824: Taylor Otwell's opinions on PHP, React, Laravel and Lamborghini Memes

In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. Taylor shares insights on his journey from creating Laravel in his free time to building a strong community and user base. He discusses Laravel’s growth, including the major features and tools that were developed over the years. Taylor also shares his outlook on the PHP ecosystem, productivity tips, and plans for Laravel Cloud, a new deployment platform for PHP and Laravel applications.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 00:29 Laracon
• 03:13 Laravel’s inspiration and features
  • Intertia
  • Livewire
• 07:18 Why don’t we have a “Laravel for JavaScript”?
• 09:02 What parts of Laravel came first?
• 10:07 The Laravel ecosystem
  • Forge
  • Vapor
• 12:29 Laravel Cloud
• 14:00 What parts of Laravel are Intertia and what parts are React?
• 15:57 How many people are using Laravel?
• 16:59 Taylor’s productivity and development philosophy
• 24:43 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 25:19 What makes a beautiful API?
• 29:33 Taylor’s thoughts on typing PHP
• 30:41 Features Taylor would like to see in PHP
• 33:03 What people get wrong about modern PHP
• 34:22 PHP stacks and CMSs
  • Nginx
  • FrankenPHP
  • Statamic
• 37:30 Taylor’s thoughts on WordPress
• 38:14 Lambo memes
• 43:44 Taylor’s coding setup
  • Sublime Text
  • Vs Code
• 45:36 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Taylor:
  • Tiny Glade
  • No Man’s Sky

Shameless Plugs

• Taylor: Laravel Cloud

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