# 99: Laravel New  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: 99: Laravel New - Show: Mostly Technical - Owner / Host: Ian Landsman and Aaron Francis - Episode publish date: 2025-09-16 - Episode AI description: The hosts dive deep into their journey with TypeScript and the updates on their exciting Postgres course. They tackle the challenges of managing database schemas and the highs and lows of modern development. A humorous discussion ensues about family driving dilemmas versus solo adventures. Additionally, they reflect on the community impact of open-source transitions like Once.com and critique a tech marketing manifesto that misses the mark. All this unfolds with plenty of laughs and personal anecdotes! - Mentioned books: [This One's for the Girls](https://share.snipd.com/book/2b2eb683-6a29-43a0-8e21-ee0eb10f93eb) by [Betsy Keith](https://share.snipd.com/person/2aba82d1-2741-478b-859d-ee24878ff04e) - Duration: 01:11:39 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/674e4722-82ec-4be0-a988-d0545acc5bbe) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/7ad45fb4-8aa6-49c2-83cc-bc2327d14b03) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:27:25 ## Snips ### [Ephemeral DBs For Simpler Teaching](https://share.snipd.com/snip/39bc4a33-3200-4a58-b91e-6e434b34c6cb) 🎧 02:23 - 04:22 (01:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d90dc9d7-0a82-4a37-8dab-1dc5c14521bf" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ian prioritized ephemeral isolated DB instances and won community agreement on simplicity for Database School infrastructure. - He accepts tradeoffs and plans to rely on Fly.io or Cloudflare containers to avoid managing Kubernetes complexity. #### 💬 Quote > I won. I think you won. I think you won. That's fine. I'm willing to concede you winning. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman celebrating community agreement on database school infrastructure #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** Some people had good feedback on if FlyIO goes away, how to manage this without them. Okay. I think Florian and Josh Manders both that I could set it up with Kubernetes, which sounds terrifying and have zero interest in doing that. So please fly. Don't go away. Find product market fit so that I can keep relying on you. I think there was one piece of feedback that I could potentially get away with Cloudflare containers doing this, which would be awesome. You know, keep it in the family. Ian's stock portfolio would love that. **Aaron Francis:** 224 right now, baby. I know. I know. I know. You're so happy. **Ian Landsman:** But no, nothing really else besides that, except several people saying like, hey, we've done stuff like this. Ephemeral is the way to go and is very helpful. So that **Aaron Francis:** was good. i guess in that while we're here uh any progress this week on it or did you wrap it up or where you at uh **Ian Landsman:** very much progress so where i'm at right now so let's see today's september 15th um so where i'm at right now is the building out the front end to do this whole like, you know, round trip, you know, editor queries, sending queries, that kind of stuff. And I'm waiting on the brand to come in. So I've been working with two different branding companies and waiting on a finalized thing for that. And then I'll be able to apply all of that to the front end skeleton that I've been building out. So the front end skeleton I've been building out is just very vanilla, not designed anything like that. But I'm getting all the routing and stuff in place like the infrastructure to do that. And then I'll put the, you know, coat of paint on it and it'll look very nice and neat. So yeah, we're making, we're making progress. Um, of course, slower than I would like, but that's kind of how these things go. --- ### [Struggling Into TypeScript](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e7bb79f7-e5a5-4db5-ab98-b27aee66e832) 🎧 04:40 - 05:41 (01:01) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d4a99da0-d3f8-48ff-80bf-384a441e9a90" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ian is building Outro as a Vue + Inertia + Laravel app and is trying TypeScript despite low appetite for it. - He ripped most of the starter kit out and is selectively adopting features he finds useful. #### 💬 Quote > The new starter kits are just like loaded with TypeScript stuff and so I'm doing my best to like not get super left behind but, you know, I ended up ripping out the majority of what the starter kit came with. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman on integrating TypeScript and starter kit complexity #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** I'm happy with where we're at, even despite wishing we were further. Is this a Vue app? It is, yes. It's a Vue, Inertia, Laravel. I'm trying to like dip my toes into the TypeScript waters. Ooh. Sounds It's not great. It's not great. I played **Aaron Francis:** with it a little. When I went through my React round there and I was like, I don't even understand what TypeScript is, but let me like fold this in. I was like, what? I have to do all this extra work. It's like a ton of extra work. And I'm like, I don't really see that much better than this extra **Ian Landsman:** work. So much extra work the new starter kits are just like loaded with type script stuff and so i'm doing my best to like not get super left behind but you know i ended up ripping out the majority of what the starter kit came with um it's just so much stuff. Um, and I know that like, that's probably what the market demands and Laravel is trying to find the way to provide that, but it's not for me. Um, so yeah, we're, we're getting there. --- ### [Start With A Minimal Starter Kit](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f6c8530e-12a2-4f46-b017-f19995de31ff) 🎧 06:16 - 09:03 (02:46) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b124320e-a09d-4526-b7bf-6a77aba5720c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Don't adopt every framework trend; choose the starter kit that matches your needs and strip extras you won't use. - Aaron recommends the Livewire starter kit for a clean base you can customize quickly. #### 💬 Quote > I recommend the Livewire. And with the Livewire starter kit, what I do... is like a nice, clean, empty shell. > — Aaron Francis Aaron Francis advising to use Livewire starter kit for simplicity #### 📚 Transcript **Aaron Francis:** I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't think you have to follow those. I don't think you have **Ian Landsman:** to follow them all the way. about I got to get glucose. My blood sugar is dropping. So we may go crazy here. But you talk. I'll be right back. I'm still listening. Okay. **Aaron Francis:** Yeah. I never talked to the empty chair before. This is interesting. So yeah, I think you don't have to follow them all the way to the edge, I guess, would be my first thing is like, you can, you know, we know what they're up to, but we don't have to necessarily do everything they do. This also makes me think the other thing is I love the starter kits and I love the LiveWire starter kit because the LiveWire starter kit has like nothing in it. really just a very clean Laravel basic kind of starter kit. And you could rip out the Livewire stuff if you don't even want to use Livewire in like two seconds. And it's very cool. So I recommend the Livewire. And with the Livewire starter kit, what I do, and I will, I'm just doing this this weekend, I will update you guys in a bit on that. But it does use a little Volt, and I'm not really a Volt man. I like my LiveWire pure. So I just had the AI, like, change that from Volt to regular LiveWire, which took, like, one second. And then you have, like, a nice, clean, empty shell. So, yeah, that's my recommendation for the starter kit is kind of no matter what, almost to start with the LiveWire one because it's actually like super clean. But **Ian Landsman:** Jason told me that there is a version. There's just like a bare bones version of the Blade Pure. Yeah. Well, no, of the React and Vue ones that don't come with all the like UI components and all of that. It's just it's just like, hey, here's Vue, here's Laravel, here's Inertia, Tailwind. We're set up. We're ready to go. Which is basically what I ended up doing by ripping everything out. But, you know, here we are. So, man, I don't know if I'm old or like stuff is moving too fast or what, but I'm just like, what? There's so much going on here. I'm looking through the folders and I'm like, is this web development? Because if this is, I want to do this anymore. **Aaron Francis:** Well, you're kind of that mindset in general. But yes, like there's a lot going on. This is where I like, I'm just, I love that I'm keeping it simple in my stuff. It's like, it helps watch this old school to begin with, even as we update it in a more Live wirey way live wire is kind of old school in its heart a little bit and uh yeah i don't know the type script it's just like i don't get it like i don't get it like i get it if you're on like a big team great fine but like i don't know for your one or two people i don't know it's a lot of extra work for i think the dubious amount of value yeah **Ian Landsman:** that's kind of how I feel right now. I'm going to keep pushing because I know a lot of smart people see a lot of value in it. But I'm not smart enough to see it yet. --- ### [Bite-Sized Database Courses As Funnel](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4acae637-4854-4155-86cc-b3c24b0f15c4) 🎧 12:42 - 13:53 (01:11) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/415e9af1-025d-4755-9f12-a9b1996b9b74" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ian will launch a free 'Introduction to Postgres' short course as the new Database School style. - He plans bite-sized, two-hour material to make beginners 'dangerous' then upsell deeper courses. #### 💬 Quote > This is not zero to hero for Postgres. This is, you don't really know very much and I'm going to get you dangerous. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman describing the Intro to Postgres course approach #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** Yep. That's the main thing I'm working on this week. It's either October 15th or October 22nd. I don't know which one yet. And there's some confounding variables in there. But I have an introduction to Postgres course coming. So that will be coming on the new database school.com either on the 15th or the 22nd, and it will be totally free. And so I think what's going to happen is it'll end up being the 22nd. And I will start doing heavy, you know, promotion just before that. But it could be the 15th. But there are some contractual things we're trying to figure out there. So intro to Postgres is coming. this will be, this will be the first foray into the new, what I'm hoping is the new standard database school style, which is shorter, more focused, more bite-sized, discrete courses. So this is not, you know, zero to hero for Postgres. This is, you don't really know very much and I'm going to get you dangerous. And then after that, you can do mastering Postgres or something else, but it's going to be, you know, two hours of, hey, you don't know very much. Here's at least a little bit. --- ### [Solo Getaway To Think Clearly](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3588f8f9-de9a-4ba0-ae4e-21bfcf5a9576) 🎧 15:44 - 17:38 (01:54) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4b1dd413-2a72-4adf-8849-4047c3954765" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ian plans a mid-week solo getaway to Broken Bow, Oklahoma to unplug and think about priorities. - He'll brick his phone and use long drives and solitude to reflect on life and work direction. #### 💬 Quote > I'm going to brick my phone before I go out there so it's gonna be a little bit of like a little bit of, you know, monastic torture but a little bit of detox. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman describing his plan for a short reflective trip #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** I don't remember. Kids got sick. Nanny got sick. I'm at home with sick kids. Brutal. But it was OK. It actually ended up being like the weekend ended up she came home Saturday late afternoon and it ended up being fine. You know, her parents helped, my parents helped, everything went fine. But during that time, I thought like, oh man, it would be nice to get away, like for me to get away. This seems nice. I want to do what you're doing. So I thought it'd be nice to get away. But with the like sole purpose being like have some thinking time. So I started looking at there's a place near here, near Texas called Broken Bow, Oklahoma, which is like, I don't know, three, four, five hours away, something like that, drivable. And it's a it's a little more secluded. got a bunch of these hipster doofus airbnb cabins out there that are that are all shiplap and then in the kitchen there's a sign that says kitchen in case you forget where you are it's like oh kitchen coffee it's like why do we need signs for things that are self-evident anyway um i started looking at all a bunch of those and i think i'm gonna get like two nights away in the middle of the week so it's not you know overly burdensome on jennifer uh two nights away to to go be like completely unplugged gonna i'm gonna brick my phone before i go out there so it's gonna be a little bit of like a little bit of you know monastic torture yeah but a little bit of detox. And try to think through, like, what do I want out of life? So, you know, I got two days to figure that out. But hopefully we can make a little bit of progress. Yeah. But yeah, I think I'm going to do that. I may even do that before the course launches, like next week or something. Oh, well, okay. Let's just sit back and think for a second. We'll see. I don't know. It's coming up soon. So we'll have to make that decision pretty quickly. --- ### [Delay Memberships To Reduce Moderation Burden](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ff71f060-7914-4e30-a6de-ae26ebd56e62) 🎧 21:20 - 26:55 (05:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b647a301-cd8e-443e-b2bf-2cb9eaed1953" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Aaron re-evaluated Outro's membership feature after reading long TOS and moderation burdens. - He favors shipping the core podcast tooling first and delaying memberships to avoid heavy moderation stress. #### 💬 Quote > The memberships are eating at me... I don't want to be the guy being the arbiter of does this cross the line of violent rhetoric or whatever. > — Aaron Francis Aaron Francis explaining why memberships cause moral and moderation concerns #### 📚 Transcript **Aaron Francis:** But like middle last week, early last week, you know, so here's the thing. I haven't worked on it as much as I'd like to. And there's a lot of reasons. But part of it, this isn't the main reason, but part of it is I've had this little, it's a little back of my brain, little like chipping, little thing talking to me, right? And so I started poking around because the thing that's kind of bothering me is like, outro is a tool. tool parts of it, I'm totally good on. I this right now. Like organizing the episodes, mailbag, selling sponsors all that stuff's good but the memberships the memberships okay are eating at me and so i went over to patreon which is sort of the closest thing what **Ian Landsman:** part is eating at you before you go to the well i'm gonna i'm gonna get to that it's gonna be clear in a