Navigating Tech Shifts, Expanding Your Developer Toolkit ![rw-book-cover](https://wsrv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopenchannels.fm%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F08%2FOpen-Channels-FM-Podcast-Cover.jpg&w=512&h=512) ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Winter Hustle And Home Sauna** - Carl Alexander described rebelling against winter by heating his apartment so he can wear shorts and stay productive. - He uses warmth and cooking to cope with seasonal isolation and keep working during long cold months. Transcript: Carl Alexander Great. I'm a degenerate workaholic right now. I mean, to be fair, it's like, I mean, you got all the U.S. Got a lot of cold and snow. But, you know, like it's been we've we've gotten a really early. Well, you're far up north. So you're kind of the same as me. But the winter started really early this year. So I'm like, I'm holed up. I'm holed up and working right now. That's like that's been my January. I am wintered out. I was wintered out before winter actually started, right? Because winter starts just December 21st, right? So which is like people don't realize it. Like the season of winter just starts in December. I've been wintered out before winter officially started. Zach Stepek I was wintered out before November had even ended. Carl Alexander Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like, absolutely. I I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I'm, yeah. I wish I was like in Mexico or something or like Brazil, but here I am right now. So I do the best of it. I'm in my little hobbit hole basement apartment with the heater running uh like i i blast it i'm like i'm a weirdo but like ever since covid when i couldn't travel i basically have rebelled Against winters and i basically cook i cook my apartment so i can wear shorts in it okay so so i don't know how to say it in Fahrenheit, but it's like 20. It's like it's 90, you know, in my apartment, I think. Zach Stepek That's a little warm. A little warm. Carl Alexander Yeah. Yeah. It's warm. Like, wait, ([Time 0:00:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c233db5-8e45-4573-9b95-0b49a0280eb2)) - **Rock Photographer Weekend Runs** - Zach Stepek shared weekend runs as a rock photographer, playing multiple shows across cities and hitting a flat tire in Indiana. - He balances partnership-building and gigs while traveling for short creative trips. Transcript: Zach Stepek Okay so friday saturday sunday kind of thing yeah i went to cincinnati went to louisville kentucky and then went to uh evansville indiana, which is an interesting city. Evansville is a lot of fun. Carl Alexander Why is it interesting? I've never heard of it. Zach Stepek So it has a reputation that's not great as a capital of the United States for a certain drug. But it's also just got a great music scene and great people, and I've got a lot of friends out there. So it's always nice to come back to Evansville and see the folks that I know out there, especially my friend Kirk. So Kirk Martin, I know you're not listening to this, but it was good to see you, especially a couple days before your birthday. Nice. But, yeah, it it's a good time, and got to go to a venue owned by the drummer of the band Knocked Loose on our Louisville date. Got to go to a famous venue in Cincinnati called Express. Okay. Or no, that's Madison Live there, Madison Live. It's technically in Covington, Kentucky, but yeah, it's right over the border from Cincinnati. Got it. Six blocks from Cincinnati. Wow. So, but yeah it's a great venue we were in their their smaller room it's a theater complex so they have multiple rooms mostly club-sized shows so it was a good time on my way out there I got A flat tire in the middle of Indiana which is always fun hit a one of the famous Indiana potholes on the side of their highways. They do a very bad job of taking care of their roads. So that's basically been my winter is spending a lot of time in, building partnerships, working the role at Big Scoots, and then occasionally taking a weekend and just going off and Being a rock star photographer for a few days and coming back. ([Time 0:03:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ef68e008-f817-43c3-9534-8f8b633ab167)) - **AI Multiplies Work And Fun** - Zach and Carl described AI as massively increasing the fun and capability of programming rather than replacing developers. - They observed AI raises the volume of possible work, turning prioritization into the core challenge. Transcript: Carl Alexander Like, there's so much to do, like, with AI and stuff now. Like, I just feel so unleashed. And I'm just, like, I have so many things I'm trying to tackle. And so little time. And also, like, I don't know. Like, it's fun. Like, I think, I mean, I'm on Twitter a bit more now again, and it's like a bit kind of echo chambery for the AI stuff. But I think one thing that's kind of true, though, is it did make