Aaron Francis is here! We chat about open source projects, Fusion and Solo, his company Try Hard Studios, and his educational courses. Is Aaron an LLM? Maybe! He also tweets viral things sometimes. Enjoy!

00:00 Introduction and Welcoming Aaron Francis

03:23 Introducing Aaron Francis: Developer and Educator

04:53 Deep Dive into Fusion

19:43 Exploring Solo: Simplifying Local Development

29:05 Business Side: Try Hard Studios and Screen Casting

29:50 The Challenges of Creating Technical Courses

30:48 The Exhausting Process of Learning Databases

32:59 The Art of Screencasting

35:27 Balancing Technical Rigor and Personal Opinion

39:38 Starting a Business After a Layoff

42:00 Navigating the First Year of Business

45:49 Cool things

Links:

- Aaron on X https://x.com/aarondfrancis and Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/aaronfrancis.com

- Fusion https://github.com/fusion-php/fusion

- Solo https://github.com/soloterm/solo

- Try Hard Studios https://tryhardstudios.com/

- Mastering Postgres https://masteringpostgres.com/

- High Performance SQLite https://highperformancesqlite.com/

- Screencasting Course https://screencasting.com/Cool things:

- superwhisper https://superwhisper.com/

- lex.page https://lex.page/

- Sesame AI https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice

- Rocket League https://www.rocketleague.com/en

Our very first guest! Eric Bailey, a talented developer at Bluesky. Eric shares his journey from Iowa to New York to Chicago, detailing his transition from design to development while highlighting his experiences with various tech companies. We talk a bunch about React Native and what it's been like working at Bluesky during its explosive growth in the past few months.00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:37 Eric Bailey's Background and Iowa Connections04:22 Career Journey: From Design to Development11:29 Joining Bluesky, working with React Native16:44 Getting Started with React Native19:16 Open Source Dynamics20:05 Public Launch and Growth21:00 Challenges of Rapid Change22:16 Collaborative Development24:00 Community Contributions27:42 Scaling Infrastructure31:28 Presta: Framework Development Journey35:24 Cool Things

Links:

- Eric on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/esb.lol

- Night Agent on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/81450827

- Severance S2 on Apple TV+ https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx

- Toe (band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_(band)

- Character Limit (book) https://www.amazon.com/Character-Limit-Elon-Destroyed-Twitter/dp/059365613X

Austin shares details about his recent ankle injury over Thanksgiving, and Josh announces the birth of his third son, Levi. Then they dive into the sale of Josh's side business, Barkpass.

Topics include due diligence, legal processes, accounting, technical security audits, and more. You won't want to miss this one!

Links:

- Open Auth

- React 19

00:00 Welcome and Thanksgiving Recap

01:57 Ankle Injury Woes

03:44 Josh's Family Update

07:27 Selling Barkpass: The Journey Begins

12:15 The Acquisition Process

17:48 Technical Due Diligence

24:49 Finalizing the Sale

25:27 Legal and Logistical Challenges

29:02 Buyer's Intentions and Future Plans

30:40 Reflecting on the Journey

36:26 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

42:13 New Beginnings and Future Projects

43:06 Cool Things of the Week

Josh and Austin hop on the pod to chat about cold weather and late night DNS cutovers. Josh shares his trip down memory lane on the Iowa State campus over the weekend, and they discuss some of the architectural design decisions of campus buildings from the 80s. Then, Josh and Austin dive into the challenges and pitfalls of transitioning a site to server-side rendering. Josh shares his discovery that: SSR is not a silver bullet. They also discuss ways to optimize rendering, the potential of server components, and reflect on legacy code.

- Silo on Apple TV+

- Cloudflare's Docs

It's Halloween! Josh and Austin dish on the "Beggars Night" tradition from Central Iowa and talk about their Halloween costumes. They also touch on Christmas shopping (is it too early?). Then they dive into Svelte: a high-level intro, what's new in Svelte version 5, and a hot topic: Runes. One of the podcasters also happens to make a cameo on the Svelte homepage.

00:05 Halloween Traditions and Beggar's Night

07:03 Holiday Season and Christmas Shopping

09:28 Shout Outs

11:57 Introduction to Svelte

25:11 Initial Thoughts on Svelte 5

29:14 Svelte's New Website and Controversial Font

34:04 Technical Discussion on Svelte 5 Runes

45:58 Cool Things: Podcast and TV Show Recommendations

Links:

Beggar’s Night

Svelte’s website

Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast

Severance on Apple TV+

Josh and Austin reconnect after a month-long hiatus to discuss how to make our houses not cold during the winter, updates on Josh's new car, Your Iowa State Cyclones, and a new segment they're calling: "Shout-outs!" Then they discuss announcements coming out of this year's Laracon US, including a $57 million investment in Laravel, the introduction of Laravel Cloud, a new VS Code plugin and Inertia 2.0, and more.

Links:

- ⁠Laravel⁠

- Nobody Wants This on Netflix

It's local-first day on the pod!

Josh and Austin start by talking about children's clothing, Josh's car shopping adventures, and the big Iowa vs Iowa State football game.

Then we dive in to "local-first" software: what it is, what problem it solves, and how it's hard to get it right.

They compare it to traditional client-server models and offline-first approaches, highlighting examples like Linear, Superhuman, and potential uses in apps like GitHub. They cover the challenges, especially with caching and sync engines, and touch on security concerns.

"Cool Stuff": Laracon (including a spicy take).

02:54 Parenting and baby clothes

06:04 Car Shopping

10:32 Iowa vs. Iowa State

13:21 Exploring Local First Software

15:32 Challenges and Benefits of Local First

21:37 Sync Engines and Security Concerns

25:31 Developer Experience with Local First

42:43 Cool Stuff: Laracon and hot takes

Links:

Josh and Austin dive into full-stack JavaScript, discussing the longevity of podcasts, intense potty training sessions, and the Iowa State Fair. They explore frameworks, serverless, and the benefits of a batteries-included approach in web development.

Josh and Austin Figure Out How to Start A Podcast