second oh i **Aaron Francis:** go to patreon and i look at their terms of service i'm poking around, right? I'm looking at their community guidelines. Community guidelines are like 500 pages long, right? And it's like all this stuff about like pornography, threats, firearms, whatever, all the stuff, right? All the bad stuff, intimidation, extortion, blackmail, all the things, right? And this is the part that's me i mean partially in our current political environment but even just in general do i want to be the guy me arbiter being the arbiter of does this cross the line of you know is this too far on violent rhetoric or whatever like i don't know that I want to be that guy, you know? I don't want you to **Ian Landsman:** be that guy. And you don't want you to be that guy. **Aaron Francis:** That's, I think, the thing that's been eating at me. It's like, you know, because it's like, oh, people are going to be able to comment. So now you just have random, there's like two levels. There's like the actual customers of Outro who are sending stuff, which will have to be policed, obviously. And then there's the people commenting on the stuff those people write, which is its own of stuff. Right. And it's like, do I want to do that? You know, and it's like there's a different level even of like you use as a tool and maybe you use it for things I don't care for. And I just have to be OK with that. Right. Maybe somebody runs a TypeScript **Ian Landsman:** podcast using Altra. **Aaron Francis:** And that would super annoy me. Right. That would be awful. **Ian Landsman:** I hate it. So is that hate speech? I don't know. I hate it. **Aaron Francis:** Yeah. But it's like they're just using it as a tool. I'm not the face of their TypeScript stupidity, right? Right. Whereas if I have this membership thing in Outro, it's like all the public links are like outro.fm slash whatever bad thing, right? And like all that stuff. And like this is a side project, you know? And I want it to be fun and I want it to make money, but I also don't want it to make my life more miserable. And, you know, if I was a BC back thing, that would also be different. I'd hire a previous moderator who was the moderation lead at Facebook. And I'd be like, build out your team and we're gonna have other people who deal with all this terrible stuff. And that's not going to be directly on me to look at every day and make these decisions. But that's not the case. So it's just going to be literally me in there being like, I don't know. What do I think about this? What do I think about this terrible thing this person said or whatever? And like, don't like that one bit. Yeah, I don't think I want to do it. Right. So like, so that puts **Ian Landsman:** you the Shopify the cloud flare the square space that puts you in all of those positions where you're like you can have my platform or you can't but either way it's gonna suck for me to put that call like if I if I de-platform you that sucks if I leave you on that sucks what are we doing here it's a no **Aaron Francis:** win type of situation and like obviously I know that like 95% of the people using it it's gonna be totally fine it's not gonna be issue but it's like the weight of that five percent is heavy you know and so that's where i think i've come i talked to like justin jackson a little bit about this um as well and like what they do but again they're more **Ian Landsman:** like a tool you know i think would he host a typescript podcast for example like do they make calls like that this is **Aaron Francis:** a genius little uh analogy here we come up with but um you know i think he said we had to get like into the super specifics with him but it sounds like they kicked a few people off um but like you know obviously there's like the ultra extreme like if you just have a bunch of swastikas on your stuff right well i'm not going to feel bad about kicking you off that's going to be very straightforward but it's going to be all the other stuff that is not so easily defined right that's that's much harder and so you know so he said they have done a few but they don't basically aren't like digging around looking for it right and it's like the host again is like it's similar to how outro minus membership is where it's like this is a tool yes your hot your podcast may be hosted on there but it's not the face of your podcast it's not obvious that you're hosting them it's not like there's not a bunch of dissertations posted under the transistor.fm domain with a bunch of bad stuff so so they're not like not in their face that much right so that's kind of where i'm thinking i want to be, too. Like, I want it to be a useful tool. Maybe I don't make as much money, but you know what? I don't need, you know, as much money. Like, the money versus stress, like, ratio has to be correct, right? And, yeah, so I think my current plan is kill the membership stuff. It can always come later, too, right? It's like, **Ian Landsman:** here's **Aaron Francis:** a big new feature we have. It's like, membership's great. Like, and that's awesome um so that's a big a kind of biggest change to my original vision but i think it's one i'm going to make because as i look through