The Big Announcement w/ Taylor Otwell

Ian

Hello? Good

Aaron

morning, Ian. We got somebody with us.

Ian

We got a guest. It's been a little while.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Hey, guys. Good to be here.

Ian

Soothing sounds of Taylor Otwell, still in her best voice Back

Taylor Otwell

with another mostly technical podcast. Oh, man.

Ian

You used

Aaron

to do those Laravel snippets back in the office this week. Those were great.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It's like every week, basically.

Aaron

No. I miss those.

Ian

We also used to do, some movie podcast, Taylor and I. We did, like, three or four of those. And, Yeah. I went to saw revenge of the Sith. So maybe Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, a little revenge of the Sith, little quick quick movie pod, to start the show.

Taylor Otwell

Why were the it's an okay movie. Why were they re showing it? It was, like, the twenty year anniversary, thirty year anniversary?

Ian

I think it was.

Taylor Otwell

Like twenty years? Yeah.

Ian

I think it was maybe twenty years. It was something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But I saw it set, like, some kind of record for a rerelease or something.

Like, people people clapped at the end. It was like Really? Yeah. That's what I was like. I was like, oh, man.

The nostalgia's hitting hard.

Taylor Otwell

The Star Wars franchise is just such a tough topic for me. Let me pull up the Star Wars franchise movie list real quick. Yeah. And the the problem

Aaron

Which one was in theaters? Revenge of

Ian

the Sith?

Taylor Otwell

Revenge of the Sith. Yeah. Episode three.

Ian

Three, the last of the prequels.

Taylor Otwell

The problem is, as much as I hate to say it, more than 50% of the Star Wars movies are bad. They're just not good.

Ian

It's crazy.

Taylor Otwell

And the ones that are good are just so good. Yeah. Phantom Menace, bad. Attack of the clones, bad. Revenge of the Sith, okay.

A New Hope, great. Empire Strikes Back, great. Return of the Jedi, controversial opinion incoming, bad. Force Force Awakens, good. Last Jedi, bad.

Rise of Skywalker, bad. It's just it's very hit and miss.

Ian

I'm with you on all those, I think. What? Rogue one?

Taylor Otwell

Rogue one is good, I think. I actually enjoyed Rogue one more or less. I mean, it was entertaining, like, popcorn muncher movie, you know, in the Fast and Furious style of movies. It's just an entertaining I was about to say,

Aaron

you need a list on TaylorAtwell.com that ranks these movies.

Taylor Otwell

Nothing deep, but it was it was entertaining.

Ian

Yeah. That's what I think I agree with all that. Return of the Jedi, I think, salvages itself slightly at the end. I do enjoy the end of return of the Jedi, but, like, the first two thirds, like, I don't care about the Ewoks. I don't care about all this stuff.

All that stuff is bad. You know?

Taylor Otwell

Like I mean, I I know I've told you before. The Ewoks, like, really killed killed it for me, but it was our first glimpse into, like, the Jar Jar Binks mentality of George Lucas.

Ian

Mister mind of George Lucas. Yeah. Like, once he has no constraints and he can do literally anything he wants, like, it's all downhill.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. That's what it's that's what it was like watching revenge of the Sith. I was like, man. Like, I don't even know what he's thinking. I don't understand why he wanted to tell the story.

Like, there's no you get two and, like, three quarters of the prequel movies is like, Anakin Skywalker's a great guy. And Mhmm.

Taylor Otwell

Then

Ian

it's like there's literally five minutes where he turns to the dark side. He's like,

Taylor Otwell

stop the bad guy. I'm murdering children with a lightsaber.

Ian

Go murder children. Literally. Literally, it's five minutes. He's like, oh, no. It it snapped, and I'm going to murder children.

Which even if you gave me a good snap scene, fine. Like, give me something that pushes them over the edge, but there's not even, like, there's not that. It's like he's just scared about Padme, but it's, like, I don't

Taylor Otwell

think it

Aaron

will surprise either of you that I have not seen all these movies, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Ian

Star Wars, man.

Aaron

I've seen some of them. I've seen some of them. I think I've seen the original three, the middle ones, but I have not seen

Taylor Otwell

That's fine.

Aaron

This one that was just in theaters again, I haven't seen that one ever. Yeah.

Ian

You don't need to see that. It's bad. I will say the only thing I did, I did put this out there on the Internet, but I'll get your thoughts, Taylor, quickly is what made the movie laugh. I'm halfway in the movie. Right?

When me and my son are there, I'm like, this is it's brutal. Like dialogue is it's unbelievably bad. People are laughing, you know, when you're not supposed to be laughing, like it's, it's horrible. Dialogue. And then I realized if they made this a silent movie, keep the music.

Right? But, like, old school silent movies style where somebody's playing music. Right? And and then you just have the visual and there's no dialogue. It's, like, way better.

It's way, way better. It's just like the visuals and there's action. You don't need to hear the words for any of it really. It actually all makes more sense. I really started to see my dialogue.

I was like, it's better. That's kind of

Aaron

a brutal indictment. You

Taylor Otwell

just stopped. I know. I was just thinking that script whoever wrote that script, like, how bigger much bigger of an insult can you have?

Ian

Yeah. It's so much better without the dialogue, though. It's, like, actually, it's, like, much more compelling movie without dialogue when I was actively tuning it out.

Taylor Otwell

So You should make a we should make a a Star Wars silent cut of,

Ian

like, the whole Yes. That's literally what

Taylor Otwell

I'm saying.

Ian

Artsy. Yeah. I when I was walking out of the theater, I was like, exactly my thought. I was like, boy, if somebody did a silent cut of the prequels, I actually think the whole thing is, like, so much better. It's it's actually would be a lot better.

Yeah. The visuals are alright. You know? Especially, like, if you don't have to hear the terrible dialogue, it's like, oh, alright. It's fine.

Like, I don't like what they did with some of the visuals, but whatever. It's still compelling on some level. But

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. And I like this podcast. This is a good podcast.

Ian

We're not talking about boring tech stuff. The other thing is you gotta watch Andor. I know you Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

I saw the season two reviews are looking pretty crazy. Like, people are loving it.

Ian

Yeah. I just I don't I don't know if I like it as much as season one, but, I mean, it's only three episodes in. So I I do really like it, though. Like, the first episode, I was like, it's a little slower. But then by the third episode, it's, like, banging.

Yeah. It's they're right on it.

Taylor Otwell

So So I went out and looked. Are they releasing them in three episode chunks, like, every week or two weeks or something like that?

Ian

Is a three episode chunk for four weeks. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

That's kinda cool.

Ian

Like, yeah. It's basically like a year per chunk. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by that. So, like, they're kinda having these little movies basically of, like so it's kinda cool because also you get the, like, binge vibe, but you're not getting the whole thing. So you still have time to talk about it.

Right? And, like, all that stuff.

Taylor Otwell

And people did Wow. So a year goes by in show every three episodes. Right.

Ian

Yeah. Roughly. Wow. Okay. I guess they originally planned it to be five, five seasons, and then they were like, this is nuts.

We don't wanna do five seasons. So, like, they just did the like, I think the first season's like a year, and then they kind of compress the rest of the story, which I was a little worried about, but so far so good. So it seems solid.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I gotta watch it.

Ian

Yeah. Andor the first season's unbelievable. Aaron, you gotta watch. You gotta watch Andor. You could just jump right in on Andor.

You don't need to know all the Star Wars stuff. That's the beauty of it.

Aaron

What what is what is Andor? Where does it take place in

Ian

the universe? Disney plus. It's before the, like, destruction of the death star and all that. So if you're aware like, before the first the real first movie, episode four.

Aaron

So Yeah. And, you know, very on brand, Rogue One, the popcorn movie in the style of Fast and Furious. Great movie. Love it.

Ian

Yes. See?

Aaron

There you go. Love that movie. Great movie.

Ian

Andor is about that guy. So if you like that movie, you like the show. Yeah. Andor is that guy's name, the guy in Rogue One.

Aaron

Okay. Well, there you go. I'm in.

Ian

Good. Then we could do a review on here about that. So you got you gotta watch that. We got Taylor back

Aaron

on that. Want from me, Ian, is you just want me to watch movies so you can talk about movies, and I continually let you down. Down?

Ian

I wanna just shit can this whole show. I just wanna turn it into a movie podcast, and that's it. And I'm just totally I'm the

Aaron

holding you back.

Taylor Otwell

I'm the worst at watching movies and shows. It took Abigail and I, I think, three years to watch Ozark all the way through. I mean, the show was already done. Like, the show all the episodes were out. We're just terrible at finishing stuff like that.

Ian

It is kinda nice nowadays, though, that, like, most shows have an end. You know? It's like in the old days, if you didn't keep up with the show, but the show is still going on. It's not like you return to it in three years and, like, oh, we'll get to see what happens. It's like, no.

They're just doing another twenty four episodes next year. Like so it's kinda cool that shows have an actual arc, and it's like, oh, yeah. If I don't Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

Return to

Ian

it in three or four years, and then you get to see the end of the show, and that's cool. But, yeah, we tend to never return. That's pretty good that you guys are turn like, if we start something and then we don't finish it, like, right away, if we're not plowing through it, like, this is awesome.

Taylor Otwell

It is hard to come back.

Ian

Go back. Yeah. Alright. So I guess that's the end of the pop culture segment. That that

Aaron

whole that whole segment reminds me of this great comment that we got on last, episode on YouTube. This comment says, I need an entire podcast entirely about Ian explaining activities to Aaron. Like, Disney World is a park where you pay money to have fun. And Aaron's like, sounds like a nightmare. Continue.

Ian

That's pretty much your show.

Aaron

Yeah. That's the whole show.

Ian

So We just did that. I didn't even know about that.

Aaron

Star Wars. Never heard of it. Continue.

Ian

Oh, man.

Aaron

Alright, Ian. We got the big boss here. Should we what what should we do? Should we do the regular song and dance? Should we talk about some Laravel stuff?