programming feel like a lot of fun again. Yeah, it did. Not that it wasn't before, but it did an order of magnitude difference in the amount of fun i have programming um no i get that i stopped coding actively a while ago right because i've been Zach Stepek In more executive leadership roles for a while and um ai and the the tools that are available now have brought me back into that world of coding more. And so it's really, it's fun to be back and to be learning new things with this new, I don't want to say pair programmer, but kind of junior programmer that I get to direct. Carl Alexander Yeah, I mean, it's changed a lot over the holidays. Like, I'm still writing my year review 13 000 words we're still we're getting there we're getting there wow i have a i have a couple thousand words on ai and stuff and some of it is like related To the holidays i think we hit a really big inflection point around december um so it's it's people are still i mean the jury is out whether like it actually like, you know, gets you to like, You know, everybody can code, but it's like, okay, marketing is more important than ever now, basically. Uh, and cause there's even more noise and more apps and stuff, but, um but it is fun and like like a lot i've seen a lot of executive i've sent one okay i don't know if i could actually say the Company name but so i have a friend i'll keep the company name uh anonymous but basically there's a there's a company called sentry they do error monitoring and stuff like that. During the holiday, the CEO sent an email to say, look, this is an inflection point. He used to be a developer. And he's like, look, I've been shipping stuff for Sentry that's going in production, doing security fixes. And I've been doing it with agents for the past six months. So I'm not saying that you need to, like you will get fired if you don't use agents, but you should be aware that this is happening and this is impacting stuff. So I send this to a friend who's working at a very big company uh who who's the the ceo is very ai-pilled and i i don't know if we can swear but i'm gonna say it anyways the cheeky motherfucker Dms the ceo on slack with that email because you the ceo is trying to get everybody to like use ai and stuff like that but they're kind of like curdling it in and stuff because they have to Use asia and then he's he's like that's it so you know like let it rip basically so i indirectly got this big ass company to go like all in on on ai because i sent that to my friend it was a good Email um i'll try to get it for the show notes for bob but um there's a really good email, but I think, yeah, it's changed a lot. And I've seen a lot of takes. I think the jury's out, whether it's like super good for, for like the large businesses or what the impact is. My favorite take is to Javon's paradox, which is like you know as technology advances uh it doesn't actually shrink the amount of work it increases the amount of work because like you You hit more stuff and i feel this intently like with emir like basically like i went from like oh i've like all these things i can't do to like oh no like now it's just a question of priority And triage basically like nothing feels out of and that's why it's exciting and fun because i'm like oh do i have to learn rust i want to do this thing in rust i'm like now i can learn rust But i also can have the ai write the rust for me so and just review and and do a lot of it at the same time it's like it's amazing i'm having so much fun but workaholic. So ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b34802a-ea97-485f-93bb-ab6481cc4006)) - **Experiment With AI Before It’s Mandatory** - Be aware of AI's inflection point and experiment with it even if not mandatory, as Zach shared via a CEO email example. - Use AI to prototype and learn, then decide how to adopt it strategically in your business. Transcript: Carl Alexander During the holiday, the CEO sent an email to say, look, this is an inflection point. He used to be a developer. And he's like, look, I've been shipping stuff for Sentry that's going in production, doing security fixes. And I've been doing it with agents for the past six months. So I'm not saying that you need to, like you will get fired if you don't use agents, but you should be aware that this is happening and this is impacting stuff. So I send this to a friend who's working at a very big company uh who who's the the ceo is very ai-pilled and i i don't know if we can swear but i'm gonna say it anyways the cheeky motherfucker Dms the ceo on slack with that email because you the ceo is trying to get everybody to like use ai and stuff like that but they're kind of like curdling it in and stuff because they have to Use asia and then he's he's like that's it so you know like let it rip basically so i indirectly got this big ass company to go like all in on on ai because i sent that to my friend it was a good Email um i'll try to get it for the show