even like i look through like some of the mail providers like whatever i looked at a bunch of terms of service for how people handle this stuff and like there's a lot of stuff in there that's like obviously they've had to deal with this stuff. I'm like, I don't want to deal with this stuff. So, --- ### [Validate Core Tool Before Adding Layers](https://share.snipd.com/snip/df48b5f2-a9b0-49c8-a191-091a6f6bc8b0) 🎧 26:59 - 29:50 (02:50) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1e77de5e-9629-4adf-b82b-fee1f1e34b9b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ship the base product without the most complex features to validate demand faster. - Add memberships later if users want them and the core tool gains traction. #### 💬 Quote > Ship it without members first, 100%. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman urging Aaron to launch Outro without memberships #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** Does it change if the membership stuff is all private? So like, if there's no ability for, you know, you to post a TypeScript dissertation or manifesto on outro.fm slash TypeScript slash manifesto. If it's just like you can email your podcast subscribers or your members, rather, you can email your members. That's kind of it. There's no like message board or place, you know, there's no place for them to all gather and talk about how they're going to, you know, destroy JavaScript or something. Does that change anything? **Aaron Francis:** So I. **Ian Landsman:** It's flawless. I think it would. It is **Aaron Francis:** flawless. Everybody's hearing exactly what they want to hear, which is my only goal. So great. So, yes, I think it would. like i think i do think i would feel better about that than because it's not like so much uh totally randos on the internet could just be linking over to this right and causing your right under my domain right yeah so i do i do think so i do think it's worse product though i guess that's kind of my bigger issue with that it's like to me like letting people have a public element to it helps them draw people in through other channels which then helps them get members which then help like all that stuff builds on itself so it feels a little half-assed i guess to do it that way um but i'm not totally opposed to that i mean i did think about some things along those lines i guess to me then what i kind of came down on was like i'd rather not do it at all for now. I buy myself time. I see if the like core tool and idea is people like it. Because maybe nobody even likes this, right? So without the membership stuff, I can ship faster, which is good. That's good. It's simpler. Do people even like this? Maybe nobody even wants to use this. And then I don't need to have a membership part on top of the other thing. Because if nobody even likes the base functionality, they don't need a member. Then maybe I should build a separate membership thing to compete directly at Patreon or whatever. Yeah, I think the only thing you've **Ian Landsman:** proven there is that they don't like the base tool. Not that they wouldn't need a membership thing, but yes. Right. **Aaron Francis:** Yeah, right. But I kind of viewed it as like the base tool is what gets you in. And then the memberships are like kind of the next layer so like if you don't like the base tool i feel like that hurts the memberships also like well probably i can't even get people to use the base tool when are they gonna they're not gonna even find out about the memberships right and all that stuff so um yeah so that's kind of what i'm thinking there uh and mostly in the buy me more time because you know what, I can ship the base tool and then I can anytime add memberships and be like, now we have memberships, big release, yada, yada, yada. It's always good to have those kinds of things anyway, right? So it keeps me from procrastinating and building more stuff. It's definitely the most complicated thing to build. So yeah. The --- ### [Spec-Driven Rebuild With AI](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ab5828f0-42a4-4d61-a087-1ba3de45fd91) 🎧 31:53 - 35:28 (03:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/9314e919-310d-4862-8d84-f1c2a51c9fd9" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Aaron is rebuilding parts of Outro with an AI-driven, heavily spec'd approach informed by his first implementation. - He plans a Microsoft-style top-level spec so AI tools have full context before coding. #### 💬 Quote > I'm going way down. I'm right now I'm at a top level spec... and then build it. > — Aaron Francis Aaron Francis describing his plan to spec the product thoroughly for AI-assisted development #### 📚 Transcript **Aaron Francis:** You know? And so I had the Laravel Nuit this weekend, man. No. I had the Laravel Nuit. You started **Ian Landsman:** from scratch. Laravel Nuit. **Aaron Francis:** And. It's so appealing to Laravel Nuit. We haven't even shipped anything yet. I know, but it's so clean when you do the Laravel Nuit. And just empty. And it's this virgin. And the whole world's in front of you, you know? You just do **Ian Landsman:** anything possible. All been business dad. You might be developer dad. That's