What do you

Ian

wanna do? Well, should we talk about our

Aaron

big announcement? Let's talk about our big announcement. Let's tell Taylor because I don't think Taylor probably knows. So let's talk about our

Ian

big announcement in front of Taylor.

Aaron

Knows. Alright. Taylor Taylor knows everything that happens in his company, but this one, he might not know. We'll we'll find out pretty quickly. Ian, give him the big announcement.

Ian

Alright. We are having a party at Laracon US. Mostly a party.

Aaron

The mostly technical day zero party at Laracon US.

Taylor Otwell

Wow. This is crazy. What are the de what's the details on

Ian

this? We are, it's gonna be at around 08:30. The first the night no. I guess day zero before the first day. Mhmm.

And it's gonna be a couple hours. Gonna have some drinks. Gonna have some, snacks of some sort. I don't know if that's totally figured out yet. Great.

Yeah. It's just gonna be a place to hang out. I think we're gonna have a 50 tickets available, so not room for everyone. So you will have to reserve your spot. We're gonna have that link up.

Hopefully, when the show goes live, you can go to mostlytechnical.com. Check out the, there'll be a link for the party. Reserve your spot if you're going to Laracon US, which you should be, of course. And, I think it's gonna be cool. We're gonna have some of the Laravel team there.

And, That's gonna

Taylor Otwell

be awesome.

Ian

Yeah. I think it'll be cool to have, like, a night before gathering in the community. I don't know I don't know if

Taylor Otwell

we've got This Laracon has a lot of stuff going on, like, a lot of kind of extra stuff like this, which is which is pretty cool and kind of new.

Ian

What are some of the other big things? What what else is happening around it?

Taylor Otwell

Well, like, you know, I mean, similar to last year, with the basketball game, we're doing we're doing a sporting event. I don't I don't know if I can I don't know if it's been publicly announced what we're doing, so I won't do it? We're doing a sports related activity the day before, and, of course, we got this mostly technical thing. I've heard about, like, a rooftop get together at some point. Of course, we'll be doing the after party stuff like usual.

Yeah. There's, like, a separate vendor hall this year. It's just, like, a bigger That's pretty cool. Cool. Better event.

Gavin, some cool people on stage too that we haven't had on stage in a while, like, Evan Yu from Vue JS. We're gonna do a panel with Oh, exciting. Adam, Evan, and then we added Jeffrey Way to the panel as well. So Jeffrey Way back on the Laracon stage. So it'll be it'll be good.

Ian

Adam back on the stage. Jeffrey Way back on the stage. Evan up there.

Aaron

That's my whole development life right there.

Taylor Otwell

Three of

Aaron

the three of you and Jeffrey Way. That's, like, my whole career, so that'll be fun.

Taylor Otwell

Man. Yeah. I would be

Ian

talking to, so first, thank you to Hank and Sam and your people over there who've been helping us, organize the party and get And Diagonal who

Aaron

is sponsoring the party.

Ian

Yeah. So we have, I think, another sponsor coming on too. So

Aaron

thanks for the long run. To register. So make sure you register. Yes.

Ian

It will be free, but, you just have to register. So thanks to the sponsors. Big thanks to your team for helping us get it organized. But, but, also, I was, yeah, I was talking to them, and I almost feel like because they were saying some of the stuff you guys have going on too, and it I feel like it's like I love the format of Laracon, and I don't want it to get bigger in a sense. But then there's also, like, literally not enough time kind of for, like, all this stuff go like, there's all these, like like you said, like, ancillary things kinda happening, and it's like but there's, like, literally not enough days.

Like, we need more days to, like, fit the stuff in. So it's kinda interesting.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll be fun. I'm excited about the talks. I think everything would be great.

It'd be my first time in Denver, actually.

Ian

Me too. I've never

Taylor Otwell

been in Denver.

Aaron

Yeah. So I think I'll be moderating the panel with the four of y'all, and I will try my hardest to do a great job. But one thing I can promise is that I will not fall asleep on stage. So I'll just put I'll just say that. I know.

So Omar.

Taylor Otwell

I I know. A low it's a low bar. Stay conscious during the Q and A.

Aaron

Conscious. Yes.

Ian

I don't know. I'm gonna be feeding Aaron those shots the night before and see if we can get him real tired. It's my power.

Aaron

That'll be perfect. That's exactly what we wanna say.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, yeah. Watch out for dog bites too. No dog bites.

Aaron

Yeah. Apparently, Sam Selikhoff confirmed he was the one that got bit the year before. Yeah. I remember that. We're two for two on dog bites at Dax's house.

Not great.

Ian

Alright, man. It's been kinda low drama. Knock wood. Hopefully, that continues. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

We had no injuries or people falling asleep. No.

Ian

Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So you then so you weren't you didn't go to Denver to, prep the site or anything either. Right?

So now you got the No.

Taylor Otwell

Like, Hank and Sam did. They went out to Denver. They walked through the venue. They sent me pictures. They loved it.

So, yeah, I was good with it. So, yeah, it'd be my literally my first time, like, in the city of Denver. So be a fun time.

Ian

Yep. Yeah. I like that vendor hall I did too. I think, they were saying that Mhmm. That this way, it's just like that noise is its own space, and, there's no no issues there.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I'm positive.

Aaron

The first one you haven't had to, like, plan yourself?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Kind of. Like, starting in what was it? The Nashville year, which was 2023. That was actually the first year I hired, like, an event company Mhmm.

Who we're still working with through this year. But I was still kind of making all the, like, high level decisions, that year and last year for Dallas. This year, I have tried to, like, just kinda turn the reins loose and let the team run with it and kinda put their own stamp on it and not really step in or micromanage the whole event. So, like, just the other day, I actually messaged Hank, and I was like, hey, what's the stage look like this year? You know, which is, like, really different than previous years where I would have been super involved in, like, figuring that out.

So yeah. I mean, I'm trying to do that in a lot of areas around the company, honestly, where I've, like, done every little detail in the past, and I'm trying to let other people kinda find their way now.

Aaron

What do you still do? PRs, I know. Mhmm.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. PRs, like, honestly, just, like, feature review. Like, if there's a big new feature on cloud, I, like, go in, use it, like, try to figure out what makes sense, doesn't make sense, or even, like, when we're first thinking about the features, thinking about in general how they should work, you know, with the product managers and stuff. You know, a lot of that kind of stuff, just like guidance and feedback and direction setting and feedback giving and sort of, like, vision defining of what kind of big picture items should we work on over the next year or whatever or what our goals are. A lot of stuff like that.

Yeah, PRs are part of that every morning as well. Do you have So so in the nitty gritty.

Aaron

Do you have standing meetings with, like, teams, like, team leads where you, do reviews and feedback and stuff like that?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I think I have one, two, three. I think I have, like, four or five standing meetings per week. Wow. Yeah.

I know.

Aaron

That's four or five more than you used to.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I know. It's fine. Whatever. It's I are they necessary?

I don't no. They're not. But, you know, I have to play along a little bit, and, it is good, you know, to, like, see everyone and talk to everyone. And I will say we get we do get things done that I think would be more time consuming to, like, figure out over Slack at times. Mhmm.

So, you know, I'm not totally a downer on the meetings. I did go, like, five or six years at Laravel without having a single call, and things kinda went more or less fine.

Ian

Oh. But

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It's all good. Also, like so it's

Ian

so much bigger now. It's like you want your sort of mindset to seep into the company a bit, and that seems easier if you're actually talking to people, you know, to get those subtleties versus just like

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It does also help you build, like, relationships better, especially for people you don't really know or, like, that haven't been around the Laravel ecosystem for years or even a decade at this point. It helps you, like, actually feel like you're kinda becoming, like, you know, you know, there's, like, real camaraderie and, like, friendship there if you, like, talk to them visually and can see them, you know, versus just only on Slack. Yep. You know, whatever.

I'm trying to convince myself that it's all good.

Ian

Do you

Aaron

have all hands where it's, like, every quarter, you have a big meeting and stuff?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. So we usually do that once a quarter roughly around kind of you know, we have quarterly board meetings. And we sort of give a company wide update at those. And so we sort of repurpose a lot of that material to just present to the entire company. Right.

Because sometimes, you know, like, you know, you might imagine if you're on, like, the night watch team or the cloud team, you might not know exactly, like, what other people are doing. And you might be interested in it. It is interesting to see, like, what the other teams are doing. Sometimes we have little demos. So, yeah, it's just a time to, like, bring everyone up to speed and and talk about what we're doing, how we're doing, you you know, things we're struggling with, things that are going well.

Ian

Do you think you're gonna do, like, team off-site type of things? Like, I assume maybe do one around Laracon, but I don't know if you would do, like, the whole team. We actually did try to

Taylor Otwell

get as many people as possible, and we did an an off-site, a short one, last year in in Fort Worth after Laracon. And we actually had a a fair number of people at the time. I can't remember what percentage of the company was there, but it was a a lot of people. And we, you know, kinda did that similar thing to we do once a quarter. I think we just use that to do like, go through every part of the company, how we're doing, what we're working on.

And I think we're gonna do the same thing this year, in Denver. So we're trying to get as many people as we can. It can be tough because we've got people literally all over the place, but, hopefully, we can get a you know, most

Aaron

of us there. I like that. Is that is that the plan is, like, use Lyricons as a way to get everyone together and then spend a few days together afterwards?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I mean, it's super convenient because a lot of people wanna come anyway, especially especially the engineers, I think, especially wanna come, but then a lot of other people as well. So it's just a good convenient excuse to make it happen, you know, around that time.

Aaron

And that's fun for the attendees because then, you know, at least at Laracon US, a good portion of the Laravel team is gonna be there, which is you know, that's always fun to see the people you see on Twitter in real life.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And that's I mean, that's one thing I really like about Laracon is, like, if you go to Laracon, you get to hang out with, like, the people that work on Laravel. Like, they're not all, like, hiding in these super secret VIP, like, parties where they never come out and talk to, like, the regular people.

