All right, I'm going to record just a series of episodes here, and I'm going to blast them out because, whatever, I've got some things to say, and I don't want to just put it in one giant one. Yeah, let's go. Let's start off with a simple one, a simple short one. Somebody sent me a Reddit thread this morning that said...
Laravel's going in the wrong direction or whatever. Actually, somebody said, people are talking about Livewire. You should look or something. And I was like, oh, no. And the title of the Reddit thread is Laravel's going in the wrong direction. And it's a bunch of people mad about everything.
um you know what's new it's they're mad about the new laravel landing page they're mad about flux and the starter kits they're mad about um they're mad about lack of whatever jet stream starting pointing they're mad about lack of a normal auth builder thing they're mad about everything um but this this is sort of the way that i felt on i hopped on the starter kit youtube live stream
and there was a lot of negativity in there, which was kind of surprising. This is why it's so surprising. Are you ready for this? This is so surprising to me because do you remember? Do you all remember when Jetstream came out and how mad everybody was? Like, it's so funny. The irony is just punching me in the face. That like...
When Jetstream came out, Taylor goes, here's a thing that does everything you got. It's an amazing starting point for your app. It's like everything you need. There's teams like there's all this stuff. There's two factor auth. It's like. So such a robust starting point. He launched it, was so pumped about it. There was a liveware version and an inertia version. Published it. Everybody freaked out. They were so mad.
They were all saying, well, now we, there's too many, there's too many decisions. There's too many. There's too many options when we start out in Laravel. It's like, is it Jetstream? Is it just the, you know, the normal off like starting point? And now there's what's Sanctum and what's Fortify and what's all it was like, there's so many options. We're so mad about that.
So, and they went so hard on Reddit to the point that Taylor tweeted out, I'm done or whatever. He just kept trying to like defend the point being like, don't use it. It's free. You don't have to use it. Why are you so mad? Stop being mad. And they just went harder and harder and harder. And it got so heated that he literally peaced out.
do you remember that day i remember seeing that tweet and actually being like being like no there's no way like there's no way that he's just gonna quit but it also was like I don't know. He's pretty mad. And why else would he say I'm done? It was nerve wracking. And I remember being like, oh, crap, like.
Everything in Laravel kind of hinges on this benevolent dictatorship. Less so now, but in those days, for sure. And did it all just go poof because everybody on Reddit was really, really mad? But... Then like an hour later or something, he tweeted the, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. You know, the Wolf of Wall Street thing. And I was like, oh, thank God.
But that just hardened his skin even further, I imagine. He's already got a thick skin because he's just, since forever, just put up with heat from people. facades every decision he knows the fundamental truth of things like this by now that i am learning still that everybody will be mad when you change anything Many people will be mad when you change anything. That's just the way it is. The tricky part is you build something.
Lots of people use it, and then you hear a complaint, or you realize a way that it needs to change to address some shortcomings. So you address those shortcomings with a change. then you make the other half of people mad about because of that change.
And you have to be careful to not just yin and yang back and forth or create a watered-down product that does nothing for nobody. That's the tricky part about listening to the people who are mad. Like you need to listen because often there's like... truth nuggets of truth buried you know in in those in the heat um there is light in the heat but
Uh, but sometimes you can get trapped in this, just going back and forth forever on whatever. So a great example of this to me is now jet stream and blah, blah, blah. And then he's like, all right, well, let me address all the hate I'm going to make.
I'm going to make something that feels much lighter weight than Jetstream, is far less opinionated and is much more close to the like auth boilerplate stuff that was around before. You remember that stuff, the auth boilerplate stuff? Okay, I'm going to create this thing called Laravel Breeze. Okay. Simple. Just get up and running. Okay. Creates it. Another option. You know, whatever. Kind of like even more mad about more options. But everybody liked Breeze. I liked Breeze.
um but people were like oh it doesn't have x y and z and what about spark like do we need and then he's like all open source okay all of that the message was clear to laravel
that things need to be simplified and unified. None of this, you know, Laravel knew, do you want plain blade? Do you want blade and alpine? Do you want... you know livewire with volt livewire with volt functional do you want react do you want view do you want inertia spa mode api only it's like these are all the options that different people want but
it just creates this like too many options thing so they do the what i think is the smart thing is is simplify down to like three options three good modern options of course there's going to be people who want different things whatever But at least new people coming in will see, get started with Laravel. You want View Reactor LiveWire. It's perfect to me because it's like, I guess if they only had to have two, it should just be like.
react or livewire if they're trying to cater to new people because new people coming in they're not going to be view heads but laravel is like view is a big part of the community so i get it that like a lot of people use view um But React is like the king in the world. And then you have to have that like, not like what's, you know, LiveWire or Laravel's like, you know, non JavaScript option that every framework has like.