a total developer move. That's **Aaron Francis:** awful. You know, because it's like, I know so much more about how I develop with the AI now. I know how much, we have Laravel Boost, which I didn't have at the beginning of this. Yeah, so I didn't like delete the other stuff. So maybe this Laravel new path won't work out. I don't know. **Ian Landsman:** You know, with the cutting of memberships, two steps forward, Laravel New, three steps back. **Aaron Francis:** We're not getting closer. But maybe we are. Maybe we are because I have a much I have a clear vision for those parts I've already built. You know, I see the rough spots. Is **Ian Landsman:** this how you feel every week when I tell you my plans? Yeah, this is what makes me a no man. **Aaron Francis:** This is crazy. It's crazy, right? This is crazy. This is crazy. Okay. I'm speechless. Aaron's never speechless. I can't believe you're speechless No, this is crazy. This is crazy. And so, my other plans, I know was sitting down. since I built, I know how I like to build AI now. I'm doing the whole thing totally different because, you know, you got to if you're a player while doing it. I'm like, I'm like specking the whole thing, like everything. Deep AI built spec. I'm going way down. So I'm right now I'm at a top level spec. I'm going to go then have sub specs for each part. We're going to spec the whole thing. going to read it over. We're to go through it. We're going to refine it. I'm going to try different models, different people, whatever. Get it all perfect, hopefully. And then build it. So we're going to go old school Microsoft style. Sounds like a fantastic waste **Ian Landsman:** of time. Here's a 500 page spec on **Aaron Francis:** what we're doing, right? We're going Microsoft on it um see but i like building with the ai that way so i feel like the ai does a better job when you have the tight spec so this is motivating me to to do it that way and so you know i'm sure once you actually build it of course you get whatever i'm gonna make changes and all that stuff but i don't know i kind of like the idea of like it can see it has the whole picture, right? Like you can see everything. It's all written out. it trying to. One of the problems I have with AI building is as the app gets bigger, you know, it's not using AI for everything. Right. It's not actually shoving the whole app into the model and being like, look at this thing. Right. So instead, it's doing a bunch of old school stuff, regexing crap and being like, let me just grab little chunks and hope I can piece it together. And I feel like it misses stuff like fairly often where it's like, oh, it just didn't happen to grab that file. And so now it doesn't know anything about that. And so now it's done. It **Ian Landsman:** implemented the same helper function again **Aaron Francis:** because you didn't look around. Yeah. So I think it's, I don't know, this is all experiment. We're going to see. But I feel like it having a spec where it has the whole thing in its brain before it does anything is going to be useful both initially, but then also as we get deeper into it, it will have the whole thing always in its context of like what it's supposed to be doing. And then it can just fill in the gaps, you know, actual code by going to do its little regex stuff. But that's my theory. **Ian Landsman:** Okay. I don't like this one bit, but I hope it works out great for you. I hope it moves quickly. I hope it moves **Aaron Francis:** quickly. Oh, it's going to move quickly. I expect it to be done very soon. Very soon. I expect to get an update next week. Yes. --- ### [Rails Pushes SQLite And Multi-DB Tenancy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0254f44d-1a68-4ecf-8e52-6ac74b9985dc) 🎧 40:44 - 43:58 (03:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6fb3ab5e-05eb-4087-aa60-6cec8b0784b1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Rails World emphasized simplicity and renewed interest in SQLite and multi-database tenancy tooling. - Rails introduced first-party multi-database tenancy and Beamer for SQLite replication to enable geo-distributed setups. #### 💬 Quote > They have a multi-party or multi-tenancy first party thing that uses discrete SQLite databases per user. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman summarizing Rails World's multi-database and SQLite direction #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** So, yeah, got to keep it. Let's lower the blood pressure. Let's keep it benign. Yeah, calm down. Here we go. Nothing controversial we don't have the uh emotional bandwidth for that this week so first of all rails world looked like a great success big you know that's their laricon um looks like great success a lot of fun i watched the dhh keynote which was just of course just so fun, so wild, so crazy. I just love him to death. He is just, he just gets up there and rants and then he installs Omarky on stage. I was going to say, did it have any real stuff in it? What the is going on here? Yeah, it had a lot of real stuff. Oh, did it? Okay. Yeah. So what I found very cool was just, I think one of the things that they talked about was database for everyone. So they have this