Like, you know, I go out and hang out at lunch or, like, during the breaks and just, like, stand around and, like, talk to people. And I like that, like, feel about Laracon where it feels very, like, genuine and real and, like, you know, you can just approach anyone. You know? You can go talk to Jeffrey Way. You can go talk to Nuno.

You can go talk to whoever you want. And you

Aaron

see people from, like I remember I think it was maybe the Laracon EU, this this most recent one. I saw Graham Campbell, and I was like, wait. You're supposed to be 17. I haven't seen you in forever, and he's just, you know, like, a normal grown up person now. And I

Taylor Otwell

was

Aaron

like, you were a big part of early Laravel. That's fun.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I was actually walking through the Dallas Laracon at it was kind of during, like, the after party or the the day was over. And I see him, and I was like, Graham? He he, like, he hadn't even, like, told me he was coming. I was like, dude, I didn't know you were gonna be here.

And so I was like, here. Take a picture with me. Like, I took a picture with him. You know?

Ian

Not not a picture you.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Not not vice versa. Yeah. Pretty funny.

Aaron

Yeah. I love I love Lyricans. I'm happy, sir, that you're so relaxed during Lyricans because I'm not I'm not relaxed at all. I gotta make sure that all the speakers end up on stage.

Taylor Otwell

But Yeah. And hopefully hopefully, you don't have to, improv for thirty minutes with Calab Orzio.

Aaron

Man, I will say of all the people it could happen to, Caleb was the best. We had it. It was totally fine.

Ian

I was, you know, looking fine. I watched that video. You guys were fine. It was

Aaron

great. He's good on his feet. It was a lot of fun. So, yeah, it was That was crazy.

Ian

Yeah. Technical issues. Are you gonna stream it?

Taylor Otwell

I don't know, honestly. I I mean, I know we're gonna video it like usual. I don't I haven't heard about the live streaming thing this year. But a lot of times, the same guy that does the video also does the live stream. So maybe it's possible.

Just depends on kind of the Internet set up as well.

Ian

There'll be videos after regardless anyway.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. We usually have them up, like, super quick.

Ian

Right. Yep. Cool. But you should still come. Yeah.

You gotta come get your tickets. Come see us all.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It's gonna be good. There's such a there's there's some cool stuff coming at Laracon. Big up big updates, big forge updates.

Aaron

I have heard. I was just listening to you and Matt Stauffer. I heard all this the forge teasing, and that sounds that sounds very exciting. I've seen James talk about it a little bit. He is he the head of the forge team?

Taylor Otwell

He is team lead on forge. Yeah.

Aaron

Okay. Yeah. It sounds super exciting, and the only one that I guessed was the Envoyeur one, which you admitted on

Taylor Otwell

that. Everyone guesses that.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited to see what else y'all have been cooking up. So what's Yeah. What's the what like, what's the idea with Forge?

Because I know a lot of people were kinda down on it and being like, oh, they're gonna take Forge away. Clearly, that's not happening.

Ian

Mhmm.

Taylor Otwell

I mean, you know, my perspective on on it is we have many, many, many thousands of happy customers on Forge. There's a high level of customizability on Forge that people really like. They like installing their niche little extensions and the little tools they need for their app to run. And that's just hard to do, like, on a fully managed platform, at least for now. And, you know, I I think, hey.

Like, we need to keep making this better. We need to, like, go harder on it, be more ambitious with it because we have a lot of people using it, enjoying it. So let's, like, keep keep working on it. So we've done a lot. You know?

The the Envoy stuff that everyone guessed is honestly maybe not even the biggest part of, like, what we've been working on on Forge, so I I'm super pumped. It's kind of a fresh new look. You know? Lots of cool new features. So, yeah, definitely not a slowing down on the Forge development pace.

Aaron

I like this because you're I think you said this to Matt. Your biggest competitor to forge is cloud, and the biggest competitor to cloud is forge. And so you're like you're running the the Procter and Gamble or the Johnson and Johnson playbook where it's like, we own it all. Pick whatever you want. It's all us, guys.

So I like that.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in, like, I want in some ways, it's it's funny to me because Forge is a little bit more, like, unique of a product, I guess, because, you know, cloud is a fully managed platform, and lots of people have done fully managed platforms. Right? Whether all the way back to Heroku or or whatever.

But not a lot of people have really, like, built this really high quality, just like server VPS management tool that's, like, very deep on Laravel, but maybe potentially on other things as well. So, like, to me, it's like I I don't know. It's kind of a unique tool and has its own little corner of the market that is not very well served. So I I'm a forge fan still.

Ian

I love forge. Great. Just the other day, I was doing a new help spot website, and, like, I ended up just putting out on forge because I was, like, playing with the cloud, and then, like but there was something weird. It's, like, for older legacy stuff too. It's, like, forge.

I I know I can just do anything. Right? It, like, doesn't it doesn't need, like, any special settings. Like, if I have to put some weird thing on there, I can just do whatever weird stuff I want. Yep.

Because it's fully customizable. So, yeah, it's just great to have that, like, ultimate flexible tool. Right? And then you have cloud, which will probably creep in on that, I assume, over time. Right?

But, like, but up until that point, you know, it's, like, gonna be a little more dialed in, I think, on, like, applications and, like, kind of the core stuff like that and not so much on everybody's random edge case. It's gonna be a while till you get to every random edge case on cloud. So you still have forge for yeah. You got weird edge case. Great.

Like, just Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't No.

Taylor Otwell

Literally do anything. Yeah. Yeah. You

Ian

can do whatever you need to do. And, yeah. I I don't know. I still love Forge. It's good to know.

Aaron

Have you looked at have you have you looked at DHH's what what is it? Kamal? That thing? Have you looked at that at all?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I've looked at it a little bit, and I saw him demo it live at, Rails World in Toronto in, Toronto. I mean, yeah, it seems fine. Like, I I probably you know, I would just rather use forge or cloud or something, but, it seems pretty cool. You know, DHH is always, like, kind of against the grain and doing his own thing and blazing his own trail.

So it's a little bit more, like, complicated than even, like, Forge, you know, more than I would wanna bite off, but that's cool. It's DHH. You know? He can do what he wants. He drives race cars.

Yeah. He

Aaron

he's earned that. He can kinda do whatever he wants.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah.

Ian

He's not so much worried at this point, I feel like, about, like, the usability of things necessarily either. You know? It's like I mean, I think with base camp, I'm sure he is. But, these other things, it's like, this is the tool for our use case. And if you wanna come along, that's great.

But he's not, like, trying to make it easy to use necessarily. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

I think you're right. Like, it it's not like the, it's not built for the same reasons that Rails was built. It's, like, more ideological against the system, like, against the corporate, you know, like, man that's overcharging us.

Ian

Than a

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It's more of a Yeah. Yeah. Where to me, Rails was, like, very, yeah, very, like, polished and about the DX and all of that.

Ian

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's kinda interesting how that occurred because, like, I mean, it was sort of a statement against the way things were at the time too, but it was done with a much, like, broader outlook. Right?

You would say, I think. Like, it was really a general purpose tool. I feel like he was trying to build, and I don't there's other stuff that's coming after. I don't I don't feel like that's the case. Yeah.

Probably. But but who wants to run their own server? It's like, at the base of it, it's like, you could run this thing and run your own servers, but it's like, I don't really wanna run my own servers and, like or at least want a little more middle ground there. Like, Forge kinda gives you to both get it set up correctly to begin with and then, have that, like, layer. Even though I'm, like, ultimately responsible for it, there's, like, this layer of management and help there with Forge so that you don't have to be all the way down in the weeds most of the time.

And then obviously you have cloud where you're not in the weeds at all. But, yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't run-in those things. It's like,

Aaron

yeah. Alright, Ian. Let's let's pay some bills.

Ian

What do you say?

Aaron

Yeah. Let's do it. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS auth kit, coded hand coded by our guest today, mister Taylor Otwell. Laravel twelve's new starter kits include work OS auth kit, future proof your authentication stack with the identity layer trusted by OpenAI, ever heard of it, Cursor, Perplexity, and Vercel. You can find out more at work0s.com.

This episode is also brought to you by Bento at Bentonow.com. Bento is the email service provider that we use at TryHard Studios for both marketing and transactional email. I highly recommend you check them out at bentonow.com.

Ian

Thank you. So that actually is a perfect segue because I have a little bit of a starter kit question. Okay. Bossman here. Starter kits, love the idea, love the execution, love you have all the different, like, every flavor you want back, you want Livewire, whatever you want.

You want different flavors of Livewire. Like, we got the whole thing for you. Right? Great.

Aaron

This feels like a setup, by the way.

Ian

It's a little it's a little bit of a setup.

Aaron

He's buttering them up.

Ian

So I it's like I I I want my cake and eat it too. I love that it's like you just get the code. We're not trying to make it packages that you have that that is updating, and you're worrying about conflicting things and all that stuff. Right? Like, I think that makes sense.

Taylor Otwell

Mhmm.

Ian

But then I was, you know, I was poking around, messing with the thing the other day. It's like, oh, man. You guys are working on a big two factor enhancement for the auth stuff. And it's just, like, huge branch with, like, 50 commits in in it. Right?

And it's like Yep. Man, I can never get that. Right? So that I've already messed with Jason, McCrory, and I was like, dude, you gotta put this in shift. But so that would be one answer, but I was wondering what you guys are thinking on that.

When you when you do add something big and huge and new and awesome, is there, like, gonna be upgrade docs, or what do you think in there?

Taylor Otwell

I don't know. It'd be nice if we did have upgrade docs or even, like, automated upgrades for it through some kind of shift thing with JMac. And I don't even that two FA stuff, you know, we may even use end up using Fortify for that, so there's much less code. We're not sure. We may we may pull that back into Fortify.

Just use that. But, yeah, I don't know. It's kind of like that that it is kinda like the gift and the curse, the way the starter kits are set up. It's like, I really wanted all the code to be available like Breeze, but they're like, like, you're right that there's not, like, a a clear upgrade path for some major feature. That's something.

