ton of work around that to, like, make that a sane user experience, and I could carve that out as well into, another package. And then I think, you know, a lot of what I do is create content, and I think it would be fun to do basically like a rebuild where I, you know, sit down in one day and reimplement it from scratch and do one of those, like, you know, one of those crazy, like, six hour YouTube videos that people do sometimes. And we'll see if it works. I've never done one like that. So there are a lot of places I could take it.

Of course, I could do conference talks. I could write articles. So I'm trying. Everything that I do, I try to make serve multiple purposes, because if it's just, like, one thing, well, we've got 10 other ideas that could serve multiple purposes, so we would have to pick those instead. So that's kinda how I think about, like, spending time on something like this.

Eric Barnes

Right. Right. I gotcha. It's, it's pretty sweet. So one of the questions that, was asked, actually, Janek asked me.

He's like, is ask Aaron if he thinks this will eventually become part of Core Laravel.

Aaron Francis

That is always an interesting question to me. I don't know, and I don't hardly ever push for anything to become Core Laravel. I wrote a package years ago called, Pseudo Demons or Pseudo Demons, and it was a it was a way to run, scheduled commands, basically, like, sub one minute. So it used to be in Laravel that you could run scheduled commands every minute. I needed something that was basically like, like an infinite loop, like a like a daemon, basically, that was, like, constantly pulling the database every two, three, four seconds.

And so I wrote this big this big package for it. Worked out great. Maintained it for a couple years. And then later, Taylor DM'd me, and he was like, hey. Do you still use this package?

He's like, yeah. It's awesome. He said, okay. Well, we're thinking about implementing subsecond processes in Laravel. I was like, take whatever you need.

Like, I I don't think he took anything from my package, but my my point was, hey. This I've battle tested this. It's been in production for many years. Like, have at it. And I think I prefer that method because, I don't wanna be on the hook for messing up Laravel, frankly.

You know? Like, I don't wanna I don't wanna come in with this at this point, this solo package is ginormous. I don't wanna come in with this package and cause a bunch of headaches for Taylor and Dries and whoever's maintaining, you know, the open source side of Laravel at this point. And so what I would rather do is spend a year or two or three fleshing it out, just eating that glass by myself. And then if they wanna come along and adopt it somehow, that's totally fine for me.

I think there is a world in which the, application skeleton could ship with, this my package composer required without having, to, like, hand it over to the Laravel organization. Because when you hand it over to the Laravel organization, as much as I will say, sure. Yeah. I'll keep maintaining it. I could just walk away.

And then it's on somebody else's shoulders, and they didn't write the code, and that sucks. And so I anticipate they'll add it at some point if it's good enough to the framework, like that, this application starter, but not the actual Laravel organization. That's just a guess.

Eric Barnes

So the next thing, you have three courses now. You let's let me let me think if I can go through the history. You started with screencasting. I did. Then you did SQLite and then Postgres.

Is that is that the sort of the way you you went through and launched all these?

Aaron Francis

Yep. That that is correct. The, deep the deep lore is I also have an accounting course for sophomores at Texas A and M University. I did that one in 2016. And then right before screencasting, I did, MySQL for developers for my former employer.

And so those I think that is the the totality of my courses. But, yeah, as a, as a solo entering into the money making online world, screencasting was my first real big one, although accounting did some money over many, many years, but the the real big ones are the three that you mentioned.

Eric Barnes

Gotcha. What you know, it's sort of interesting because you would think the accounting one would actually have a way bigger market than databases or, screencasting.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. It it, it doesn't because it is, the topic is introduction to financial accounting for college students. Like, it's not, it's not like learn how to do bookkeeping for entrepreneurs, which is on our list of, like, ideas. But the specific topic of that course is it's basically, teaching to the university's curriculum. So it's not broadly applicable.