notes for bob but um there's a really good email, but I think, yeah, it's changed a lot. And I've seen a lot of takes. I think the jury's out, whether it's like super good for, for like the large businesses or what the impact is. My favorite take is to Javon's paradox, which is like you know as technology advances uh it doesn't actually shrink the amount of work it increases the amount of work because like you You hit more stuff and i feel this intently like with emir like basically like i went from like oh i've like all these things i can't do to like oh no like now it's just a question of priority And triage basically like nothing feels out of and that's why it's exciting and fun because i'm like oh do i have to learn rust i want to do this thing in rust i'm like now i can learn rust But i also can have the ai write the rust for me so and just review and and do a lot of it at the same time it's like it's amazing i'm having so much fun but workaholic. ([Time 0:08:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38b041a6-455f-4e32-a7b6-29a44ba06ff5)) - **After Effects Scripting Exploration** - Zach described learning After Effects scripting to generate fractal noise for grunge video effects as a non-WordPress pursuit. - He enjoys exploring video automation and generative techniques outside his main stack. Transcript: Zach Stepek I similarly have been pursuing some things outside of the WordPress space. And one of the things that I've been doing is learning After Effects, actually. And After Effects has a whole scripting language that lets you aspects of video with code, which is really cool. So I'm learning how to generate random fractal-based noise in order to create grunge effects. That's cool. It's so much fun. That's kind of my pursuit outside of wordpress at the moment ([Time 0:10:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/adeb68a5-2376-421f-b22a-e3de65ee290d)) - **Laravel’s Developer-First Momentum** - Carl highlighted Laravel as a batteries-included framework advancing fast and offering developer-focused tooling. - He noted Laravel's ecosystem innovations often outpace comparable developer experiences in WordPress. Transcript: Zach Stepek So first, a lot of people know that you have Laravel experience, but not everybody does. Not everybody knows that a lot of Amir has been built on Laravel, right? Carl Alexander I mean, it's all Laravel. Most of my consulting that I have left is actually more or less Laravel. We're very Laravel- focused in the sense that like um roots that the the like the the wordpress community that does a lot of the advanced stuff has like a paid framework called radical Which is like this hybrid um laravel wordpress thing uh that emir actually supports that's kind of like how i got my foot into hosting laravel sites um yeah so i do i'm working on a large Project around that um of just like having basically most wordpress be more of a backdrop to the whole thing but yeah no uh i mean i have a heavy experience in php i think i think it was known And then forgotten because again like i the world's changed a bit since covid but like i i've mostly always promoted myself as kind of a php dev more than right wordpress dev uh for very Because like you know the emir cli is all is heavy i mean laravel has a lot of symphony but like the emir cli is all symphony right like it's got no laravel in it um like i just like php a lot As a language but i'm increasingly open like with especially with ai to like other programming languages and and other things um but yeah no definitely more of a developer but yeah doing Zach Stepek A lot of laravel because i think laravel is exciting you know yeah it absolutely is and it keeps evolving it keeps getting better and so um you know you're working on Laravel support inside Amir, which is cool. Carl Alexander I mean, Laravel is kind of interesting because I'm very into the ecosystem. I listen to a lot of the podcasts. I pay attention to a lot of what Taylor does and stuff. And there's kind of an interesting aspect to the Laravel stuff right now is that for on the tech side, they're so far ahead, right? Like, you know, like they do a lot of cool stuff. Like I think the closest thing to like Laravel is the Rails framework. Like it's really like they call it batteries included, you know, like when you get something with the batteries included, like it's what they call batteries included framework where You get like everything need. Like you need billing, we got billing. We need this, we got this. ([Time 0:18:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dbdb0c19-b621-4050-9841-e3a80b890b9f)) - **Learn Adjacent Backend Practices** - Expand skills from WordPress to adjacent ecosystems like Laravel to increase career flexibility and value. - Learn core concepts like Eloquent, migrations, queues, and auth to make practical cross-platform transitions. Transcript: Zach Stepek And i think that you know laravel is at a point now