Yeah. But I don't know. I'm hoping we can at least get, like, the controllers and the views, especially for, like, something like two FA kind of isolated enough to where you could sort of drop it in if we wrote the docs on what files you need. But I could potentially see features down the line where that's just, like, not feasible because they're, like, so intertwined with, like, how it works. Regarding the OS stuff, you know, like, this kind of plays into the work OS stuff where which I took some heat on even releasing.

I saw that. We don't get any money from we don't have any deal with Work OS. We don't get any money from that. But, like, the main reason I built that is because, like, you know, like or maybe you don't know. I'm just, like, super OCD about, like, super minimal organizing everything and just, like, having all of that awe stuff, like, in the app.

I just didn't like it. I didn't want any of that in there. Like, I just wanted my own app in the Yeah. In the in the Laravel app. So when I built the Work of West stuff, I was like, oh, this is sweet.

I can just, like, redirect to them. They do all of that. I don't have to think about it. I don't even I don't wanna see any code in my app about two FA or login or registration or anything. And then it's redirect back to me.

Great. So, I mean, that's that's kind of, like, why I built that, honestly, is so that

Aaron

summer child. The people hate it. I know.

Taylor Otwell

I don't know. The the they'll come around. You know? They hate they hate everything at first. They hate everything, and then they're crawling, you

Ian

know, they're crawling. We

Taylor Otwell

love it.

Aaron

It had the tinge of VC even though there was no action.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. That's true.

Aaron

And so people

Taylor Otwell

were like, oh,

Aaron

now they're doing money for off. No.

Ian

I think it's messed up that we've made more money on Work OS than Taylor. That is true. You

Taylor Otwell

you guys have made more of this than me. That's so funny. It it is true. I need to be more aware of, like, the optics of that. I don't think about any of that crap.

I don't think about any of that any of that VC stuff. I just build the things that I think are actually good. There's no way anyone could, like, hold a gun to my head and make me build something that I think is trash or I don't agree with or, like, I would just I just quit. I just wouldn't work anymore. I don't care.

Like, you know what I mean? So, like Right. All the, like, conspiracy stuff doesn't really make sense. But, you know, that's how it goes. I do need to be a little bit more aware of the optics of that.

But I just thought it was cool and minimal, and I don't know. If I was starting a new Laravel app today, I would use it. I think the other cool thing is, like, they iterate on the auth stuff. You know? Mhmm.

It's like, you know, they're constantly updating it and making it more secure and stuff, and I don't have to do anything. Anyway, starting to feel like a commercial, and they're gonna have to, like, pay me before I say anything else. But

Ian

That's alright. Thank you for asking us for sponsoring.

Aaron

Yeah. Thanks for sponsoring this show.

Ian

I should think about that more. I I always, like I went on a little thing where I was like, oh, I don't wanna ever deal with auth again. Then I was like, there was, like, it's sort of tricky to get set up, and then it's like, we'll just use Breeze or whatever the Laravel thing is, right, at the time. But, but, yeah, nowadays, maybe it makes I mean, now that you've given us the, the super tight integration, it's like, maybe it's just back to WorkOS and, like because that stuff is so critical. It's like everybody's trying to hack you all the time now.

Even, like, littler projects, like, so much is automated and everything that, like, having that off your plate, if you have a use case where you can, where it's like a pure SaaS and, like, it's no problems. Mhmm. I think that's

Taylor Otwell

I think it's also, like I I don't wanna beat a dead horse too much, but I think, like, when I look back on Laravel and, like, as we grew and eventually as we took funding, I see now that, like, you know, I think the whole YAGNI approach is, like, kinda true a lot of the time. But there are things I wish I had done more, like, forward thinking to get more, like, let's say, like, enterprise ready from the beginning. So things like, you know, a single sign on system for, like, all of our products. Mhmm. At the time, it felt very, like, YAG.

You know? It was, like, very YAG mentality. Like, let's just see if the products are even successful. Right? Like, if they even make any money.

But now, like, looking back, I was like, oh, it's kind of a bummer that, like, there's, like, five different logins for five different commercial products. And so I don't know. You know, if I was starting today, I think I would actually pick something like an auth solution like that because, one, it's easy to do now, and it can just, like, really pay off later, if it works out.

Aaron

Do you think that would have, I agree about the logins. I have, like, eight different logins in my one password, and they all just say Laravel.

Ian

Like, this is not helpful. Yeah. Do you think

Aaron

if you had had that mindset of, like, let's look forward, do you think you would have been as successful, or is the YAGNI mindset what got you here?

Taylor Otwell

I think, like, it wouldn't have really mattered from, like, a revenue perspective that much. I just think it would have been, like, convenient. It would have been sort of nice to have more than, like I don't think it would have materially affected the success of the business up to this point. But, you know, it just would have been convenient for users, I think. I just

Ian

think it's always hard. You never know where to draw that line. Right? Because you could be like there's probably 10 other features you can name that are more enterprise y that you could have been like, well, we can't launch until we have this thing too. Right?

And then, like then that starts to, like, delay you in even launching and all that kind of stuff, and that maybe impacts things. You know? Whereas, like so it's always hard to know what is the feature that would when oh, yeah. That one you could throw that in, and that would be useful and not a big deal versus, like, the other ones and which when you draw the line and all that stuff. Mhmm.

And plus for Forge, especially, it was so long ago. There was no work OS. There was no there was no I don't even think there was AWS, whatever was it? Incognito or

Aaron

Yeah. I mean say.

Taylor Otwell

Who's this what it's called? Yeah. I just hoped Ford was gonna pay my mortgage. You know? Like, I had no idea what was gonna happen.

Ian

Yeah. That was one of the

Aaron

did so well, Ian had to fire you. He had to push you out the door and say, go work on this.

Ian

Like, dude, get out of there.

Taylor Otwell

I yeah. I can't believe, you know, I couldn't believe it myself back then, you know, that people were interested in it. It looked like garbage. If you go back and look at that, go back. It's like boost Twitter bootstrap, no customization.

Ian

Who did the first real design of it? Did Steve do that, or was somebody before Steve? There's somebody before Steve.

Taylor Otwell

So, you know, like, I did the first one in bootstrap. And then I think after that, I think Jack McDade did a pass on it, and David Hemphill coded it.

Ian

Oh, wow.

Taylor Otwell

Like, he got the designs from Jack, and then David finished it off and something like that. I think that's how it went. I don't think there was anything in between the initial launch and that happening.

Ian

Yep. Wow. Those guys go way back too. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. And the design that it has now is roughly reminiscent of what Jack did, I'd say.

Ian

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's still rough.

Aaron

Did you point your army of new designers at Forge yet?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. So we have a designer on Forge that's, like, dedicated to Forge right now. Yeah. And like I said, it'll be a big big, like, kind of UI update, at Laracon for Forge. You know, trying to take a lot of the stuff we learned on cloud, stuff we did on cloud, but still retain some of Forge's personality and the way it looks.

And, so, yeah, it it'll be a a big update.

Ian

Love the Forge love. Alright. What else we got going on here? Well, we could talk about this. Yeah.

Aaron's got

Taylor Otwell

some crazy shit going on. Why is Aaron laughing?

Aaron

Because I know that Ian is reading the Trello board, and he's like, what the hell is going on here, man?

Ian

Let's start

Taylor Otwell

with the

Ian

we'll start with the one I put in because I I'll be curious

Taylor Otwell

to know

Aaron

if you put in

Taylor Otwell

this too.

Aaron

Six things, and we're gonna start with the one thing.

Ian

It's alright. Hey. You want me to run the show? We're gonna start with mine.

Aaron

I want you to run the show, so keep going.

Ian

About you, so don't Alright. Then I'll let it

Aaron

I'll let it slide. I'll let it slide.

Ian

Because you had a tweet, I believe, or some formal post that was your Chat GPT history, your style.

Aaron

Oh, yeah.

Ian

Yeah. I did. And, you got you know? So I guess it's like it's interesting to see how people use Chat GPT. At first, I was like I think I even wrote in the notes.

I was like, something like, Aaron's boring or something chat gbt history. And I was like, oh, let me delete boring out of there because it's not exactly boring. But, like

Aaron

a little aggressive, I

Taylor Otwell

guess. On that too. Yeah.

Ian

But he's got, like, you know, read read only attributes in Laravel

Taylor Otwell

Mhmm.

Ian

Exporting videos from DaVinci Resolve.

Aaron

That's good stuff.

Ian

Video short description naming. I think sin nature.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember that one.

Ian

Mist and sound effects. I'll click exercise tips. So you got a health thing in there. That's what changed my mind. I was like, everybody's got a health thing in their chat sheet.

Aaron

Everybody's got a health thing.

Ian

So, like, I was like, how does he not have a health thing? But then I saw that. I was like, okay. Okay. He's got a health thing.

It's not that boring. We're good. You know, you got Leland, Cypress, and Texas. You got a bunch of random stuff.

Taylor Otwell

I gotta pull up my own, though.

Ian

Foot gate feasibility. Thirty

Taylor Otwell

thirty six

Aaron

foot gate feasibility. Turns out it is feasible. And for concrete, it is a rolling gate across the driveway. That's what that's what I was after.

Ian

See, I don't like that. I picture it vertical. Like, you want Yeah. An emperor style wall, 30 foot high.

Aaron

I mean, I kinda do want that.

Ian

Taller than the walls between us and Mexico. It's giant wall. Yeah. That's what I was picturing.

Aaron

And I'm gonna make my neighbors pay for it. That is for sure. Yes. Yes. No.

We got this we got this driveway that opens to an alley, and right behind the alley is a a major road. And so I wanna put a gate up, but the driveway, like, our property line is kinda on an angle, and so that makes it really long. And so I needed a 32 foot gate, and I wanted to see if it was feasible. And it's feasible.

Ian

Is it a break in two two two gates?

Aaron

I I think it's gonna be one big rolling guy.

Ian

Like, you're pulling, like, a a truck in there kinda thing.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So that's that's the plan.

Taylor Otwell

Chad GPT is down, actually, so I can't even look at my history.