Eric Barnes

I gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Because my actually, my daughter's in accounting right now, and then, she sort of hates it, of course. And she's like and I was like, well, I'm pretty sure, like, if you need help, like, I can just, like, ping ping, Aaron, and he'll be like, yeah.

This is what you would do. Yep. But it but, you know, I don't know. Like, high school accounting, there's probably a big market in there because

Aaron Francis

everybody still does it. And I freaking love accounting. Still do. Still do. I was an accounting major.

I was a CPA there for a second, and I just love accounting so much. So, yeah, that's a that's an interest that's an interesting idea. We have not Steve and I have not ruled out doing more full on, like, accounting slash business course.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. It what? I I will say this. You always have a fallback if if you hate being a developer because Mhmm. Good accountants are so hard to find.

Ones that actually, like, look out for you. Like No. They're all fun. They can do numbers, but, like, they none of them are, like, have your best interest at heart. Like, you have to go to them and, like Yes.

Can I do this? And they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. You can do that.

Aaron Francis

I was like, oh, I'm like, they they

Eric Barnes

three years ago.

Aaron Francis

You exist until, you know, it's you email them and you're like, hey. When are my documents due? And they're like, oh, man. They were due two months ago. And you're like, why didn't you should have told me something.

Like, Like, I know that it's the same every year, but you gotta reach out and be like, hey. Here's what I need from you. I know. Accountants are the worst.

Eric Barnes

That's great. Well, so so on your the the first course screencasting, are you Mhmm. Do you consider it complete? Are you gonna kinda revisit it, or is it just good to go?

Aaron Francis

It is complete, and we're gonna completely redo it. So it is, it's it's pretty good right now. I think it's a good solid effort. I think it, it needs a little bit of love. And so that is the goal for, the first month of next year.

So January of twenty twenty five, Steve and I are gonna redo just from the ground up, we're gonna redo screen casting. And so the shape of that is going to be, I will teach the, like, the philosophical course, which is the only course that we have right now. So I'll teach that on, like, why you wanna do it, how to do it, how to prepare your material, how to prepare yourself, tips for recording, that sort of stuff. And then Steve is going to teach a series of, basically, like, add on courses or adjunct courses for every popular editor. Because, you know, Steve's been a video editor now for more than twenty years.

He's used them all at some point except ScreenFlow, which I will teach. I will continue to teach ScreenFlow. But he'll teach, you know, he'll teach Premiere and, DaVinci and, I don't even remember what all of them are. Final Cut. So he'll teach all of those.

But from a very, like, scoped down perspective of as a screen caster, what do you need to know? Like, what is the 20% of Final Cut Pro that you need to know to be able to make really good screencasts fast? And so we'll we'll have this whole kind of, like, collection of courses with the hope being you buy, like, the flagship that, like, teaches you how to screencast, why you want to, how to be successful, and then you pick your editor of choice, and you buy that, as an add on. So that that's the idea, and we'll we'll start on that in January.

Eric Barnes

I like that. So from the course, you talk about ScreenFlow. Are you is that still your sort of method? You record everything in ScreenFlow, and then you

Aaron Francis

I sure do.

Eric Barnes

Pass it to him, and he does whatever he wants to and whatever app he wants to. Okay.

Aaron Francis

That's right. It's crazy. I mean, ScreenFlow sucks, but it's the best of, you know, it's the best of the normie tools. And I think, potentially, one of the only ones that you can record directly into. And so the reason I like ScreenFlow so much is you can say record my camera, record my mic, record my screen, go.

And it records everything. Whereas with, like, QuickTime or something else, it's just kind of a mess to get everything else to get it recorded somewhere else. And so, yeah, I record everything in ScreenFlow. I still do a rough cut to to chop out any bad takes, and then I I just ship the ScreenFlow file over the Internet to Steve, and he exports it to Apple ProRes or something and then puts it in whatever editor he uses and does it from there.

Eric Barnes

I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's funny because ScreenFlow annoys me to no end. Yes.

