Web Dev with Matt

I know that I said that I was going to step through building a web app in this episode. But, after quite some experimentation, a podcast doesn't seem to be the best format for hands-on building.

So, in this episode, I'm sharing with you why SQLite is the database you should start with. Yes, I've been using SQLite for years, and love doing so each and every time! But, there are some serious, tangible benefits to choosing it - even for larger, more sophisticated projects. In this episode, I share each of them, with loads of references to back them up.

Links from the episode

• What is SQLite?
• Appropriate Uses For SQLite
• Why you should probably be using SQLite
• Everyone Is Wrong About SQLite
• How to Build Your First Web App in 2026: A Complete Beginner’s Guide: The Overview

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

In this episode, I'm quickly recapping the previous episode (and the accompanying blog post) before stepping through building a web app in the next couple of episodes. What did you think of the seven steps outlined for building your first web app in the previous episode? Do you think that they're the essential ones that you need, or did I list too many?

I also have a brief discussion about whether it's still worth learning the foundational skills of web development, now that AI tools are so readily available. I believe (and suspect that I will for a long time to come) that foundational skills will always be both necessary and valuable. Do you agree?

Links from the episode

• How to Build Your First Web App in 2026: A Complete Beginner’s Guide: The Overview (The accompanying blog post)

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

In this week's episode, I want to share with you the seven steps you need to take - BEFORE you build your first app. Sure, it's exciting to get in and start building, but don't. Do these things first to set yourself up for success.

Step 0: Always remember the KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) principle!
Step 1: Set up your development machine
Step 2: Build an ultra simple web app, using a Sinatra-inspired framework, on your local development machine
Step 3: Start learning about HTTP, i.e., the different request types, request methods, etc, HTML, and CSS
Step 4: Augment the application with different request types, i.e., POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE requests
Step 5: Build your first CI/CD pipeline and deploy your application to a remote server
Step 6: Add database support to your application

Links from the episode

• GitHub Actions
• GitLab CI
• PHP Deployer
• Capistrano
• The Sinatra framework
• The Slim framework
• The HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

Following on from the previous episode recapping Pycon AU 2026, let's talk about self-learning and why it's your super-skill as a web developer; not only as a developer but in any career or discipline of any value!

Come find out why that's the case, why learning is wonderful, and why a degree, or trade/industry certificate is but the beginning - never the end - of your career education.

Links from the episode

• CQUniversity - Bachelor of Information Technology
• UTS - Bachelor of Computing Science

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

Over the years, I've attended a number of software development conferences, but this year's PyCon AU would have to be the most impressive and memorable one I've ever been to! In this episode, I'm giving a full breakdown of just why it was so special and memorable for me.

In short, it was because of:

• The diversity of the attendees
• The sheer thoughtfulness and dedication of the organising team
• The excellent quality of the website; and
• The quality of the location

Links from the episode

• PyCon AU 2026
• Bachelor of Computer Science at UTS (The University of Technology Sydney)
• Bachelor of Information Technology at CQUniversity (Central Queensland University)
• Jack Skinner

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

What do you do when bugs make it into the production version of your web applications? While there are many approaches that you can take, over the years, I've refined a simple, 3-stage process for both fixing them and helping ensure that they don't happen again in the future.

In this episode, I'm stepping through that process, along with a host of links, suggestions, tips, and tricks, that I hope will help you recover from and improve your processes after bugs slip out; regardless of whether you're a solo developer or part of a larger team or organisation.

Links from the episode

• Git blame
• Git annotate
• Good Code Reviews, Better Code Reviews, by Gergely Orosz
• Filezilla
• CI/CD Pipelines
• Automated deployment
• Mago
• PHPStan
• Phan
• PHP Code Sniffer
• Cargo Clippy
• golangci-lint
• GitHub Branch Protection Rules
• GitLab
• Forgejo
• Codeberg
• Mercurial SCM

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

This is something that I've thought about a lot during the (roughly) 30 years of my career. If you want to be a developer, if you want to write software you have to read! Whether that's a project's official documentation, the code, the docblock or inline comments, or related places such as forums like Reddit and Stack Overflow - you have to read.

Sure, AI can summarise content for you, and can help with projects that have poor or no documentation. But, whether you use AI or not, there's no getting around reading. There are no shortcuts.

In this episode, I go into depth about having to read as a developer, explain how it's unavoidable, and also why reading is a good thing.

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

In this episode, I'm finishing up the 3-part series showing by stepping through how to pick a set of software development languages for your web development journey. As with the previous two parts in the series, I'm doing that through a series of questions to get you thinking. These include:

• What are the established languages
• What is a good IDE or text editor that supports your language of choice
• What are the technologies and stacks and tooling that is available for those languages
• What are the frameworks available for each language that you're considering

To make the process as hands on as possible, check out the resources below, which will provide you with a wealth of detailed information to help with your decision making process.

Links from the episode

• The Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey
• 13 Best Languages for Web Development in 2025

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

If you've been wondering how to get started as a web developer, but were unsure how to do so, in this episode of the podcast, I'm continuing to step through how I'd get started if I were starting over. In this episode, I'm talking about how to pick the right software language and tech stack for your web development journey, before you dive in and commit to mastering them.

To help you do that, I'm asking questions such as:

• Which languages do you enjoy using?
• How big are the communities around each language?
• What is the language's available tooling like (e.g., Composer for PHP, Maven and Gradle for Java, Cargo for Rust, etc)?
• What job openings are available?

Here's the quote from the show: "There are only two kinds of programming languages. Those people always complain about and those people never use".

Links from the episode

• Seek
• Indeed: Job Search
• TIOBE Index for July 2026
• PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language
• 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (Technology)
• The Top Programming Languages 2025 (IEEE Spectrum)

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?

If you've been wondering how to get started as a web developer, but were unsure exactly how to do so, in this episode of the podcast, I'm stepping through how I'd get started if I were starting over (knowing what I know now).

I'm not talking about tech stacks and software development languages in this episode. That's coming in part two.

In this episode, I'm starting with helping you understand your motivations so that you get a clear focus on where you're at and why you want to get into web development.

Want to grow your knowledge further?

Check out the books below, where you can grow your web development skills in a very focused, very hands-on way.

• Deploy with Docker Compose
• Mezzio Essentials

Hosted and produced in Bundaberg by: Matthew Setter.

Website: https://matthewsetter.com.
Follow me on: LinkedIn.

If you like the podcast, and want to support it, how about buying me a coffee?