hotwire and rails and live view and whatever it's like that's livewire and laravel so it's like oh you don't want those big javascript stuff then well here's live or here's our option for that To me, it's perfect. It's three things. It reads really well. And it's opinions that I think the opinions baked in, I think are good. Like I can only speak to the LiveWire one specifically, but it's like, yeah, it ships with Volt, but you don't have to use it.
and the voltage chips was the class-based components that like are not that dip to me it's like this is really i don't see why it again it shouldn't be called volt it should literally just be liveware single file components or separate files just pick your poison you can you know do whatever with whichever one you want um but anyway so you know seeing some pushback on that it's like what do you know do we have uh
You know, oh, they're pushing Volt. Again, I need to put out a LiveWire. Sorry, you heard that ping. I need whatever. We could talk about what LiveWire needs to do to unify things. in the future um but anyway the point is is that everybody's mad they're mad and then they're just like throwing shade
Like the new Laravel page stinks and VC is ruining everything and the docs and blah, blah, blah. And this is just Reddit. There's a lot of people saying how they want to just use Blade and they don't like all this liveware stuff.
There's a lot of people saying that they don't want this Volt stuff. They only want other LiveWire. So now there's people in there literally saying what made LiveWire great was... x y and z and it's like oh my gosh like we're to the point now where people are like the good old days of live wire it's like no like whatever that's okay the point is is is that people will be mad when you launch a new thing and but taylor knows that and i imagine internally at laravel they're you know
taking in this feedback and probably considering it more now because they're a big company than when it was just Taylor. But I hope that they keep the perspective. of like, like I could see, like, let's just say that somebody at Laravel headquarters, who's not like an old Laravel head, you know, would see things like this and go, oh, feedback, like we should listen. And it's like true that, yeah, but also they were.
what they're saying they miss is the things they complained about last time and you really just have to like make a decision and be confident in it which and to me this is the right decision is like simple and a unified starting point and again like i i want to make it so that there is no volt you're never there's no there's not another word i do not like words
I don't even want it to be live wire in Alpine. Like I literally, I want it to be, I don't even want it to be live wire. I don't want it to be live wire. It's just blade components. And they're just live. If you use the live stuff, that's like my dream is you're just using, I love one true paths. I hate fracture, you know, but I get that like live wire is a, is a. a you like um a faceted enough thing that it makes sense but it's gonna be the same whatever it's just yeah it's tricky because
when you have a new concept you want to brand it and give it a name and give it an identity so that people know where it fits people know that it's a thing but it also does create this situation where it's like you know i'm using whatever, Livewire and Volt and Alpine and Blade and Laravel. And when you walk into a new ecosystem, that's a lot of words. And I don't like that feeling when I go into other ecosystems. I don't like two words. I like one word.
you know and flux what's flux you know so whatever um but the reality is it's like okay oh you don't want us to ship with flux you just want us to ship with tailwind oh my gosh like there was somebody who said that and it's like okay we well it's and they're saying that this is just like one big play so that we'll buy caleb's pro components and it's like well no
I think I'm probably getting the boot. I'm supposed to be leaving this Airbnb. Oh, no, that's just River. Yeah, I could go on all day about all this stuff, but I actually do have to go. So whatever, everybody's mad again, but what do you do about it? You listen to some of the things they're saying, which, okay, what do I think are the good things that they're saying? The things we should listen to? There's too many words. There shouldn't be all of these words.
Like people already kind of have a home for like a name for a front-end library or a front-end UI kit. like shad cn and a name for like a back-end framework like react and a name for some kind of glue thing like an inertia or whatever um and i think you know similarly it's like there's live wire that's like the main kind of engine of everything and ideally it's just live wire and flux um and whatever an alpine i guess if you need extra things
but okay so too many names that's just valid i'm not proposing a solution in the moment can't do that right now what i can say is yeah too many names um as far as you know using flux and it being like a play to make everything Pro. It's so hard to focus on those sweet guys yelling your name in a cute way. Yeah. So too many names. Sure. Scroll jacking on the Laravel homepage.
I don't like it either, but it doesn't matter. It's like, it doesn't matter. Don't be a jerk. I don't know. I guess if there's something that you don't like and you have no goodwill for like... the people behind it, then why would you spare them from your feedback? So maybe, sure, give the feedback. At least it's specific. That's very specific. Instead of, I don't like the new Laravel homepage, this is good.
Say you don't like scroll jacking on the new Laravel homepage. Say that. Don't say I don't like the new Laravel homepage. Be specific in your criticisms is my like number one qualifier for criticism. So, yeah, you know, it's another thing that's like a huge shame that I think that I think that Laravel shipping all that stuff in one day was a mistake.