But it's the only one I've actually found that you could actually do those three things, you know, your screen and your face and your mic, where everything else, you know, is not that not that handy. Yeah. The the worst, though, is, like, if you're not on a big monitor, I don't know if you've done this, you're trying to do it

Aaron Francis

on your

Eric Barnes

laptop Mhmm. ScreenFlow will not go down small enough. So you have all this, like,

Aaron Francis

extra stuff.

Eric Barnes

It's very floor

Aaron Francis

kinda hangs off the Yeah. The screen. It's crazy. Yeah. There, there there might be Steve and I might have some news to share on that in the next six to twelve months, but right now, it's a it's a little early.

But, yeah, we're we are also aware of the pains of ScreenFlow, and I still recommend it because it's the only thing out there. Screen Studio is nice, but it's a fundamentally different it serves a fundamentally different need. Screen Studio is like, I wanna make a one, two, three minute demo of my application software, whatever, But I I'm not doing, like, full on editing, you know, a course in Screen Studio. No way. Mhmm.

So there's there's something missing there, and I think Steve and I have found

Eric Barnes

a solution for it. Oh, I love this. A brand new app. Mac app. I will make sure it's a Mac app.

Well, I guess, technically, Windows is probably bigger, but Mac apps are what we all know and love. ScreenFlow is good. The one thing that bothers me about it is, like, you can't actually move the captions around.

Aaron Francis

Screen Studio?

Eric Barnes

Yeah. Screen Studio. Yeah. And so, like, when you try to make Instagram reels, the captions end up coming out, like, under the like, where your name is at the bottom. And, just little minor things like that.

It's just like, why can't we move this around? Like, I don't I don't get what's going on behind the scenes there. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

But And it seems like he does great. Like, it seems like even despite all those issues, you know, there are a few other things about it. It seems like he's just constantly selling copies, and so I think it's a good space to be in. Mhmm.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. Definitely. I think the whole screencasting things should continue to grow, you know, in the future compared to, which I don't know. You're you're very good at picking things that are sort of, will be around forever and doesn't go too much out of date.

Aaron Francis

That's the hope. That's why that's why I'm glad, I'm that's why I'm glad I'm not a React guy. One, I don't like it, but two, it moves so fast. Like, I feel like all the React, instructors are constantly and that just feels exhausting.

Eric Barnes

Mhmm. For sure. And then well, like, SQL, that probably that doesn't really change, does it? Like, maybe? I mean, I think MySQL eight changed a bunch of crap and broke stuff, but that was it.

Right?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Even, like, even Postgres moves faster than MySQL, but it's still like, people don't update their databases terribly quickly. So, you know, you're running let's say you're running Postgres fifteen sixteen. I think we're we're currently on 17. Let's say you're running Postgres fourteen fifteen.

You're not really in a hurry to wanna upgrade one of your core pieces of but more than that, Postgres itself can't chain like, it can get better and add new features, but it can't fundamentally change terribly much from release to release because then people would stop using it. Right? And so I feel like that's a little bit a little bit of a difference between React. I feel like React is constantly shipping experimental stuff and basically changing how everything works, whereas Postgres can't really get away with that.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. You know, it it just reminds me of the good old trusty jQuery. I'm pretty sure you could, like, have a jQuery one app right now and just throw in the brand new version of jQuery. It'll probably still work.

Aaron Francis

Yep. Exactly.

Eric Barnes

That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I I I think, more people should try to do that. But I'm I'm sure that's so hard, especially when you have all these, you know, new ideas and things change.

You're like, oh, yeah. That was a dumb idea. Mhmm. But, but, yeah, that's, that's super interesting. So, what other courses you got coming up?

Anything anything you wanna talk talk about yet?

Aaron Francis

Let's see.

