In this conversation, Ben interviews Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. They discuss everything from the age-old argument of tabs vs. spaces to the origins of Laravel and how Taylor has turned it into a thriving, sustainable business.
Links:
Laravel, the framework Taylor created
Tuple, used by the Laravel team to collaborates
Takeaways
- Coding preferences and philosophies can vary among developers and programming ecosystems.
- Maintaining backwards compatibility is important for frameworks with a large user base.
- Clean code can be subjective and depends on the specific needs and goals of a project.
- Testing is crucial for shipping software with confidence. When starting a new project, consider writing documentation first to iron out any potential issues and ensure a user-centric perspective.
- Focus on high-level testing, such as feature-level or controller-level tests, to gain confidence in the functionality of your code.
- Challenge assumptions and ask questions to improve the quality of your code and avoid unnecessary complexity.
- Believe in the potential of your project and raise your ambitions to achieve greater success.
- Building a business around open source can be a sustainable model if you create commercial products that complement and support the open source project.
Chapters
- (00:00) - Tabs or Spaces?
- (08:00) - Shells
- (10:46) - Minimalism in Coding
- (17:24) - Stripe and Their API
- (22:41) - Aesthetics
- (25:09) - A Coding Hill You Would Die On
- (28:09) - Clean Code
- (33:38) - Testing
- (40:30) - Personal Involvement With Code
- (45:00) - Notes and Manifestos
- (49:09) - Skill Over Time
- (51:49) - Ian Landsman and Laravel
- (55:49) - Businesses Based on Open Source
