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My developer content recommendations

·4 mins
Table of Contents

Ecuador Provinz Pichincha
Ecuador Provinz Pichincha
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash.

This is my curated and opinionated list of what works for me, on how I try to keep up to date with what’s going on in software development and in particular PHP.

Podcasts #

I listen to a podcast every breakfast, I use the Pocket Casts Android app, which does an excellent job downloading and playing my podcast selection. According to the stats I’ve listened to 13 days and 17 hours of podcasts!

Newsletters #

I subscribe to three newsletters, as you would expect many of the news is the same across the three, but each does have a different slant. It doesn’t take long to skim the similar content, they all have news, articles and tips.

YouTube #

I have over 100 subscriptions, here are some noteworthy dev-related ones.

Regularly watched #

These are channels I have the bell icon notification and try to watch soon after receiving:

  • Laraveldaily with over 100k subscribers, with short daily tips and posts about Laravel. The daily videos are on my notifications and I watch them every day!
  • Stefan Mischook, over 200k subscribers, good tips for new developers wanting to learn how to start, he has his own Studio web site which is promoted
  • Brent Roose, Brent used to work for Spatie, now a developer advocate for PhpStorm, I’ve enjoyed the recent series on Generics

Periodically watched #

These are channels I periodically monitor, when I want to cheery pick something interesting to watch I have so many choices (alphabetical)

  • Andy Sterkowitz has some great information and tips
  • Derek Banas, over 1.1M subscribers, there are some detailed beginner courses on many languages, including the source code! I’ve just started watching the 3h 49m Golang course, out of interest
  • Derick Rethans is the author of Xdebug, if you want to know about Xdebug then these videos are a must-watch
  • Freek Van der Herten of spatie.be used to host a monthly Laravel Worldwide Meetup, they are some great videos!
  • freeCodeCamp.org over 6m subs! This site has courses on just about anything software related
  • Laracon Online from 2017 to now the Laracon online talks
  • Laracon EU from 2013 to now all the Laracon EU conference
  • LaraconAU some videos from 2020 Laracon AU conference
  • NomadPHP includes the Midwest PHP 2021 conference talks
  • PHP South Wales my local meetup even includes some talks by me 😀
  • PHP South West UK meetup group from Bristol talks going back to 2015.
  • PHP UK Conference talks from PHP UK London going back to 2012.
  • Silicon Brighton, only 0.5k subs, but some great talks! I’ve been recently enjoying it. This channel included the PHP Sussex meetup group’s online videos
  • Steve Griffith - Prof3ssorSt3v3 I’ve found the videos on CSS and Javascript to be well explained
  • TraversyMedia over 1.9M subs, the videos are well explained in a variety of software languages

Streaming #

  • larastreamers archive has links to many recently streamed channels, the home page displays upcoming streams

Learning #

I have found Laracasts to be one of the best Laravel and PHP tutorial sites around, I now understand the reason many people recommend it! The quality to top draw. I have not only watched over 400 episodes in the last 8 months. I have put much of the information into practice!

Documentation #

  • PHP manual, even after using PHP for years, the docs are frequently checked
  • Laravel documentation if you are doing anything with Laravel review and bookmark the docs, they are invaluable
  • Filament I’ve found filament admin, tables and forms to be brilliant to work with, the documentation is superb
  • Livewire is well worth a review before starting any Laravel-Livewire projects
  • Alpinejs for all the sprinkles that modern websites need take a look at Alpine docs
  • Tailwindcss docs for the utility-first CSS framework, a must-read and bookmark
  • Mozilla Developer Network MDN this guide and documentation is first class for all things web, HTML, CSS, Javascript and many more

Summary #

I hope others find this curated and opinionated list useful

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