Eric Barnes

Aside from screencasting redo?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. So the screencasting redos are big undertaking for first probably two months of next year, honestly. We have completed a guest course. So I had a guest instructor fly here to Dallas where I am and record an entire course here. That will probably come out in February or March, and it is a Rails, on SQLite course, teaching you basically how to go from zero to MVP, as quickly and as, with, like, high quality, like, not just ship a bunch of crap.

And so that'll come out probably in February. And then after that, we're gonna try a little bit of an experiment and go, maybe down market. So a lot of what I've done so far is very, like, intermediate level stuff. It's it's not it's not for people who are just getting started. You know, you could take the SQLite course not being, you know, being fresh out of school, and you'd probably learn a ton.

But it starts out pretty it starts out pretty quick, and we go pretty deep. And so that, I think I I like teaching that stuff. It does take a lot out of me because it's just so much harder to teach intermediate material. And, also, the market is just so much smaller. And so, after we finish screencasting early next year, I think I'm gonna do an introduction to SQL that's gonna be, like, you know, a short, maybe two, three hour course, very cheap, and very, like, here's what here's what a select statement is.

Here's what an update statement is. Because I think I live I live in a world where it's like, nah. Nobody would ever want that. That's so silly. Why would any no.

Everybody knows that stuff. And then you go to, I don't know, you go to any course platform anywhere, and it's all intro stuff. And it's like, okay. Come on. Like, that obviously makes sense.

There are way more beginners than there are intermediates. Like, use your head for a freaking second. And so I'm gonna try to do that. It's a little bit of a mismatch with my audience because my audience is, like, senior engineers. But it's a very good match with the Internet, And so it's gonna be a big I think it'll be a big SEO play.

This will be very different than what we've done in the past, which is, like, build up hype on Twitter and YouTube and then launch it to all of, you know, the people that follow me. This is gonna be basically like, hey, y'all. It's done. If you know anyone that would like it, it's out there. But I don't, honestly, I don't expect most people that follow me to need a course like this.

So that'll be that'll be an experiment. We'll see how that goes.

Eric Barnes

I think you might be surprised. Like, I don't know. I still Google the very, very basic SQL stuff. It's like anytime I need to do something besides, whatever Eloquent is, it's like, well, let me go Google because I can't remember how what it is that stuff does. Mhmm.

Especially, like, for me, it's like the joins is where it gets super confusing. And Mhmm. And, you know, what the index and do all this basic stuff. It's like, you know, everybody should already know this probably, but, you know, Tom O'Eric don't know. So he's gonna he he's right up your alley.

But it it it's also really good too, though, because that would actually transition well. Because once you get them signed up to there, then, you know, after they get through it, then now they're on the intermediate level. They're ready to Yep. You know, continue those learning steps. So I love that.

Aaron Francis

That'll that'll be interesting. We'll give them a, you know, an intro to SQL, and then maybe they can pick their flavor. They can do, you know, mastering Postgres or high performance SQLite or something like that, to carry on learning. So trying to, like, trying to round out the offerings in this, education empire. And there's just there's just so much to do.

But this will be so much easier for me to do. I could probably sit down next week and and record an intro to sequel with zero prep whatsoever. And so I'm very much looking forward to that versus, you know, versus I'm still finishing Postgres, and I've still got, you know, dozens of pronounce of docs everywhere because I'm like, I gotta make sure I get all this right because this is, you know, these are intermediate people, and I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna lead them astray. But with, like, intro people, I just know it all cold because I've been doing it for so long. So I'm looking forward to that.

Eric Barnes

That's awesome. So so your guest instructor, is he using your office? Is he same backdrop, same app, everything?

Aaron Francis

He was. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. So we flew him here, and, he sat in here and and recorded.

You know? We we we he brought a few extra, like, trinkets for the backdrop to make it, his flavor a little bit. But, yeah, he used my camera, my mic, my lights, my desk, my monitors. We just plugged in his computer, and got ScreenFlow on his computer, and that was basically it. So yeah.

