Best Shawn McCool Podcasts (2025)

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Kilopixel Retro w/ Ben Holmen + Joe Tannenbaum 1:11:20

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6d ago1:11:20

1:11:20

At the beginning of August, after six years of working on it on-and-off, Ben Holmen took his Kilopixel project live. It's a 1000 pixel display, where each pixel has to be manually toggled by a custom CNC rig, and it's whimsical and impractical and took the internet by storm. In today's episode, Chris chats with Ben and Joe about the whole project a…

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(Actually good) browser testing w/ Nuno Maduro 1:54:19

21d ago1:54:19

1:54:19

Up until now, browser testing in Laravel has felt… bad. Dusk was a huge step over nothing, but it's been slow and flaky and just waiting to be replaced with something better. And with Pest 4, Nuno's cracked it! In today's episode of Over Engineered with dig into the technical details of what makes browser testing in Pest 4 both very fast and much m…

1
Fostering Community w/ Alex Hillman 1:41:41

2M ago1:41:41

1:41:41

Alex Hillman has been thinking about and actively supporting communities for decades. In this episode, Chris and Alex talk about lessons he's learned along the way that can help meetup organizers tend their local tech communities, and brainstorm about ways that we can organize together to support meetups in general. Links: tiny.mba stackingthebrick…

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Native PHP w/ Simon Hamp 2:18:45

4M ago2:18:45

2:18:45

Simon Hamp and Marcel Pociot have been working on NativePHP for a number of years, and Simon just surprised with world at Laracon EU with a NativePHP for Mobile announcement. In this episode, Simon and Chris get deep into the the NativePHP innards, explore sustainable open source, and generally just have a good time for <> over two ho…

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The next era of Larabelles w/ Zuzana Kunckova 1:20:17

5M ago1:20:17

1:20:17

Zuzana Kunckova started Larabelles five years ago, and over that time it has grown into an important part of the Laravel community. In today's episode, Zuzana and Chris talk about the future of Larabelles now that she has more time to dedicate to it. Links: Larabelles Sponsor Larabelles on GitHub Sponsor Larabelles on Patreon Other ways to support …

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PHP × NYC Chaos-Cast™ 1:11:21

5M ago1:11:21

1:11:21

What happens when you get a bunch of Laravel podcasters + a bunch of mics in a room? Chaos, apparently. Recorded live after PHP × NYC with Ben Holmen, John Drexler, Daniel Coulbourne, Chris Morrell, Ian Landsman, Dave Hicking, and Joe Tannenbaum.By Chris Morrell

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Running Small Teams w/ Dan Matthews & John Rudolph Drexler 1:34:57

5M ago1:34:57

1:34:57

There's lots of advice out there for running software teams, but much of it comes from large organizations with dozens or hundreds of developers. Smaller teams have different needs. On today's episode, we pick up from a question Dan asked on Bluesky and talk about how best to approach running a small development team. Links: Dan's Bluesky Post Thun…

1
Event Sourcery w/ Shawn McCool 1:52:31

9M ago1:52:31

1:52:31

Shawn McCool has been talking about event sourcing for years, and recently started a new series of streams on the topic. In this episode, Chris and Shawn talk about event sourcing, Verbs, and community (among other things). Links: Shawn on Twitch Event Sourcery VerbsBy Chris Morrell

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Design Patterns w/ Mary Perry 1:15:39

10M ago1:15:39

1:15:39

Design patterns can be very useful, but can also be weaponized as a way to "prove" that someone is doing something the "wrong" way. Mary has been thinking a lot about the good side of knowing design patterns, so we sat down to chat about them.By Chris Morrell

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Side Projects w/ Joe Tannenbaum 56:21

11M ago56:21

56:21

Joe Tannenbaum is thinking about starting a podcast about side projects. So we took an afternoon to talk through what that might look like.By Chris Morrell

1
The Art of Pairing with Strangers w/ Ben Holmen 59:48

1y ago59:48

59:48

Ben Holmen started his Pair-amid scheme as an experiment in meeting new people and experiencing new code. He shared his calendar with the world, and booked pairing sessions with 15 complete strangers. The outcome? A bunch of new friends and new experiences. In this episode, Ben and Chris talk about pair programming, side projects, and how to find f…