Ian

Oh, no. No. Mine I don't I don't actually don't have anything, too interesting in mine. Mine's more boring. I have I have some stuff about Star Wars prequels.

I have, writing some stuff for the HubSpot website.

Aaron

Boring. Mine's way more interesting than that. A simplified pool automation plan. That's a good one.

Ian

Mine has, like yeah. I I don't actually don't even, I have a I have a health thing, but not for me, for my son's pinching arm. Then I

Taylor Otwell

Man, I've got a health thing too. I've I have it on my phone. My first one is oh, I got modern outdoor design concept. Then I've got Crestor steady state time, which is cholesterol medication. These these Laravel guys, we're getting old.

That is

Ian

Oh, boy, aren't we?

Taylor Otwell

Oh, that's funny.

Ian

That's too I have a I have a permanent project in the sidebar. You know, you can make projects now, like, to organize stuff. That's just called gallbladder. So that's got my Oh

Aaron

my gosh.

Ian

It's got my cholesterol medicine, which is what you

Aaron

use to call the last couple of minutes.

Ian

Yeah. We're getting old. This is geriatric podcast.

Aaron

I'm researching sin nature. You have no gallbladder, and Taylor has high cholesterol.

Taylor Otwell

Like, we're

Aaron

not the most interesting people in the world.

Ian

But it is funny how, like just interesting how it just it's sort of seeped into your life, you know, and you're just, like, using it, like, optimizing it on the phone.

Taylor Otwell

All the time. All the time.

Ian

It's kinda it's definitely it's definitely dramatically hurt my Google usage, which Google has already grown themselves, you know, with, like it's just being, like, impossible to find anything, just all the ads and boxes and stuff they have there. But, yeah, it definitely anything question like, it just goes right to chat GBT.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, yeah. It's just it's destroyed my Google usage. Totally. Yep. Yeah.

Aaron

Speaking speaking of AI, Ian, did you watch that AI video I made?

Ian

Yes. And you liked it? I like that one too. You're I

Aaron

love AI.

Ian

On all cylinders right now. So We love it. Very good.

Taylor Otwell

That's true.

Ian

Taylor, but Aaron made a video about how they use AI at try hard.

Taylor Otwell

Okay.

Ian

And it was cool. It's like, like I mean, I maybe it was a little bit of code. I think you did mention the coding stuff, but it was also, like, kind of all the other ways that you use it, to kind of optimize. I guess it is a lot of it was coding, but I even think of it as coding because it was, like, more like you were building tools to Yeah. Do things.

And, obviously, it was creating code to do those things, but it was not like you were building an app and it was writing the code as much

Aaron

as it was, like, you're having integrate it

Ian

into our Yeah. Our You're writing commands. Yeah. To, like, process videos and make transcripts and all that stuff. Yeah.

That was cool. How how did it how did it go? Did the people like it?

Aaron

Yeah. People liked it. I think Reddit complained that the thumbnail was cringy, and YouTube had the highest click through rate ever. Ever. So it's like

Ian

Hey, man.

Aaron

Who do we listen to here? But, yeah, it's it's doing well. And I did change the thumbnail to see if it would do any better, and I don't I don't think it's done any better. So, once again, maybe don't listen to Reddit. But, yeah, it's been doing great and a lot of lot of positive comments.

Ian

Feel like cringe thumbnail is, like That's that's

Taylor Otwell

what you're

Ian

supposed to do. Yeah. That's, like, that's what they all are. They're all like, oh, that's weird, and that's why they work.

Aaron

Yeah. But Reddit hates everything.

Ian

Yeah. What are you guys using Taylor? What are you using for your AI? Are you using, like, coding wise? Are you going between chat g p t and not?

Or are you are you cursor? Or what are you doing?

Taylor Otwell

I'll pop open cursor, like, if I wanna if I'm actually working on a Laravel thing and I wanna try AI. If it's something quick, like, how do I do this? And it's just like it's gonna be a few lines of code. Sometimes I'll just use chat g p t directly and, like, copy it out. Yeah.

The other day, I popped open cursor. I don't know. We got a PR to Laravel, and it was the auto discovery of the HTTP, like, API resources that are linked to your model. So usually, we'd have your model in, like, appmodelsuser.PHP, and you have your resources in, like, app HTTP resources user resource or something like that. Someone sent a PR to, like, find those based on conventions.

So if you know you have a user model, you kinda know where the resource for that is, but it only were it assumed, like, the app directory was the name of the directory instead of, like, you know how people do the DDD stuff and Right. Blah blah blah. They go down all these rabbit holes. And I wanted it to be, like, more generic so that no matter where the model's directory was, it just found the closest, like, sibling resource, if that makes sense. So I popped open cursor, like, explained that, and there's, like, bam, bam, bam, one shot.

Good. I've changed, like, the styling a little bit to be kinda Otwell style and then and then shipped it. So, yeah, I'll pop it open occasionally. You know, I used to try out a lot of boilerplate stuff too, like, tests. Yeah.

At least to get me started.

Ian

So not all in on it, but still poking around. Yeah. Probably probably not coding as much as you were either.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. That's true. The team uses you know, we have a cursor license for the team. So I think a lot of the team is using cursor pretty much every day.

Aaron

Yeah. I just started using codecs. Have you all heard of this? It's like a command line tool from OpenAI. And, like, a week and a half ago, it only worked with, ChatGPT.

And then, like, a week ago, a few days later, they were like, yeah. Fine. It can work with any model because somebody forked it and made an open codex, of course, as they do. And so, OpenAI was like, yeah. We'll do it first or second in this case.

And it's really nice because I use PHPStorm, and there's not really, like, a good story there for, an editor or an assistant. And this is just, like, runs in the command line, interacts with files, asks you questions, like, confirms commands before it runs, and it can do all kinds of stuff. Like, it can look around, you know, look around your computer, run Git commands, run NPM install, all of that. And it's like it's really good. So I hooked it up to I think I hooked it up to Gemini 2.5, and had it do some stuff.

And it was it was pretty impressive. And I like I don't know. I I like it being outside of my editor because I don't like it when it gets, like, getting in my way when I'm trying to just, like, you know, hand write some code. And so I find that this is a good trade off.

Ian

I'll check that out because I do definitely, the worst part about all of these editors for me is that they're not PHPStorm. I know. I'd greatly prefer PHPStorm. And so it's like, like, Cursor. It's so Versus Cody, obviously.

And, like, it's like, I don't really care for much of the v a Versus Code sort of mindset. And, so, yeah, maybe that'll be something like I know Anthropic had a thing like that. I didn't realize OpenAI did. I saw OpenAI is looking to buy that windsurfer thing too or whatever, so I guess they'll probably have their own Versus code knockoff entry at some point as well. But, yeah, maybe I'll try that.

That's interesting. Because that's fine. Like you said, it is annoying sometimes in the chat window is, like, overtaking the, like, code window, and it's like you got a lot of stuff going on there. So just in the terminal, it's

Aaron

Or you type out, like, four characters and the auto completes, like, here's a hundred lines of code, and you're like, that's none of that is what I was gonna say. Yeah. That part's really frustrating. It's

Taylor Otwell

I'm really curious how, like, AI will impact developers' perception of, like, DX in general. You know? Because, like, when we when I was first building Laravel, like, even back to the rails topic, like, so much of what we focused on was, like, every character of the syntax. You know what I mean? And, like, will people even care anymore?

You know, if, like, the AI writes all the code anyway, like, who cares Yeah. What the syntax is? It's kinda sad.

Aaron

Yeah. It is kinda sad.

Ian

Or you have to even wonder if it's gonna go farther than that of, like, what's optimal for the AI

Taylor Otwell

to run. Exactly. Like, in some ways Yeah. Worse DX or, like, might be even better for the AI. Yeah.

Worse human DX.

Ian

Worse human DX. Yeah. Like, maybe, like, every function should have this crazy long name. That's Right. That the AI will understand it better if it's, like, a sentence long name for this function, you know, and things like that.

Taylor Otwell

Kinda wild.

Ian

Yeah. Rather than you finding the perfect Otwell word that, like Mhmm. The single word. Yeah. It's like, nope.

We'll just write it as a huge sentence and call this huge function everywhere and doesn't matter because everything's fast now, and AI understands it better. And that's it.

Taylor Otwell

It's a crazy world.

Ian

I also kinda wonder. What do you guys think about? I still don't know. Like, obviously, I feel like all the AI stuff is so tuned to code. Right?

And they're, like, just training it more and more in code. I don't know. I wonder if other industries are gonna get like this. Right? Like, where it's like like, that's the theory, of course.

Right? Everybody's like, of course. AI is gonna be in every industry, and it's gonna act just like this. But, like, not every industry is like coding it. Like, coding is so perfect for this.

It's all text and blah blah. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it will be. Maybe it won't be.

I I'm so torn. I'm like, I don't know. Can you tell the doctor? Can you knock? Can you replace, like obviously, it's physical things that'll be harder to replace.

But

Aaron

I don't know. I feel like coding, there's the a huge corpus of data on which they can train.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. And

Aaron

I just don't feel like that's the case for most industries. Mhmm. And with coding, like, you can run this AI, and then you can verify if the output is correct. Like, do my test pass, or does the app work, or have loosey goosey you wanna do it? You can verify, yeah, the thing works.

I feel like with everything else, except maybe, like, math, it's hard to just verify if it works. So, like, you have it right you're an attorney and you have it write a brief, and it's like, first of all, what's a brief? I have no idea. And then second of all, it's like, was it right? Was it good?

Who can say good luck? Go present it. I don't know. It feels weird to me.

Ian

There is some tricky stuff there, like, with a legal brief, for example, right, where if one word is wrong, that word could be incredibly important and change the entire meaning of the whole thing.

Aaron

Hundreds of millions of dollars. Right.

Ian

And it's not like quite like code where you can have like a unit test. That's like ensuring that the thing you want to happen is still happen. Even if it happens in a weird way that you don't understand, or you wouldn't write it yourself that way at the end, it's spitting out the correct value. Whereas, like, in a legal contract, it's not true. And if, like, you miss that, it's, that word is off.