And then we we saved them all. Like, before he left, we saved everything to my, Synology NAS that's in there, so my network attached storage device. And then Steve just logs into that NAS and pulls them off and starts editing. So it it it kind of it worked out great. I am curious to see, so, like, the production worked out great.

I'm curious to see how the distribution and the selling of that does, because this will this will be the first one where I'm not the instructor, and we'll see we'll see what kind of pull, the try hard brand has when it's a different instructor.

Eric Barnes

That makes sense. So you you sort of touched on that. Steve is not in your city. Right? Y'all are No.

Unfortunately. Y'all are both remote. So you Yeah. You actually have a a computer in your in in your apartment office, and you just put everything on that, and then y'all just have access.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I have a

Eric Barnes

That's that's a pretty good idea.

Aaron Francis

It's great. I have, it's a Synology, network attached storage device, and it holds I've I think I have got, like, five drives in there, and I think the max usable storage is, like, 22 terabytes or something, because it's set up in an, a RAID configuration. And so that is just always on. It runs. It's wild.

It's like a it is like a computer. It runs Linux. And so I could I could install PHP on it and, like, run, you know, Laravel apps on my Synology, but I don't really have a use for it. But, yeah. So I drop everything onto that Synology, and then we use, a tool called Tailscale where Steve, can just mount the device on his computer.

So he can open finder, and it looks like an external drive, and he can just click on it and browse through it. Of course, transferring is slow because it's from Dallas to Boise, but it's just incredibly like, it's incredibly practical. And I saw the other day, I was adding some new ScreenFlow documents, and I saw that some had been, like, labeled green. And I was like I texted Steve, and I was like, did you put these green dots here? He was like, oh, yeah.

I thought that was local. And I I I didn't know that you could, like, in finder, in Mac finder, you could, like, add labels to stuff. And so I think he's using that to keep track of what he's edited and what he hasn't, but it's very like, it surprised me because it it is just a local device to both of us even though the inter Internet separates us. It's very cool.

Eric Barnes

That that is pretty sweet. What about, do you keep every video you ever make, you keep all the raw footage forever?

Aaron Francis

Yeah. I'm I'm back and forth on that. I have for the courses so far for a lot of the YouTube videos. No. I don't.

Right. But for the courses so far, I have. I don't know that it I don't know that it's important. Mhmm. I don't I don't know.

It just makes me nervous to delete, like, course material. Once we hit I think we're only you know, we've only used two terabytes of storage. Once we start bumping up against the limit, we'll probably delete some of the old stuff, but now I I still have it all. And I I'm sure Steve does too. I'm sure he's got a copy of it over on, you know, his working, drives over there.

So and it's backed up. Like, I I back up the Synology to back Blaze b two. And so I just I just have copies everywhere, which is feels excessive.

Eric Barnes

That's that's good, though. Like, for me, like, I have copies of nothing. Whatever, once I put hip hop, I wish I just go and delete, but, of course, I'm not making, courses or selling anything. So it's just like, whatever. I don't care anymore.

Just be gone. Get get off my computer. Mhmm. But, yeah, that's that's pretty that's a pretty good I like the tags too. So I use tags.

Do you have you ever used Hazel Mac app?

Aaron Francis

Oh, man. That rings a bell. I feel like I used that years ago.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. So I still use it because everything What

Aaron Francis

does it do?

Eric Barnes

So it it can basically watch finder and or watch files and just do stuff automatically. Mhmm. So, like, when I download a file, it'll tag it blue and put it in the downloads folder. And then anything tagged blue that's older than, like, fourteen days, it just automatically deletes off of the downloads folder. So that way, I never have to, like, clean up anything.

It just automatically handles all that. And then the other thing, I I don't do it much anymore, but, used to, it would I had a had it set up to auto compress images, like, featured images for for the Louisville news website. So I would just drop them in a folder. It will not automatically run the thing. But now it's, like, whatever.