new tenancy concept, first party tenancy in Rails, which has historically been rebuffed by Taylor and the Laravel framework. Taylor's always like, what do you mean multi-tenancy? Like, I don't understand what you're asking. People are always asking, show me what you mean. Yeah. And he's like, I don't know what you mean. And so Rails now has a first party tenancy, multi-tenancy thing. I think they call it, I wrote it down here, Beamer. No, that's something different. That's something different. I like that. It is similar. So they have a multi-party or multi-tenancy first party thing that uses discrete SQLite databases per user. Okay, so the multi-database per user scheme approach. approach. Yeah. Okay. So presumably they're doing something to like, you know, handle migrations across all these different SQLite files, whatever. You would hope. Not a good solution. Hopefully that is part of the first party thing. But they have also apparently written Beamer, which is a, I think it's like a SQLite, it's either a SQLite backup or a SQLite replication tool to like basically help automate some of the failovers and backups of all these, you know, many thousands of SQLite files. So I'm kind of with you on the head shake there. This is not my favorite approach of having like hundreds of databases that I'm responsible for. Like if I could do this on like I think Terso does a multi-tenancy thing. You know, that's fine I'm okay with that but what I found really interesting is this push back towards simplicity SQLite the one person framework the in in-house tooling like that's been their story for you know that's kind of always been his story but especially the past you know three four five years it's like we got to simplify this whole thing. All of this stuff is a mess. And it's nice to see people like picking up SQLite in a serious way and pushing some tooling forward for that. So I'm curious to see where it goes. I think it's very interesting. I don't personally want to manage the multi-database **Aaron Francis:** thing. Not sure if that's the solution is the issue. **Ian Landsman:** It's definitely not the simplest. It might be the most effective. --- ### [Weigh Complexity When Choosing Tenancy](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f691a373-9a1e-4d79-af86-0f61b6668bb9) 🎧 45:14 - 46:48 (01:33) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fb593ffe-d682-47ba-9c37-55b4b4d15f97" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Accept that multi-database per-tenant approaches shift complexity rather than eliminate it. - Choose mainstream stacks when you need broad operational support and community tooling. #### 💬 Quote > It's just shifting complexity around. > — Aaron Francis Aaron Francis warning that per-tenant databases trade one set of problems for others #### 📚 Transcript **Aaron Francis:** It's like we have two regions with two separate app stacks, and we have two database servers with failover in each of those regions, blah, blah. And we do do per customer. **Ian Landsman:** In what? MySQL? **Aaron Francis:** Yeah, in MySQL. So each of them have their own database with their own user. So the way SQLite works, I feel like you're not getting some of the like security benefits of doing this because you're just like connecting as the app always. So like you still have a lot of like, I could potentially jump into someone else's database and stuff. But yeah, I don't know. I guess. I feel like it is more complicated to me. Like to actually manage hundreds of databases you know, is more work than one for sure. **Ian Landsman:** Yeah. And I don't know who's eating that complexity. I don't know if that is in this Rails tenancy thing. Maybe it's trying to smooth it over. I have to imagine if they're doing a first party multi-database tenancy thing, have an answer for schema migrations there's no way that would be an oversight like that it's **Aaron Francis:** not even just the migrations though you know it's like just weird stuff that happens with databases right like oh this one is huge and like now i gotta do you know it's like it's just weird stuff and like but yeah i mean it does have its benefits for sure like when you're on one database you have the reverse problems of course of one tenant that is using all the resources and blah, blah, blah. I just, I do think like nobody builds apps this way. Right. So like maybe it's partially because of the tools potentially, but I do think like nobody building a SaaS app ever does anything, but like I put the ID column in every table and I --- ### [Once.com Pivoted To Open Source](https://share.snipd.com/snip/125908e5-086e-4af5-abef-12fc6fd149e1) 🎧 50:28 - 52:22 (01:53) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/9a4efaf5-3c32-41f8-9619-423d91dd8878" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - 37signals opened Campfire and Once.com but later open-sourced the project after market demand fell short. - Aaron and Ian see the pivot as reasonable; open-sourcing gives the project a better chance than one-off sales. #### 💬 Quote > They threw in the towel. They did not remove all the marketing puffery from the once.com homepage... > — Aaron Francis Aaron Francis on 37signals' decision