It could be incredibly expensive. So yeah. I don't know.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I just saw that like, I just saw the other day, Bill Gates predicted a two day work week within the next decade for most people.

Ian

Next decade?

Taylor Otwell

That seems like so incredibly farfetched to me.

Aaron

Yeah. But So farfetched. Farfetched. No way. I mean,

Ian

there's just not even, like, society would have to change dramatically to even allow such a thing, first of all. But, like, even putting that aside, yeah, I just most people jaw like, I don't know.

Taylor Otwell

Has AI unlocked a two day work week for anyone in the on the entire planet thus far? Like I don't

Aaron

I don't think so.

Taylor Otwell

Kinda think no.

Ian

No. And would the I would the economics I mean, I just feel like, okay. If in an industry where you it creates huge efficiencies, it's I mean, if it goes traditional tech, it's just gonna actually make more jobs in the in that industry, but not necessarily, like, less work. And or if it does go the route of replacing, then it's not gonna be like everybody has two hour two day work week. It's gonna be like, well, there's 20% of the people working five days a week.

Like they always were, but there's just 80% less of them or whatever than there were before. But everybody working two hours at the same or two days at the same salary, I don't know. It seems weird.

Aaron

That's never gonna happen.

Ian

I feel like people

Aaron

are already only working, you know, 40% of their time when they're at work. So it's they're not gonna give them three days off. No way.

Taylor Otwell

People, people get nervous about this. I had someone DM me not too long ago, and they were like, I'm really depressed. I'm on, like, anxiety medication because I think the AI is gonna, like, destroy my career that I worked so hard on. I was like, I don't know. I didn't know what to say.

I was just like, I I said something like, do you do you pay for any AI generated app now? Have you have you ever seen a good AI generated app once? No. The most impressive thing is that Peter level's flying game so far.

Ian

Yeah. Like,

Taylor Otwell

you know, I don't so I don't know. I don't I I love I use AI every day, but, obviously, it's just still such a long way to go.

Ian

Yeah. It's a useful tool for sure. It's like another tool in the bag, but I don't know. Like, even with HubSpot, it's like, this is the thing. I think I've talked about this a little bit on on the show, but it's like, man, two years ago, I was like, oh, that's it.

Fold it up. Like, this is gonna be AI customer service. Right? And, like, all the customer service tools have added AI, but, like, hasn't replaced us yet. You know?

And, like, I think there's a lot to do there. And I think customer service, much like coding, is one of the areas where you could see some big changes, but it's also not like an overnight thing. And also just there's still gonna be a place for the human aspect. There's a lot of things that just aren't AI a bull. Like you're Yes.

That are just everything is a one off. Like we have a lot of customers where like every request they get is a one off. So like, that's not true. And like, whatever, a SaaS app, that's not true. Right.

Because you're getting the same questions about pricing and how do I do thing X and whatever. And that's probably more automatable. But if you're like the Yukon library, you're not necessarily getting, like, a ton of automatable questions. Right? So, yeah.

So I don't know. We'll see, but I I agree. I don't think it's, like, I don't think it's total doom and gloom. I think there'll be some shit. And the history, technology always makes more jobs.

Like, there could be a shift in where it goes. Like, some industries go away and other ones rise up, so that could be tricky. But,

Aaron

There there are an infinite number of things that need to be done and need to be fixed and need to be made better How

Taylor Otwell

much work is that?

Ian

Working two

Taylor Otwell

days a week.

Ian

So much software is bad. Like, that's a thing. Maybe bad.

Taylor Otwell

All of

Ian

the developers will just be able to fix a lot of the bad stuff.

Aaron

Hope so. Yeah. Like, just make something good.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Is it DAX that's always tweeting, like, if the AI is so good, why is none of the software I'm using getting any better? Like

Ian

Well, that sounds exactly like that. He didn't say

Aaron

that he should have. Yeah. That sounds like him.

Ian

True. Right? Like It is true. In the real world, like, if you get out, if you just take one step back from bleeding edge where we all wanna be, like, oh, you're in linear, and it's all magical and amazing. You're in Laravel Cloud.

It's beautiful. It's awesome. If you just take one step back from that, it's like, oh, every other app you interact with is total trash all day long. Like, the your doctor's office app is trash. Right?

Like, that's all trash. It's all trash.

Taylor Otwell

I think it's I think it's debatable if linear is better than Trello, and Trello is, like, 20 years old. It's like it's not a settled conclusion, I don't think. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. That's true too. It's like everybody just yeah. Yeah. You get the hot app that everybody copies.

Right? And it's like, is it even better? Nobody even stopped to ask if it's better. It's like, oh,

Aaron

it will work. A sync engine. It must be better.

Taylor Otwell

The linear linear is good. But it is most software, you're right. Most software is just absolutely terrible. It's hard to write good software.

Ian

Yeah. It's super hard. And, and then even what is good software. Right? Like Yeah.

It's like, is it doing the job? Is it looking pretty? Is it, like Mhmm. Be using cutting edge techno? Like, there's all these other questions around, like, what do you even define as good.

Right? And what's the price performance trade offs and all those kind of things. So

Aaron

Yeah. We can even we can we can just stop at doing the job. I feel like that was the first one you said, and not all software even gets there. So let's just work on that one, and then we can look pretty, and then we never have kids cutting edge technologies. I don't care about that.

Ian

I mean, this is that's the thing. It's, like, such a huge opportunity for small software developers. Like, again, this is, like, one of those things where, like, twenty years ago, I'm in there. Right? And it's like there's no frameworks.

There's no nothing. I'm literally writing every line of code. Right? And then then you get the frameworks. You get Laravel.

It's like, great. Now Laravel, like, puts me what took me three months to get to z right? To get to start my app. Okay. Those three months are totally saved because Laravel and the starter kit and boom, that whole thing is there.

And obviously much better, more secure, all the stuff. But now it's like, okay. Great. Now, like, the start my app part gets moved up a bit because now the AI can, like, jump into, like, the business logic right away and think things through with me and, like, all that stuff. So, like, the bootstrapper, startup y person, it's, like, a huge opportunity, potentially.

I mean, that's, like, what levels levels is kinda blazing on

Taylor Otwell

the trail.

Ian

Right? It's like Yeah. Gonna build this game.

Taylor Otwell

Why not? I think it's, I mean, it's the best time ever possibly to to be a coder, you know, to be building software. It's there's never been a better time, I don't think. So not only should you learn how to code, it's like the perfect you're coming in at the best of times, really, honestly.

Ian

Yeah. We're out of the stone ages.

Aaron

Yeah. So but here here's the hard part. You still gotta have a good idea. So how do you

Taylor Otwell

That is the key. That's what every most people's ideas are bad. That's the whole problem.

Ian

They always not fix that for you.

Aaron

Alright. So how do indie hackers have better ideas, Taylor? Tell us.

Taylor Otwell

Okay. So I think one thing I see a lot I I this doesn't tell you, I think, how to have better ideas, but it just helps people fix something that they do wrong a lot. A lot of people have, like, this string of things not working out. And, like, they launch something, it doesn't work out. They launch it again, it doesn't take off.

And they do that let's say they do that, like, six or seven times. And they never seem to step back and say, I'm not good at having ideas. My all of my ideas are bad, and how do I, like, step back and fix that? They always blame it on, like, some other ancillary thing of, like, I didn't, like, market it right or, like, the, you know, I didn't the design wasn't good maybe, but, like I

Aaron

don't have enough followers on Twitter.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Like, I don't I'm not Peter Levels. I don't have, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers. But just, like, good ideas are almost always successful, I think, most of the time. They just always take off to some extent.

But, you know, people just never seem to step back and say, okay. Like, I'm I'm missing the mark or, like, the what I think is a good idea is not what most people think is a good idea. Like, how do I correct that or fix that? I don't know. That's kinda, like, a brutal thing to, like, step back and accept.

You know? Usually, the I what I see is the ideas are usually too niche. They're, like, something, you know, that just not anyone really has besides this person, which feels weird for me to say because I've always been the guy that's like scratch your own itch. Just solve your own problems. Well, it's not hard.

You know? But, yeah, I don't know. Just, like, identifying problems that a lot of people have. But, you know, easier said than done, I guess. Obviously, everyone would love to do that, but a lot of the low hanging fruit has been done, I mean, to be fair.

Aaron

That's the hard part.

Taylor Otwell

You know, a lot of the easy low hanging fruit has been solved on the Internet, and I think that the really successful ideas are hard, and they, like, require outside the box thinking. Even though, like, it's like coding is getting easier. It's never been easier to build things, but there's, like it's harder to, like, get the right ideas, I think.

Ian

I do think there is this other crazy opportunity on the, like, bootstrapper, indie hacker front right now, which is, like, when you're try like, five years ago, when you're trying to have an idea, it's like, yeah, a lot of low hanging fruit's been done. And usually the best way my what I've always told people is, like, you wanna basically build something that already exists in a sense.

Taylor Otwell

I think Yeah.

Ian

People want help desk software, so you should build some more help desk software. Right? Because, like, you know people want that. That's at least you're not, like, trying to invent a whole new market that nobody even you don't even know if anybody wants it. Right?

Okay. But everything was mature. It's like, how do you break in? There's lots of good options at all different price points and all those things, but we're kinda hitting the cycle. And that's, like, when the HubSpot was launched, it was, like, everything was client server and everything was going browser based.

So that was, like, the tech change that made new opportunity. And, like, now you have a similar thing, which is, like, all these industries where, like, yeah, there are all these established players, but now you have people wanting to how can I use AI in it? And that could be the tech opportunity to be like, yeah. This is a category that exists. We know people want a solution to this problem this category solves.

But now maybe we could take a different angle on it that leverages the AI in a way that's not you know, all all these tools are adding AI, but it's always just chunked into the existing thing that's existed for twenty years.

Taylor Otwell

Right?

Ian

And it's like, well, now you can do AI in here, but it's not, like, reconceptualized.

Aaron

So we're we're at the radio on TV stage, and we haven't invented real TV yet.

Ian

Right. It's like that thing, which is also why I think you haven't used many good AI apps yet because it's like all the AI apps are, like, an app you already use that shoves some AI into it. And it's like In the worst possible spot.

Aaron

It's so It's

Ian

all terrible. It's, like, not amazing. And, so when you maybe start from the ground up and rethink it, who knows? Maybe it'll just be bad, all these things, and that won't be true. But I didn't think it's like when you have these tech changes, does create opportunity to come in underneath the competitors in a way that's hard for them to counter because it's just hard to rethink something from the ground up when you have a billion dollar business built on top of it existing in the way it currently exists or whatever.

You know? So, yeah, it's a lot of opportunity.

Aaron

Dangerous for an indie hacker, though. This sounds like I'm gonna go invent something new fundamentally, and then Alright. It sounds like, oh, shoot. I gotta go market it, and nobody knows

Ian

what it is. All that stuff. Yeah. Still gotta market it. Still gotta have an audience of, you know, an audience not necessarily an audience, but, like, some way or

Aaron

A distribution. A customer. Distribution.

Ian

Yeah. Ads. Whatever it is.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. There's a certain category of existing markets that I am always, like, drawn to. Like, customer support's a good example, but also tools like linear or, like, Basecamp where I find, like, those kinds of tools, like, really prey on people's desire to, like, get their life together.

Aaron

Right. Aspirational tool.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Like, if I if I just sign up for linear or this organizational tool or this support software, finally, like, everything's gonna click and, like, the comp we're gonna be organized. We're gonna

Ian

be Save so much money.

Taylor Otwell

Done constantly. Like, customers are gonna be happy. I love those kind of tools. Like, if I Right. If there's, like, another half of my career, I've gotta build, like, productivity software and and capture that, like, aspirational

Aaron

Second brain software.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Ian

Yep. And those are the kind of tools too. I mean, I tend to like those kind of tools obviously as well because it's also, like, people use them all day, which I think is super useful. Like, that's always another thing. If you're not building a tool that somebody is going to use all day, it's like, man, that's so easy to pass on that.

It's so easy to cancel it. Like, it's not easy to cancel a thing that, like, your 10 staff use eight hours a day Yes. Five days a week. Like, it's just hard. Like, it's a whole process.

You gotta get a committee. You gotta talk to the they gotta try stuff. Like, people are gonna be mad. You're even moving because they know how to use this thing already. Like, it just creates an amazing a full amount of lock in that, like, oh, I built this little widget, and it automatically does something for you, and you can check back with it.

Every two months, you can just check-in and make sure it's doing the thing. It's like, I don't know. That sounds like something that's super easy to cancel. It's like, you're not even gonna remember you have the thing. I don't know.

You know? But

Aaron

yeah. Taylor, you gotta bully Adam into making project management software. That's what I wanna see him do.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's that's kind of the idea he always brings up. You know? Anytime he anytime he talks about the SaaS timeline, you know, of Mhmm.

His career, that's that's the idea. I mean, I'd love to see it. Like, I think it'd be a fun thing to watch and talk about. He'd

Aaron

be so fun, and he would be so

Taylor Otwell

a lot of good content. Be a lot of good content. Content.

Aaron

I think he'd be so happy doing it.

Ian

Yeah. I wanna see if he would go head to head with DHH.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, man. That's that's, like, the ultimate.

Aaron

Do it. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

I I do think, like, it it puts some serious pause on, like, the idea of, like, backstabbing dad to to build like, try to build this empire.

Ian

Man, that's but that's how we make it interesting. That's how you get a movie made about it. You know? Then you have, like, THH and Wathan and Schwarzenegger's playing Wathan. We need AI Schwarzenegger from, like, thirty years ago.

You know? Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

It'd be fun for him to, like, go build some software like that, I think.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. He needs

Taylor Otwell

to do that. I think he should just do it himself, basically. Him and a designer.

Aaron

Him and his life. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Ian

That would be just just great to watch. Like, yeah, who who we'd all be raptured. You know? We'd be like, oh my gosh. Like, he's got a new a new video is out where he's doing something, whatever weird thing he's doing, and you're like, yeah.

It would be must see TV.

Taylor Otwell

The best ever.

Ian

Alright. We gotta pay the bills here. Thank you to native PHP for mobile. Turn your level project into a native mobile app, ready for the app stores in minutes with native PHP for mobile. Check out nativephp.com/mobile.

And thank you to Laracon US twenty twenty five. Laracon is calling all web artisans. Come to Denver ready to level up. Leave, ready to ship. Thank you.

Check them out at lar laracon.US. Come to our party at laracon US.

Aaron

I've got I've got late breaking news on the party.

Ian

Oh, okay.

Aaron

The party is sponsored by Diagonal at godiagonal.com, and we got a little blurb for them. We're not gonna read it every show. We got a little blurb for them. We're gonna put it on the event page, but these people are making the party possible, so we want to thank them. Yep.

Diagonal is building the future of customizable software for businesses. Come meet the team, Brannick, Weichs, Owen Conti, Andreas Sante Santebanez, all these people I know from Twitter, and I've never said their names out loud. If you're interested, we're hiring Laravel engineers. Learn more at godiagonal.com/careers. So thank you to them for sponsoring the party.

Ian

Thank you. So good stuff. Speaking of, well, let's just talk about sponsors some more. Native PHP, have you been intrigued by building a mobile app in PHP, Taylor?

Taylor Otwell

I think it's super cool. I haven't personally had the opportunity to, like, do it, you know, because I don't have an app ready to to do with that. But it's just wild that, you know, Simon at native PHP was able to actually get that done. That is just

Aaron

hilarious. In the App Store.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I know.

Ian

Apple lets him get away with it. I don't know. I don't know what kind of dark magic he's pulled there. It feels like that should

Taylor Otwell

be either. Yeah.

Aaron

That's wild.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. I've been

Aaron

real excited one day when the Laravel team is like, yeah. We got a native app for cloud, and it's in native PHP or something like that. That would that would be wild. I know. I'm excited to see somebody do a big app in that.

Ian

They've done

Aaron

a lot of very impressive, like, proofs of concept, but I'm ready to see someone push something out for real.

Taylor Otwell

Do you

Ian

ever have any mobile app ideas just in general, Taylor?

Taylor Otwell

Not really. No. You know, not outside of just, like, mobile apps for Forge or cloud or something like that. No. I really haven't.

You know? I don't know. Maybe my

Ian

the summary.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. It is kinda. I've never even tried. I've never even started hacking on something that was intended to be mobile.

Ian

Mhmm. Mobile game. Maybe that'll be your second That'd

Taylor Otwell

be fun. Yeah.

Ian

That'd be fun. Alright. We got a couple more little items here. I don't know. Aaron, maybe we'll save you wanna save the meetup, or you wanna do the meetup?

Aaron

We can save the meetup. We'll save the meetup.

Ian

Let's save the meetup.

Aaron

We'll do we'll do a few little short guys, and then we can tailor back to work.

Ian

Yeah. Alright. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. What's what's the deal with them? Did you meet them?

Aaron

We went we went to This is

Ian

a topic? This is a topic.

Aaron

We went to their show on on Saturday night. We went and saw Tina and Amy live in not concert, but live in person.

Taylor Otwell

Wow. And it

Aaron

was fantastic. So they're doing a tour, very similar. This little, maybe, be more your speedy end. Very similar to Steve Martin and Martin Short. You know?

Ian

Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

That's

Ian

Kinda speaking. Your language. Yeah. The right generation. They're almost a little before my time, but yeah.

Aaron

We saw Steve Martin and Martin Short several years ago when they did, like, this variety show tour, and it was very good. Yeah. But this one was I think this one was funnier. They did a lot of, they did a live in person weekend update. So they, like, rolled out a desk and did weekend update with, like, current topics, like, you know, the pope died, and they, like, had a topic ready for that already.

Oh, wow. And it was it was just it was so funny. They are incredibly talented. And so they did a little bit of stand up, a little bit of storytelling, a little bit of improv, a few, like, sketches, and, it was very fun. It was a great a great show.

Highly recommended if if they're coming through your town to go see that.

Ian

Dallas this was? Or Yep. Mhmm.

Taylor Otwell

That's cool.

Aaron

Yeah. That's great.

Ian

I don't know if they're going

Aaron

to Little Rock or Poughkeepsie. Probably not. Probably not.

Taylor Otwell

No one stops by Little Rock.

Aaron

No.

Taylor Otwell

We are getting Nelly. Nelly's coming through. I'm gonna go to that.

Ian

There you go. There you go. Nelly in concert.

Taylor Otwell

Very millennial thing to do.

Ian

Yeah. That's good. I was gonna say what

Aaron

is this? 02/2006?

Taylor Otwell

Oh, man. Hey. I'll take what I can get over here. Okay?

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Aaron

They also I forgot to say they also had Fred Armisen come out, and so he did a little bit on weekend update, which was very funny. I find him to be hysterical. So they had a a a sketch with him as well.

Ian

I'm not a Fred Armistead guy.

Taylor Otwell

What?

Ian

I don't know. After my time or something. I don't know. I mean, I'm not against him. I almost like I feel like I've almost have never seen him.

Like, I know who he is.

Aaron

Everywhere, but also nowhere. Like, I don't I couldn't name one show he's done, but he's on everything.

Ian

Yeah. I don't know.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, man. I like this podcast. This is the only podcast I can come on where I hear the line, I'm not a Fred Armisen guy.

Ian

Everybody else wants your take on Laravel and Tulsa.

Taylor Otwell

Tell us about Fred Armisen. Give us your take. What's your

Ian

Fred Armisen take? Fred Armisen or Will Ferrell, go. Give us.

Aaron

Oh, man. I think Fred Armisen for sure.

Taylor Otwell

Oh, really? Over Will Ferrell? Yeah.