I'm paying for pic perf, and Mhmm. I'm hoping they handle all of it because it's just something else I don't really wanna think about or deal with. But I don't know. Still an evil app to me. It's just

Aaron Francis

it's just I love

Eric Barnes

it feels like it's from the eighties, but it still works.

Aaron Francis

Man, I love those single purpose little Mac apps. Steve and I were just talking about that today. Like, I feel like back in the early twenty tens, late '2 thousands, there were so many cool little Mac apps that just did a few little things. And we're we're taking some inspiration from those as we start to think about what kind of software we wanna build, if any. But those are just so fun.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. Like, the first one that comes to my mind is, remember the bartender app? I mean, I still use it all the time. I love bartender. It's awesome.

Yep. Yes. So, well, so so I I know you've already talked about this on 40 other podcasts. So you you've went from full time to or from working full time to now being a business owner full time. Mhmm.

How how's your transition? Still going good? I mean, it seems like you're

Aaron Francis

Yeah.

Eric Barnes

I mean, it seems like every day you're publishing something new. So It doesn't feel like burnout stage yet.

Aaron Francis

Oh, man. It's funny you say that because it doesn't it doesn't feel like that. It feels like every day I'm behind and should be doing way more. So that's nice to hear from the outside. It looks like it's going well.

It is actually going well, in terms of, like, we're making money. We're surviving. We are, I think, at this point, default alive. So that part is going exceptionally well, and I'm not, I'm not blind to the fact that that is not the case for most people. It was not some as you know, it was not some calculated thing to, like, go out on my own.

Steve and I both got laid off. Like, they laid off, you know, fully half of the company that we were working at, and Steve and I were a part of that. And so it has been, perhaps more stressful than I would have liked. You know, I've got, I've got four kids, two sets of twins, and all of them are under four. I've got a two two one year olds and two three year olds, which is crazy.

My wife stays at home, obviously, because somebody's gotta take care of those those four kids. And then even with my wife at home, that's still not enough adults at home. And so we have an au pair at home as as well who helps take care of those kids. And so, you know, without my wife, I would just be completely 100% hosed. The fact that she wants to be a stay at home mom has helped us out a whole lot.

But that also means as we've got seven mouths to feed, you know, between the six of us and the au pair. That's a lot of people. And so it's been it's been incredibly stressful. We came out of the gate. We I let's see.

We got laid off maybe in March. And then I think in April, we decided, like, very quickly thereafter, like, hey. Let's just we're not gonna go get jobs. Let's try this out. And then in July, we re released, high performance SQLite, and then in October, we released mastering Postgres.

And so that's just a ton of work. I mean, each of those courses is more than a hundred videos, and there have been YouTube videos all along as well. And I don't know. I'm loathed to give advice of, like, why do everybody have a calm life. Have a calm business.

Don't work very hard because I just don't think that that is possible. I think a lot of that advice comes from people that have made it. And it's like, you mean your millions of dollars help you have a calm business? That makes sense to me. And so, that has always ripped me the wrong way when these uber successful people are like, you guys just need to slow down a little bit.

And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. So, you know, looking back, I don't think I could change much about it, because we started from a standing start. You know, we started with $0 in the bank and had to get back to working salaries, and we have. We've done it, more than done it. And now that we have, I think we're gonna slow down quite a bit.

So that's part of the impetus behind redoing screencasting because that material is very easy because I've already done it. And then doing the intro to SQL, again, very easy material because now we have these sales that are, like, propelling us along from these other courses. And so we had to come out of the gate super fast to be able to make this work, and we did. And now I think we've bought ourselves a little bit of, a little bit of runway just to kinda slow down for a little bit. So that that's the goal.

I'm I'm incredibly grateful that it's working at all, but make no make no bones about it. It has been very difficult.

Eric Barnes

Yes. I totally get that. When like, my wife stayed at home. We only have two. So, you know, I I figured out what caused it, and we stopped it, unlike Erin.