And it's funny, like this is a lesson for me because I wouldn't have thought it was a mistake. It seemed like a good idea. I like unified things like one big day. I was very excited for that day.
i woke up and i had the jitters i was like oh we're gonna get all this new stuff it's gonna be great but i think there's a lesson in here and the lesson is by pooling launches you you do miss opportunities to highlight you know the great like even like i just pulled everything into a flux too in theory like i could have done better in theory if
Like if I could just launch the date picker and it be its own thing and I give it its time of day and do a big like video with it and do a big push and whatever, then I do charting, you know, and really focus on it. Then I have two marketing opportunities and tailwind four. That's another marketing opportunity instead of just one marketing opportunity. Whatever. I don't regret that. I'm just kind of drawing a parallel. But for Laravel, I think the problem is, is that.
there were like a few things, basically scroll jacking on the Laravel homepage pissed people off. Like, and sure, I do, again, I do not like it. I do not like scroll jacking. I like to just scroll and see stuff, but whatever. It's such a tiny thing. It's so easy to change a landing page. We built the whole Flux landing page in a day, start to finish.
and i'm not saying it's god's gift to landing pages i'm just saying building cloud is a mammoth mammoth mammoth undertaking absolutely mammoth the landing page is a tiny little speck of dust compared to that But if you launch both at the same time, the most front-facing thing that people are going to see and that people interact with is the Laravel homepage or whatever. So people are mad about that. And then it just kind of clouds the discussion. Clouds.
It's like we should all have been looking at cloud and being excited about it and shipping stuff on it. Like it should have been the cloud day. You know, it's a shame that like some. like random decisions here and the starter kits like people were of course mad about the starter kits they're pumped i am pumped about them i love that i can just get started with something with a good layout and drop downs and modals and like that's amazing that
Like, let's not forget that, please, for a minute. Can you just listen to me for one minute? Can we not forget that right now you can type Laravel new and you have modals and dropdowns? And like so much stuff, buttons form everything like layouts and everything. And it's all componentized and it's all documented and it's all designed by a professional designer with Tailwind.
Whatever. There's like 15 or 20 or something like components that you get that you were building before. You were building your own modal and you were mad about it. It was a bummer. If you wanted a toggle switch in your app, that was not simple. You had to build that, and it didn't look good, and it didn't fit with the rest of your app. And now it does, and you get it for free, and it's there when you type Laravel New. That's huge. That's...
Great. Anyway, where even are we? That's the thing. There's some lessons here. I don't know. The takeaway is everybody, I keep saying the takeaway. I don't want to leave. Everybody gets mad about everything. That's just the way it is. Of course, there's shreds of truth in there, but also it's like, yeah, don't listen to the hater. Forget about Jetstream. Forget about it. It's over. Forget about Spark.
that's over pretend they don't exist forget about breeze forget about the old auth kit forget about sanctum and fortify just pretend those things don't exist pretend they don't exist let's focus on these starter kits build in you know the options the extra options people want remember this is like it just shipped and we don't have to tag a whole new major version because it's just stubs we can change it however we want
so make a pull request whatever it'll improve there's a guy tony he's dedicated to this project and he'll continue to improve it um and that's that's the future the word starter kit is the word for it And the way there are three flavors, that's perfect. Let's just continue with that.
but let's try to make fewer names for stuff let's get scroll jacking off the laravel homepage as far as people complaining about the vcification of laravel it's one of those things that's like well we're here now so like you know i don't know it's like i think the problem there is a problem that and i fall prey to this too that because vc is now in laravel everything gets blamed on them
like taylor's work os implementation or whatever that he just did as his own thing they don't have a deal with work os to my knowledge like it's not it wasn't some like big grand money grabbing strategy it was just like oh how do we get single sign on or whatever that's called you know like how do we get that stuff like octa whatever you know just easy in laravel oh work os all right well this is a really nice tool i'll make a nice integration for it
Great. Like in the olden days, that would have been like, awesome. Now we have support for that thing. That's great. Thanks, Taylor. Just like Cashier made it really easy to use Stripe. You know, it's like, oh, perfect. This is great. Thanks, Taylor.
But now there's like people, wow, it's VC, it's Laravel, they're trying them, it's a money grab, and they're turning into JavaScript, whatever. It's like everybody wants you to turn into JavaScript, but everybody's mad at you when you turn into JavaScript, you know? If you don't acknowledge JavaScript, you will turn into Rails.
a decaying ecosystem full of fracture and everybody is like the front end you know world in rails is whatever dhh pretends that hotwire can do everything even though it's poorly documented and nothing else matters and we can't use react and we can't use view that's the world that's the dystopian future of a back-end framework that doubles down and says
We are the backend framework. We will not be like the JavaScript folks. Whatever. That's what Laravel is and has always been, is taking good ideas from everywhere. you know we'll take the good ideas from javascript and we'll take them from rails and we'll take them from work os or whatever we'll take them from whatever ecosystem we think has good ideas if there's a good service container in c sharp dot net or whatever we're gonna take it
If that feels right, we're going to do it. And that's what Laravel is. Anyway, I might not have time to record any other episodes. I'm supposed to be packing up. Bye.