where it's definitely a mature ecosystem has been for a couple years now at least you know at that state of full maturity and it's just Getting better every single release. And so it's really a natural progression for a PHP developer who has familiarity with PHP and WordPress to expand into a system like Laravel as an additional skill set. So that's something that I want to talk about this year is what Laravel is and, you know, how to make a good transition from WordPress to Laravel knowledge. And, you know, what what is eloquent? What's an object relational mapper? What are you know, what what are these packages that are part of Laravel that handle things like authentication and authorization or what's a database migration like how how do we actually Work in a way that that something can be migrated without breaking everything yeah you know these are all like really important topics and you know there are things in Laravel that handle Like job cues and task scheduling and events. WordPress has that. But yeah, we have it all. Right. But it's all very well abstracted for most users. Carl Alexander Well, also, it's kind of, it's also not promoted in a way that you can use it, right? Like, I'm using it for, like, my projects, but you have to kind of be deliberate in your desire to use those systems, you know? And they're not really, like, kind of wants you to use cues. WordPress doesn't really go out of its way to teach you to use them, you know, uh, things like that. So it's very interesting. Yeah. And there's definitely stuff to learn. ([Time 0:23:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c86afcae-4bd8-4596-b0be-e7376dc92398)) - **Developer DX Drives Ecosystem Strength** - Carl observed WordPress is focusing on AI features but lags in developer tooling compared to frameworks like Laravel. - He argued strong developer DX is a competitive advantage that influences ecosystem momentum. Transcript: Carl Alexander Like, uh, right? So. Zach Stepek Well, even just looking in ecosystem, Laravel Boost, right? Right. Carl Alexander Well, I think this is one thing I think WordPress is struggling with, right? They're going very hard on the AI stuff, but for building blocks and stuff like that, but not for like. Know they have a kind of mcp server but it's not an mcp server for working with wordpress in the sense of you're a developer working with wordpress it's a mcp to like create posts to manage The site and stuff which is important but again this is like i think one of the things with taylor that's so obvious and also uh dhh too is like their love for developers yeah yeah right Zach Stepek They build they build tools for coders they're built for coders by coders yeah that's yeah very apparent like yeah it's very apparent like i was just on the docs today and they have copy Carl Alexander To markdown. Yep. For the AI stuff. So I think it's very interesting to see that space and compare it to like where WordPress is again, because WordPress powers so much of the web. But a lot of what made it so powerful was this developer ecosystem. And it feels more and more how it's stagnating, especially when you compare how fast they're iterating on their side on that stuff. ([Time 0:26:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2b27f36f-2885-4c04-b2d7-7f289ab51975)) - **Expand Beyond Code Into Adjacent Skills** - Broaden your learning beyond coding to include frontend JS, React, support, and developer relations to stay relevant. - Seek cross-discipline knowledge that helps you ship and support products, not just write code. Transcript: Zach Stepek So, you know, I want to get further into JavaScript. I want to talk about React. I want to talk about things that are happening in that world. I want to get, you know, some front end love into the podcast here, which is difficult because you and I both come from a very strongly back-end background. Carl Alexander Yeah, and also I prefer to try to avoid the JavaScript ecosystem. Like I do Livewire. Like I try to do like, I'm more in the DHH camp, you know? Like I want a very interactive front-end and great experience, but I don't want to blend my stacks as much as possible. Zach Stepek And Livewire does a really good job of that. But in that ecosystem, though, JavaScript has changed so much over even just the last year. So I want to look at getting some folks that i i know from that world in on the podcast as well um you know i've got friends that own uh educational companies in that space that i'd like to Get to come in felix is at versell now too yeah uh yeah i saw that and that would be really cool to bring felix in and talk about uh the versell ecosystem and what they do there um yeah and so Javascript definitely an area we want to cover more we want to talk about some of the front-end technologies um we've had some talks in the past about developer relations I think that That's becoming increasingly important I'd like to have some conversations about