But, but, but, man, like, just her staying home for the, now my oldest is, 16. Like, those sixteen years has actually been really, really nice. Not because, of course, she gets to spend all the time with them and do all that stuff, but just like doctor's appointments, school dropouts, school pickups,

Aaron Francis

sports things. Doctors appointments. How are they always sick?

Eric Barnes

I know. And then she's like, well, I think I wanna get a job. She's like, because I kinda hate being at home all the time. And it's like every time she says that, it's like the next three weeks. It's just like every day there's something she has to go do for the kids.

And it's just like, it's gonna be, you know, until they can drive, it's like, it's so hard to, get all the stuff that needs to be done when you have kids. It's crazy. It's like, you know, you know, I don't remember our parents doing that, but like, I don't know. Maybe it's just different now.

Aaron Francis

Maybe. But, yeah, it's hard work, man. I you know, over Thanksgiving, of course, I was, not working, and our au pair wasn't working as well, because, you know, she gets holidays and stuff. And so that was a, you know, five day stretch of just me me just doing childcare stuff, and I'm like, this is impossible. This is so difficult.

I I always come home for dinner and bedtime, and I'm usually there when they wake up for breakfast. And then on the weekends, of course, I I don't work. I spend all my time with them. And so I I've had tastes of, like, god, this is hard. But that that five day stretch of no childcare in sight, no kids school, you're just, like, there with two three year olds and two one year olds.

That was tough, man. That was hard.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. I do I don't, I don't miss those days. I did not I did not enjoy the baby stage. I like the I like the, like, six maybe five. I don't know.

When they can talk and communicate Yep. And you, like, have conversations. That was my favorite age. And then it's it's funny how, like, this is totally off the level topic, but, like, how your role changes as a parent, you know, as your kid grows. You know, you start off being basically the only care you know, they just need you for everything, and then all of a sudden, you know, now I'm at the point where, basically, I'm just the psychiatrist to my kid or psychologist to my kids because, you know, high school drama.

So, anyway, I I find that fun how you grow as a human when you have humans. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

I'm excited. I'm excited for the I love my kids dearly, and I don't wanna wish away any time with them, but I am excited for, like, when they hit four. I think that's gonna that's gonna be fundamental change for for me.

Eric Barnes

Yes. Yes. I don't know. Fun times, man. Mhmm.

Go back and rid of all that. Make sure you take lots of videos. That's something that we're doing. Yeah. We did we have tons of pictures, but, like, the you know, back sixteen years ago, the phones weren't really, the cameras weren't that good.

But, but now we have, we don't have near enough, videos and it's sad to go back and, oh man, I remember how cute they were and their little, you know, their little voice and the way they pronounce things. And we have none of that on video. It's like, oh, we failed. But, yeah, that's great. Well, what else you got going on?

Anything anything fun and exciting that we, missed that you wanna tell people to go sign up. I am speaking

Aaron Francis

at Laracon EU, in February. Are you coming?

Eric Barnes

I am not.

Aaron Francis

You're not. Okay. So I'm speaking at Laracon EU in February, and it has yet to be revealed to me. No. It has yet to be revealed to the public, what I am speaking about.

But I'm, I'm creating I've created maybe half of, so I need to finish, but I'm creating a new, library for, a little bit of a seem more seamless interaction between, Laravel, on the back end and JavaScript on the front end. So it will work with inertia. It doesn't replace inertia, but it provides a little bit, a little bit of a nicer experience for getting back and forth between the two. So that is a little tease. I can't say I can't say much more because, one, it doesn't have a name.

It's gotta have a it's gotta have a great name. I'll probably ask Taylor to name it for me. And then, two, it's not finished yet. So I gotta do that before, before February. So that's the other big thing on my mind right now.

Eric Barnes

Wait. So you're you're creating a whole brand new thing just for a conference talk. Yeah.