Aaron

Dude. I think so.

Ian

Oh my god.

Aaron

Will Ferrell is too Will Ferrell. Like, if you like Will Ferrell, you'll like Will Ferrell, but he's just himself always, and it's too much for me.

Ian

This is why me and Taylor couldn't do a podcast together, though, regularly because, like, we're too similar to see. I need I need You and I I

Aaron

need to disagree on literally everything, and that's what makes it work.

Ian

Disagree with it. Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Man, Marshall. Is in he's on the pant he's, like, on the the they've got monuments to him. Like, they've got he's on, you know, he's everywhere. He's a barrel.

Aaron

He is extremely funny. I will give I will give you that. And there was a time in my life when I was maybe in high school where he was the funniest thing to have ever happened. But he just kept playing the same shtick, and I think I got a little bit older and the shtick got a little bit tired that I've kinda, like, cooled on him. You know?

Ian

Okay. Yeah. I don't know if he's done much lately. I mean, he's kind of at all I don't know what he's even done in the past. Like, you know, he did, like, the Lego movie there, but even that's, like, ten years ago or something now.

Yeah, I'm sure he's done some stuff. He's not he was at his peak twenty years ago or whatever that was, where he was, like, elf and, you know, all those wedding crashers and all those things. Will Ferrell, the man. Brett Armiston, no Will Ferrell.

Aaron

Jack Black is another one who's only ever himself, but I I like his I like his himself more than I like Will Ferrell's himself. You know?

Ian

Oh, it's comedy. Like, Vince Vaughn. He's always Vince Vaughn.

Aaron

He's always Vince Vaughn, and I think he's very funny. Yeah. He's not too over the top. Vince Vaughn

Ian

Vince Vaughn show? That Vince Vaughn show is pretty good. You guys watch that? The No.

Aaron

What is it?

Ian

Something monkey? I don't know. He's in he's in my he's in Miami or The Keys, and he's, like, a a cop and, like, a bunch of crazy shit happens. It's, like, kind of a little bit out there. It's a Apple TV show.

Pretty good. It's it's I just remember that. Still Vince Vaughn, but it's a little more serious at times, although there's some comedy stuff. But

Aaron

The most recent thing I've seen Vince Vaughn in is Curb Your Enthusiasm, the the later seasons, and he's great.

Ian

He's in that.

Aaron

I mean, he's great.

Ian

Would never watch Curb Your Enthusiasm all the way

Taylor Otwell

through either.

Ian

Crazy. What? I know.

Aaron

How am I the guy that's seen a show that you have set?

Ian

Guy, but, like, I haven't seen Curb all the way through.

Aaron

Oh, guys. Y'all gotta watch Curb. Yeah. Don't watch

Ian

it with your

Aaron

kids, but you gotta watch it.

Ian

The old school type show, it's like, oh, there's, like, twelve seasons or something, and, like, there's a lot it's, like, 200 episodes. It feels, like, overwhelming now. It's like, oh, if I start it, it's gonna take me two years. I know. I should watch it, though.

I don't know. Alright. Final update, rock wall project. I don't know if Taylor has a rock wall.

Taylor Otwell

A climbing wall? What do

Aaron

you mean?

Ian

I think I think he means a climbing wall, but I'm not sure.

Aaron

Ian, I posted on x.com the everything app, but you probably didn't see it.

Ian

I didn't see it. Well, it's fine.

Aaron

Unbelievable. Yeah. I built a climbing wall for the kids.

Ian

Shit. You built one.

Aaron

It's done. It's dusted. It's on the wall. So I noticed in the house Okay. My, so my oldest are almost four, and I noticed my son was starting to, like, climb on shelves and stuff.

And so, like, in their room, in their closet, they've they've got this set of built in shelves, and

Taylor Otwell

they like to go

Aaron

and, like, play in the closet. And one time I opened the door, and he was on the top shelf hiding, like, in the shelf. I'm like, oh, okay. That's the way to do it. The energy, but we gotta direct it somewhere profitable.

You know? So I ordered I ordered just, like, a set of rocks, climbing rocks on Amazon, and then went to Home Depot and got, two little sheets of MDF because it's really MDF is really smooth, and I didn't want them climbing barefoot on, you know, plywood or OSB or anything. Right. And then I had them help me build this climbing wall, and we got it done in start to finish in one weekend. Two, like, solid work sessions, one Saturday, one Sunday.

It was fun for me about 75%. And then the last 25, I'm just, like, sweating and furious. I'm like,

Taylor Otwell

oh, yeah. Hang on.

Aaron

We're almost done, kids. Hang on. But then we got it on the wall, and they love it. They woke up this morning. I went and woke them up, and my son, who doesn't yet speak, unfortunately, was signing, climb.

And I was like, oh, you wanna go climb on our rock wall? And he was like, yeah. And I said, well, you know, you gotta go to school, which that sucks. But after school, you can climb on the rock wall. And so they did it, you know, they did it last night before bed, and they woke up wanting to do it again.

And I think it's gonna be really great for building his confidence because he, like, would climb up and then get really scared. And, you know, we're there, like, supporting him and helping him get down. And each time, he got a little bit a little bit better, but still a little bit scared. My daughter's just, like, up and down, up and down. So I think it's gonna be a great thing.

But we did a project, and we got it completely finished. How about that?

Ian

I love a project with the kids. Is it eight foot?

Aaron

Just shy of because of the trim. Yeah. So it's an eight foot eight foot, wall. But

Ian

Yeah. So you don't have

Aaron

half feet.

Ian

You have no basement. So is this, like, this

Taylor Otwell

is the

Aaron

main one beside it? I have no basement.

Ian

Oh, man. So where the heck is this thing?

Aaron

Because, we have a so we have three rooms upstairs, big kids, little kids, and playroom. This is in the playroom.

Ian

Okay. Oh, perfect. I love a kid project. That's awesome.

Aaron

Yeah. And it looks good. I'm very I'm very pleased with how it went.

Ian

You guys have any house modifications, Taylor, for the kids, like, specific to the house on the TV.

Aaron

About modern outdoor furniture or whatever.

Ian

Sounds like it might be for him, though. I don't

Taylor Otwell

know if that's for kids. We really don't. I mean, we used to used to build, like, a little reading nook or whatever when the kids were smaller, but now, not really. No kid specific modifications these days. You know?

Jane's been out fishing every day, and Victoria's been riding her bike, but that's about it.

Ian

Yeah. The fishing yeah. Yeah. You live out by the lake, so the fishing's built in.

Aaron

Y'all have a little fishing boat you like?

Taylor Otwell

That's that's why he's on me about that. That's the that's that's what he wants. So but to do that, like, I gotta have a dock built. I don't have any kind of floating dock to even tie the boat to. I don't know.

It's gonna be a deep project. It's gonna take a lot of work. So we gotta tackle the dock first and then potentially the fishing boat. And I swear by the time we get that built, he'll be done with fishing. Like, he'll be not interested in it anymore.

Ian

Of course.

Taylor Otwell

And then I'll be stuck with the dock and fishing boat, and I never really do that stuff.

Aaron

He's gonna say. He's just gonna say, dad, now we've got a dock. Can we get us, like, a ski boat for me and my friends? Yeah. That's exactly what he's gonna say.

Ian

Pontoon boat. Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. So we'll see. He's gonna join the fishing team next year in high school, and, you know, maybe this is his ticket to college sports scholarship.

Aaron

I don't know. Fishing scholarship.

Taylor Otwell

Amazing. Some some kid in our town just signed with one of it was one of the LSU's, like, satellite schools, you know, satellite campuses and fishing scholarship. So

Aaron

No way. Everything. Yeah. That's wild.

Ian

Is he into, like, the types of fish and all? Like, does he know it all? Like, is he researching it, or he's just more into the actual fishing and not so much, like, the fish?

Taylor Otwell

Around here, the kids, they're, like, only fishing for bass. Usually, like, largemouth bass. So that's all he's that's all he's focused on. Yeah.

Ian

Is Abby okay with him having a boat that he wanders out into the lake with?

Taylor Otwell

Or, I think so. He's pretty responsible, kid. It's not a super big lake. I can see across the whole lake almost.

Ian

So he can't, like, disappear too.

Taylor Otwell

No. Not really. No. And, you know, of course, life jacket and everything.

Ian

So That sounds pretty good. Yeah. Well, it's a home project, the dock. That'd be cool.

Taylor Otwell

They have,

Ian

like, ones that are metal. You just drop in if you wanted the, like, kind of easy version.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Definitely need the easy version. Don't don't want any hard version of anything.

Ian

Guys back there with those pylon, like, dry Yeah.

Taylor Otwell

I know. And That's what I'm picturing. Yeah.

Ian

Yeah. The whole thing.

Taylor Otwell

Well, on

Aaron

your lake have docks, most of them?

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Yeah. There's a few. There's a few docks.

Aaron

I guess it's a small small. They don't have big boats.

Taylor Otwell

No. Mainly, like, little fishing boats. Couple people have party barges, but even that seems a little bit too big, for this lake. So we'll see. Maybe this summer, we'll get it done.

Ian

I think if you're on a lake, you gotta you gotta have a dock. I feel like it's Mhmm. Feels mandatory to me. I think maybe it's good investment.

Taylor Otwell

You you

Aaron

heard it here first, James.

Ian

This summer, James. I'm fighting for you, buddy.

Aaron

Yeah. I'm fighting Good luck, big guy.

Taylor Otwell

Bro. I gotta delete Gotta delete mostly technical off of James' podcast app. I know he he listens. As soon as it drops, he listens every time.

Ian

We're really big with the 13 year old. Yeah. That was our best demo.

Aaron

Yeah.

Ian

Alright, man. Well, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

Taylor Otwell

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Fun times.

Ian

Yeah. Thanks, to the sponsors. Thanks, to the listeners. Check out the mostly technical party at mostlytechnical.com. There'll be a link there to sign up as well as in the show notes, of course.

And, we will see you next week. Thanks, everybody.

Taylor Otwell

See you. Later. Bye.