1
ReactPHP + Event Loops w/ Len Woodward 1:15:18

1y ago1:15:18

1:15:18

ReactPHP is a low-level library for event-driven programming in PHP. It lets you write code that's much closer to the async/await style of JavaScript in PHP. In today's episode, Chris and Len talk about our experiments with ReactPHP. Links: ReactPHP Whiskey Community Prompts Conductor DawnBy Chris Morrell

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Code standards w/ Matt Stauffer 1:26:35

1y ago1:26:35

1:26:35

What set two developers on a quest to build custom tooling to enforce their code style preferences? Today's episode is a story that starts with two independent projects—Tighten's `tlint` and InterNACHI's `laralint`—but meanders to all the right places, including the future of PHP itself, the intersection of bikeshedding and art, and so much more.…

1
Burnout w/ Ian Landsman 1:16:19

1y ago1:16:19

1:16:19

Today we take a break from over engineering to talk about burnout. Both Chris and Ian have been working on the same products for multiple decades. We sit down to talk about that and what to do about the kind of burnout that comes from working on the same thing for so long. Links: Brent is Leaving Twitter Join the RTSN.DEV mastodon instance…

1
Let's talk APIs w/ Steve McDougall 1:42:06

1y ago1:42:06

1:42:06

Steve McDougall (aka JustSteveKing) is known as the "API guy" on Twitter. In today's episode we start with the question, "what if the best option is just a single page app with a good, RESTful API?" Links: HAL - Hypertext Application Language JSON:API Spec Laravel Sanctum API Versioning Blog Post Steve on Twitter (follow for updates on upcoming cou…

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Full Stack Javascript w/ Kelvin Omereshone 1:14:48

1+ y ago1:14:48

1:14:48

The internet has been talking (yelling?) about full-stack javascript a lot lately. In today's episode, we sit down and talk about what it means to be "full stack" and whether there are really any truly full-stack javascript frameworks out there (spoiler: there are, but maybe not Next.js or Remix). Links: Sails.js The Boring Javascript Stack AdonisJ…

1
Building prompts w/ Jess Archer 1:50:15

1+ y ago1:50:15

1:50:15

Jess Archer took something that was quite good—the Symfony console output features—and built something that was absolutely great: Laravel Prompts. In today's episode, we dig into some of the gnarly details around building prompts and working with ANSI escape sequences in the terminal.By Chris Morrell

1
The Future of the Laravel Frontend w/ Taylor Otwell 1:18:23

1+ y ago1:18:23

1:18:23

Taylor Otwell has been finding ways to improve Laravel for over a decade, but has only more recently set his sights on the front-end side of things. In today's episode, we sit down and talk about the current state of building UIs in Laravel, and what the future might hold. Links: Laravel Volt Aire Form Builder Laravel “Context” Feature Hooks Packag…

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Building for the command line w/ Joe Tannenbaum 1:18:05

1+ y ago1:18:05

1:18:05

Joe Tannenbaum took the internet by storm with his incredible SSH CLI "experiments." In today's episode, Chris and Joe sit down to get into the messy details of parsing ANSI escape sequences and dealing with multibyte strings, but spend as much time talking about programming as art and life as an actor. Links: Joe Tannenbaum on Twitter Joe's "Lab" …

1
Do we really need sprints? w/ John Drexler, Bogdan Kharchenko, and Skyler Katz 1:20:21

1+ y ago1:20:21

1:20:21

What are the best processes for small software development teams with high trust? In today's episode the InterNACHI software development team sits down with John Rudolph Drexler to talk about whether or not we need to estimate tickets or even bother with sprints…By Chris Morrell

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Cache everything w/ Ian Landsman 1:55:26

1+ y ago1:55:26

1:55:26

As the saying goes: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." So in today's episode we dig into all the ways Ian is taking on one of the hardest parts of programming in his rewrite of their decades-running helpdesk software, HelpSpot. We talk about caching, a little bit of Laravel history, and about…

1
Handling complicated view logic w/ Skyler Katz & Bogdan Kharchenko 1:09:07

1+ y ago1:09:07

1:09:07

Complex view logic can be hard to get right—particularly in server-rendered templates like Blade. We recently had to decide just how much a Laravel Blade component should do, and decided to hash it out on the podcast.By Chris Morrell

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Modular Laravel Apps w/ Mateus Guimarães 1:31:59

1+ y ago1:31:59

1:31:59

When applications grow—in scope, sheer lines of code, or the number of team members—how you organize things starts to matter a whole lot more. In today's episode, we talk with Mateus Guimarães about modularization: breaking your application into smaller modules. We explore some of the topics in his new Laracasts course, and talk about the decisions…

1
Building Forms (and Catalyst) w/ Adam Wathan 1:10:04

1+ y ago1:10:04

1:10:04

It's been said that web development is 99% forms and tables. Today we talk with Adam Wathan about all the decisions that go into creating a great form builder API. Adam and the rest of the team at Tailwind recently launched the developer preview of Catalyst—a React UI library with a robust form system. We take a deep-dive into the API decisions beh…

1
Static site generators & personal websites w/ Aaron Francis 1:03:06

1+ y ago1:03:06

1:03:06

We all use our personal websites as an excuse for trying something new or over engineering what's usually a simple, low traffic site. In today's episode, Chris and Aaron talk about how to build a great personal website with "just Laravel" and imagine ways that static site generation, markdown editing, open graph, caching, SEO, and more could be imp…

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Perfecting lifecycle hooks w/ Caleb Porzio 1:16:08

2y ago1:16:08

1:16:08

In today's episode, Chris and Caleb sit down and try to imagine what the perfect "hook" implementation might look like. Laravel, Livewire, and the upcoming Verbs package, all have to allow for hooking into logic at specific points, and each package has to handle this in its own unique way. What if there was a canonical way to hook into the lifecycl…

1
Verbs vacation (part 1?) w/ Daniel Coulbourne 1:24:00

2y ago1:24:00

1:24:00

And now for something completely different… In this episode, Chris and Daniel sit down to talk about a new event sourcing package they're working on called Verbs.By Chris Morrell

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Customizing outgoing email 1:23:23

2y ago1:23:23

1:23:23

Most teams have encountered this basic scenario: Your application sends out a periodic report to a specific person in the company. Then, at some later point, either another team member wants to start receiving a copy of the report, or you need to remove the original recipient and add a new one. With a standard Laravel app, you're probably going to …

1
What about event sourcing? 1:31:06

2+ y ago1:31:06

1:31:06

In this episode we indulge in the purest form of Over Engineering—a 90 minute discussion of a completely different application paradigm/architecture. Our team has used event sourcing to some degree, and we're considering using it more heavily in the future. But before we do, we're going to step back and ask ourselves if it's worth it… Some useful l…

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The dreaded status column w/ Daniel Coulbourne + Cheyne Rood 1:26:46

2+ y ago1:26:46

1:26:46

Over Engineered is all about those things that bug you but you never get a chance to "solve." Today's episode is about the dreaded "status" column. This is another topic that most developers will hit over and over. You have a model. You need to track the status. You add a status column, and then later a status timestamp "accepted_at", and then late…

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Referencing specific database records in your code 1:00:45

2+ y ago1:00:45

1:00:45

Season 1 continues with a discussion of how to deal with special database records that need to be referenced directly in code. We've all been there before: you've got a specific vendor that you need to write a custom command for, or a certain category that needs special handling, so you either hard-code the ID or slug and shudder slightly before mo…

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Over-engineering migrations even more w/ Tim MacDonald! 1:16:07

2+ y ago1:16:07

1:16:07

In the second episode of the podcast we talk with Tim MacDonald about a few other approaches to how you might manage other operations that happen before/during/after a database migration (or really any deploy step). Tim pitches a lower-level approach that spawns a whole new line of thinking. We also touch on some of the responses to episode one, in…

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The line between migration and…? 1:06:15

2+ y ago1:06:15

1:06:15

In the first episode of the podcast we explore the boundary between database migrations and other operations that need to happen when the database is being migrated. How do you seed or manipulate data after new tables or columns have been added? In migrations? In one-off commands that you have to run manually? Running seeders in production? In tink…

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Pop Programming 2:15

8+ y ago2:15

2:15

"Pop Programming"By Shawn McCool

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Episode 11 - Developing the Game Kingdom 1:02:51

9y ago1:02:51

1:02:51

I had the great honor of sitting down with Thomas Van Den Berg, the creator of the video game Kingdom to discuss how he approaches programming, architecture, deployment, and other technical aspects related to building his fantastic strategy game. Learn more about the game on the website http://www.kingdomthegame.com/ Follow Thomas directly on Twitt…

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Episode 10 - Modeling Complexity with Cynefin 51:31

9y ago51:31

51:31

This episode we talk about something a little different. Programming is a technical art. But, building usable software tends to be much more social in nature. I got a chance to corner James O'Brien to discuss Cynefin, a model for understanding and acting upon complexity as well as anti-patterns in communication. Join us as we dive into understandin…

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Episode 9 - Tales of Event-Sourcing 1:44:00

10y ago1:44:00

1:44:00

An Introduction to Event-Sourcing - Probably wise to have the basics before listening to this episode. A discussion about Command Bus Event Sourcery: An Introductory Course into DDD, CQRS, and Event SourcingBy Shawn McCool and Mitchell van Wijngaarden

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Episode 8 - Game Development 1:01:23

10y ago1:01:23

1:01:23

Shawn and Matt have a conversation about their game development projects, development tools, design patterns, and more. Podcasts 5 Minute Geek Show Mildly Alarming Podcast Game Development Tools Game Programming Patterns Unity 3D Game Maker Studio Corona SDKBy Shawn McCool

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Episode 7 - Domain-Driven Design 41:52

10y ago41:52

41:52

Shawn speaks to two consultants, Mathias Verraes and Ross tuck, about Domain-Driven Design (skipping the introductory parts). We discuss temporal modeling, functional modeling, process modeling, and much more. Event Sourcery: An Introductory Course into DDD, CQRS, and Event SourcingBy Shawn McCool

1
Episode 6 - Functional Programming 59:43

10+ y ago59:43

59:43

I talk with Matt Stauffer about learning programming languages and functional programming. Erlang: Erlang: The Movie Erlang: The Movie II - The Sequel Learn You Some Erlang Scala: Free Course on Functional Programming in Scala Reading Material in Order: Scala for the Impatient (Free chapters available) Programming in Scala Functional Programming in…

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Episode 5 - Event Sourcing 1:00:55

10+ y ago1:00:55

1:00:55

Matt Stauffer and Shawn McCool have a conversation about Event Sourcing. Event Sourcery: An Introductory Course into DDD, CQRS, and Event Sourcing Broadway on GitHub Shawn's Scala Event Sourcing Learner Project Robin Malfait's Event Sourcing Learner Project Coursera Functional Programming Course (Free, you can start at any time) Errata: Shawn menti…

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Episode 4 - The Business of Development with Tighten 1:00:44

10+ y ago1:00:44

1:00:44

I talk with Matt Stauffer and Dan Sheetz from the web-agency Tighten about what developers should know about business.By Shawn McCool

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Episode 3 - The Command Bus 1:03:31

10+ y ago1:03:31

1:03:31

Ross Tuck, Jesse O Brien, and I discuss the command bus and application service layers. Watch the original live video recording.By Shawn McCool

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Episode 2 - ActiveRecord and Datamapper 1:31:37

10+ y ago1:31:37

1:31:37

In this episode, I talk with Mitchell van Wijngaarden, Davzie, N0xie, and Rafael Dohms about ActiveRecord, DataMapper, Doctrine, and Value Objects. Watch the original live video recording.By Shawn McCool

1
Episode 1 - Test-Driven Development 1:21:26

10+ y ago1:21:26

1:21:26

In this episode, Adam Wathan and Shawn McCool discuss the discipline of test-driven development. Just a heads up, we pulled this audio from a live video discussion. Watch the original live video record.By Shawn McCool and Adam Wathan