Aaron Francis

So that was an oopsie

Eric Barnes

doozy. This is this right here. Like, nobody has to tap that.

Aaron Francis

No. What happened you see what had happened was I I was working on I was working on this library. Well, I was working on a site. I was working on either our, course platform or my personal site. I don't remember.

And I kind of, like, invented or, like, created this paradigm. And I was like, hey. This is kinda nice. I like this a lot. And I couldn't justify spending too much time on it, and I thought, well, here's what I'll do.

I will submit, a talk to Laracon EU. And then if they pick me, I'll finish it. If not, that's perfect. I don't have to touch it again. And they picked me, and I was like, shoot.

Now I gotta finish this thing. So, yeah, a little bit, hoisted by my own petard there, but it'll be cool. It'll be worth it. I am I'm excited for it to be out there.

Eric Barnes

That's sweet. I mean, that's that's next level. I mean, your your little motto is what? Try hard. So that Yep.

That goes right along

Aaron Francis

the way.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. It goes that's not only try hard, but that's, like, a lot of work and effort. Boy. That's a big effort. Yeah.

So are you doing Lyricon AU this 2025?

Aaron Francis

I'm not. AU is tough.

Eric Barnes

I know.

Aaron Francis

AU is only gonna happen when I can take my wife with me, and that's just not possible yet. Because I can't justify it's gotta be a week, like, to get down there to do the thing and then to get back. That still feels tight. And I don't know. I just can't justify it yet.

So AU and India are kinda off the table until we can make a, you know, a couple strip out of it.

Eric Barnes

That's that's actually what we're doing. I can't go until the youngest turns 16, which would be twenty twenty six. And the wife wants to go. So it's like, we gotta have everything set up because it's it's right at it's always like November, you know, school's in.

Aaron Francis

Yep.

Eric Barnes

And, you know, if we're not here to take them to school, then it's not gonna happen. So it's like everything should be easier when they're both driving. Yeah. So that's our goal. As long as they don't trash our house with parties, hopefully, we've trained them better.

Aaron Francis

They'll be fine.

Eric Barnes

We hope. We hope. But yeah. So so Laracon, EU in February, which, I think would be amazing. I've always wanted to go to Amsterdam, but, again, haven't made it all the way over there.

Mhmm. Lyricon US, I assume you're gonna I

Aaron Francis

hope I hope I can MC again. I you know, every year, I ask I ask Taylor at some point, hey. Can I MC? And so far, he's said, sounds good. And we'll just you know, we're gonna ride that train as long as we can.

That's the goal.

Eric Barnes

Yeah. That's that's that's that's you described Taylor perfectly. It's always, like, I'll text him something, but he'll be, like, yes. And then it's, like, that's it. You don't hear anything else.

You're, like, okay. I guess we're good. Yep.

Aaron Francis

And that that's, like, literally the last I heard that I showed up at at Lyricon. It was in Dallas this year. I showed up at Lyricon Dallas, and I was, like, I'm MCing. Right? And he was like, yep.

I was like, okay. Good. I just wanna make sure that, like, they're you know,

Eric Barnes

we're still on

Aaron Francis

the same page

Eric Barnes

here. That's so good. Alright. Well, if you have nothing else, I think we'll wrap it up here, and, you know, we'll get this edited and published out. And I'll you know, I appreciate you taking the time this afternoon to come and come and do this.

This is fun.

Aaron Francis

Of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Eric Barnes

It's the whole reason I started this is just because I thought it would be fun to talk to people, and it's Yeah. It does its thing. So Yeah.

Aaron Francis

This is great. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun.

Eric Barnes

Alright. Well, I appreciate you. And, until next time. Everybody, go follow Aaron, and we'll have all his things in the show notes and all the other things, everything he's building. The show notes are gonna be, like, 14 pages long of everything he's built, but we're gonna have them all right there for you.

Perfect. Alright. Well, thanks again, Aaron.

Aaron Francis

You got it.