about support and how important support is so you know when we say expanding the stack we're not just Talking about you know that we're wanting you to expand the number of programming languages you know or the the number of technologies you're implementing we also want you to be able To think beyond just the box of code or the constraints of being a builder in the WordPress space right so we're here to give you new things to think about. And so I want to make sure that throughout this year, throughout 2026, we are exploring things together that help all of us grow. And so if you have ideas, we say this a lot, but if you have ideas, we want to hear them from you. If you want to come and talk about one of the topics that we're talking about here, we want to know that. And we want to bring you in and have you be a part of this journey over the next year as we explore things beyond WordPress. We're still going to have WordPress content, of course. ([Time 0:31:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/862d0847-5e06-48bf-ae23-9566326b9923)) - **Role Labels Will Fade With Better Tools** - The hosts emphasized that roles like 'front-end' or 'back-end' will matter less as tools let people accomplish more across the stack. - Awareness of available tools and AI will matter more than strict role boundaries. Transcript: Carl Alexander And it fits so nicely because it's more important than ever to like expand the stack, basically. Because I think in a year or two, even something as quaint as calling yourself a front-end or a back-end developer will just not matter, basically. You know, you might have a certain expertise or knowledge, but, you know, if your goal is to just get stuff done, it won't matter, right? Well, you just have to be aware of what's out there so that you can, you know, use the tools at your disposal and let AI do a lot of the work for you. And so that's why I think the mission is more important than ever. ([Time 0:37:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/354e7a44-e191-485c-8e42-40dcee75e411)) - **Lessons From Working With Dying Platforms** - Zach recalled being a Flash developer and losing contracts fast after the platform's decline, showing abrupt industry risk. - He also mentioned ColdFusion experience to illustrate repeated career shocks from platform changes. Transcript: Zach Stepek I was a Flash developer. Oh, yeah. And I made good money as a flash developer and then the industry shifted because of a little letter penned by somebody that turned into bad press that uh you know turned into more bad press Because somebody at adobe handled things very badly uh when they were uhOLing the end of lifing the mobile version of Flash Player for Android in favor of using the Adobe integrated Runtime or Air to generate native applications, which was part of their uh their phone gap acquisition right and so they they handled the pr for that very badly it led to a lot of people Saying that flash was dying and within two weeks of tech crunch publishing an article i had people canceling contracts millions of dollars worth of contracts. So I've been there when the technology has died. I was a cold fusion developer. It's still not dead, but it's not what it is, you know, what it used to be. It was when I started as a cold fusion developer, it was the way to build a dynamic website because PHPp hadn't evolved to where it is today and you know the option before cold fusion was Cgi uh that's basically that's all that was there right uh but that industry you know it's not gone but it's definitely not what it once was Yeah. ([Time 0:44:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e463fe0d-adbd-487d-b44d-74e8f2b6f6c9)) - **Diversify To Safeguard Your Career** - Diversify your technical skills to protect career longevity and increase value to teams or clients. - Use adjacent ecosystems to pivot if market share or platform demand shifts suddenly. Transcript: Zach Stepek And it's a lesson I learned the very hard way multiple times, but it is one that I'm not going to get caught up by again. And so I think, you know, I want to impart some of this knowledge that's not directly WordPress to the community as a whole in order to help to curtail some of that effect if ever, and it Is still an if, but if ever we start to lose market share, right? 43% is pretty high. That's a lot. You know, that's four and a third out of every 10 that are built on WordPress right now. That doesn't mean it's going to be that way forever. I hope it is because I think it's a great technology that has a lot of room to grow. And I'm very happy with some of the things that are happening in the WordPress ecosystem right now too. But I also know that things can change on a dime. And so having a more diverse base of knowledge is good for a number of reasons. It's good because you can pivot if you need to. ([Time 0:46:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e580e0d6-45d9-4c8f-ae8a-50b5d845dd57))