to open-source Once.com after disappointing market response #### 📚 Transcript **Aaron Francis:** Once.com. RIP? RIP Once.com? RIP Once.com um yeah i guess the dhh and his crew have open source campfire which we did a whole big episode on this and multiple episodes that people can go back and listen to but uh basically the premise was that i mean my biggest issue was never that they did this they wanted to sell campfire as a one-off product fine great i literally couldn't care less but there was a lot of marketing puffery, right? A lot of boistering about how IT departments, they don't want to use hosted tools anymore. They just want to download their own software and run it. They just want to pay one time. They don't want support. They just want to have full ownership of the code and do what they want. This was the whole premise. And then people bought it in the beginning. I presume to see DHH's code, which nobody's ever been able to see. DHH kind of production code. And peers, nobody ever bought it after that because they've just open sourced it. **Ian Landsman:** does appear that way. **Aaron Francis:** Which is what it should have been in the beginning with because if you want to have the Slack competitor, it's only going to work if it has some kind of community. Nobody wants to buy a thing that you are stating is unsupported. There's no use case for this. So at least if it's open source, maybe a community builds around it and you start to get some traction and maintainers and there's releases. And if there's a problem, at least there's some place I can go to and say, Hey, I have this problem. Even if it's people who just will don't have to fix it, but at least there's a place I can go complain about it. And that all makes more sense to me. Do it as open source. I like it. Great. I still don't think anybody's going to use it. But if there's any hope of it being something, I think this is the right path. So good on them to throw in the towel. They did not remove all the marking puffery from the once.com homepage, which says IT departments hate SaaS and don't want to use it anymore. But whatever, maybe we'll get there. **Ian Landsman:** Maybe we'll get there. They probably got a lot going on. I will say this, this seems like a swing and a miss. --- ### [A Personal Book On Breast Cancer Support](https://share.snipd.com/snip/83478bb1-30b6-468f-b5c8-4c3da6a11c58) 🎧 01:05:12 - 01:07:25 (02:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fea23e98-ca5b-474e-b01b-25cb98d53b62" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ian's mother-in-law Betsy Keith wrote 'This One's For The Girls' about breast cancer support and resources. - The book is published and selling, with reprints ordered and events happening during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. #### 💬 Quote > The book is called This One's for the Girls... it's selling. They're having book parties to have people come over and do readings. > — Ian Landsman Ian Landsman sharing news about his mother-in-law's published book on breast cancer support #### 📚 Transcript **Ian Landsman:** Like, honest to goodness, wrote an entire book. It's published. It's on Amazon. It's selling. They're having book parties to have people come over and do readings. **Aaron Francis:** Okay. **Ian Landsman:** This is the real deal. So here's the deal. The book is called This One's for the Girls. So unfortunately, it rules us out already, but that's okay. This one's for the girls subtitle brace yourself subtitle embracing the sisterhood of breast cancer and the god who holds us fast there you go so my mother-in and my mom both breast cancer survivors wow **Aaron Francis:** okay **Ian Landsman:** and so yeah That's amazing. I know. Her name is Betsy Keith. And you can find it at thisonesforthegirls.com or on a little site called amazon.com. I've heard of she wrote this book after going through breast cancer. And it's a lot of like personal stories, stories from friends, medical information, helpful resources, and then like an entire kind of like scriptural like support guidance, that sort of stuff for women that are actively going through breast cancer right now. And so, yeah, an entire like it's I'm looking on Amazon.com and it's my mother inin-law's name. Isn't that crazy? And so yeah, they've been doing they've been doing book parties where she'll like, you know, have friends over. so my mom and my aunt went to one with a bunch of people and she does like these little readings and asks questions. And it's apparently going very, very well. Like the book is really selling. And so it's only, you know, it's only been published. I don't know when it says, but it was like this year, June 27th. There you go. So it was published this year and they're already having to order a reprint because it's actually selling. I know. It's got five stars. I know. she says, I asked if I could talk about it on the show. And she said, yes. And remind people that October coming up is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer throughout their lives. And so if you know someone who is going through this horrible journey, this could be of some comfort. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts