PHP Alive And Kicking Episode 13 – Shane and Simon
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Transcript
PHP Alive and Kicking – Episode 13
Show: PHP Alive and Kicking Podcast
Show Summary
In Episode 13 of PHP Alive and Kicking, the hosts discuss the ongoing evolution of PHP development, highlighting exciting community updates, modern practices, and frameworks that continue to shape the language. They share insights from recent conferences, explore real-world challenges, and celebrate PHP’s resilience and innovation in today’s web ecosystem.
Transcript
[00:06] Hello and welcome to Peach p a live and kicking brought to you by PHP architect and made better by our partners at displace more about them later. This is the podcast where we explore the latest developments in PHP and what it's like to earn a living in PHP today I'm 1 of your hosts Mike Paige, I'm a developer at PHP architect and my co-host is a longtime contributor to our magazine and now team member Chris. Am I how you doing I'm good thanks you yeah not bad good good yeah I've we'll have to say I guess have already try to put me off with private chat that's going on behind the scenes and we might share that later but just to let you know everyone know we this is a live recording so if you head over to our Discord channel uh server server you can ask questions and we'll try and post them to our guests today also if you're on YouTube please like And subscribe that would be brilliant. Yeah that is youtube.com,
[01:14] as I just mentioned we produce a magazine which we do have a discount code for people out there a live 3 and that will give you the first 3 months free of the annual, digital subscription. Uh we also have a conference that we hold uh yearly and the tickets for that are now on sale pitch pitch 26 over in Chicago great, conference I know I'm biased but I've always had fun when I when I go over there alongside that this year we are running a JS Tech, which is 1 track I think we're going with but the call for papers is currently open so if you want to submit a talk about JavaScript then please do we we're looking for as many talks as possible. We also have a swag store oh I couldn't almost didn't say that word swag store so head over there where we've got some T-shirts hats caps mugs. Bottles all sorts okay that is all our little things to tick off I don't think I've missed anything have I Chris you haven't although we have already started getting some uh comments,
[02:27] oh I haven't got the chatter we're well because we've got not just 1 but 2. And now I've got to stop and read it and you no longer to read 1 sentence this is this is Dan from jump 24 who's episode is actually coming out on Friday do we ask questions in January or a different general or. This 1's perfectly fine and he also says hail nice t-shirt you have there is this something from the merch store unfortunately this 1 isn't this is 1 of our internal ones but there are similar ones on the store there's there's quite a few PHP Arch ones on there and I'm I'm only where not wearing it because Chris has got mine so I'm not going to get mine until the end of the week you can have yours on Friday yes without further Ado we should introduce, we should because we not not only have 1 but we have 2 guests today we do we have both Simon and Shane. From native PHP we may have been trying to get this episode for way too long we we wanted this to be the first episode but we finally got together so how are you 2 doing.
[03:37] That's a good place to start in a good good place so we always start with exactly the same question how did you 2 get into PHP. Who do you want to go first I think Shane should go first all right I will. Hi everybody thanks for having us first of all that's a great question how did I get into PHP I I started developing in 2012 or so I actually did a lot of. I I had a new family, my ex had 2 daughters from previous and they were older and I was thrust into this situation where I needed to make a lot of money and I didn't really know how to and I actually did door-to-door sales for for quite a bit of time for like 10 years I used to lead teams of. Commission only sales right and I I was its it sales is up and down. But I was using my dad's truck at the time the head gasket blew. And I I did I I just had no way to get to work anymore so he took me to the side 1 day that day and he was like Hey can you copy and paste and I said yeah I can copy and paste he had a he had a.
[04:52] A project he's been a developer since the 70s he started a long time ago he actually started in the Navy in 1974 I think he's a net. If the you know that whole other world of things but he got me kind of into programming and I I could see very early on there was a big hype around. WordPress and I kept bringing it up to him I knew nothing that I didn't know 1 language versus another at all you know. And he was I was like you know we should do WordPress we should learn WordPress there's a lot of business in WordPress there's a huge market for WordPress. And he just didn't see it his client that he had ended up going bankrupt. And I could see that coming about 6 months ahead and I started just dabbling and and learning some WordPress stuff to the point where I was. I was looking at there was a there was a website called twiki and then they rebranded to elto and then they got bought by GoDaddy but it was essentially like you could sign up as a developer and you could get paid.
[05:52] $40 per tweak is what it was right they they determine what a tweak was but I knew nothing how to do anything inside of WordPress or PHP I had no idea what is this. Decimal doing next to an equal sign what does that even mean. So it was kind of like I signed up and they asked me to do things I had no idea how to do and I just figured things out little by little and started building my own custom plugins and themes and then someone told me about laravel maybe maybe a year within a year later or so and I at the time I was learn I remember Googling what is what is oop how do you do oop object oriented right in PHP and so I had my own custom I guess you can call it a framework I don't it was just a bunch of includes all over the place really and I got into to laravel and that really made a lot of sense to me and I I just kind of stayed with that ever since then. Nice so that's what 13 years uh yeah I guess so yeah something like that.
[06:55] And how about you son not too different I mean I I didn't end up with a family all of a sudden and have to provide for them but, actually I I've been programming in PHP for. Coming up to like 22 23 years something like that which is kind of crazy now I think about it but I I yeah I didn't used to be this great I think that's because of PHP. Or or maybe it's because of Shane I don't know I think I had more color in my hair this time last year so I had hair this time last year oh snap yeah so. Uh I I was just like I I was working for a company I was like 18 I I came out of school I didn't go into college or university. I started working in it support and this company that I was working for they were using like, connected systems they had servers in in a room in the office that I was in and the whole they they had sites throughout the UK and they were like. Running an IBM AIX server and they were.
[08:09] ISDN lining terminal service on top of that so that all of the sites throughout the UK which there was like over a hundred depos could connect to this Unix basically. Interface and and use a a text UI to input data into their account system which was running on that server and I was just like. We've got web browsers the internet is a thing like this just feels completely. Ass backwards basically I just want like we should be able to do this way way better and they were paying like tens of thousands of pounds a month to have just the rights to use that service and and the company that supported them and all of that and I was just like man there's so much money to be made in this industry and so I was like while I'm working in that job I just went and bought books about programming and how to write websites and and all of that and 1 of those books was PHP I think it was php5 although, that had probably just come out I I ended up starting with php4.
[09:18] And and like my SQL 5 you know it's like the 2 fives together and it did Cover a little bit of oop you know and I was like oh so I don't know what this is completely ignored those chapters and then within within a few months of just like messing around in, notepad saving files and trying to figure out how to make a patchy work on my terrible Windows laptop at the time I'd kind of got enough. Dumb look confidence to go and try and get a job in the industry you know it's like I know how to do this now let's just go and get work, so that's what I did and I proceeded to go and get a job doing asp.net I'm trying to convince the guy who ran that business like you should use PHP for this it's way better which was a terrible idea, see I just got this image now if you frantically Googling everything every time his back was turned right and that was so I got really good at doing Google which was a thing that people used to do as programmers you know like you used to Google stuff.
[10:24] Gosh I can't believe that in my career that's got come in and gone out of fashion already but yeah and and I've just been doing PHP ever since then so Built My Own framework. Realized that that was really difficult and should never be done and then use somebody else's framework instead which was laravel and after many others and and have stuck with that so I've been working with laravel. Basically ever since then so it's like 13 years. So yeah that'd be cool I don't think many of us that were around in PHP 5 days haven't tried to build a framework but you went 1 step further and you built a way of doing mobile apps in PHP for fun. But how did that even start that yeah. There are lots of ways of starting this I the first 1 is like. We're crazy that's how it starts I well basically because of that. Introduction to programming as kind of via the web you know like doing PHP. Doing it over web browsers and and that kind of thing managing servers setting up databases blah blah blah I kind of got into this place me personally I got into this place where I was like.
[11:47] I know how to build applications now like they are applications right they're not just it's not just a bunch of scripts tied together. And and the robust and their reliable. And I want to use the skills that I have now to go and build applications that live on people's computers and phones and I don't understand why. PHP isn't capable of that or can't be capable of that and why I can't use things like HTML CSS and JavaScript to build you know these robust Solutions which, I build for the web from a server. To do the same thing when it's just like all packaged up in 1 little bundle and you know runs on the person's device so. Yeah crazy enough to actually try and give that a go and that's kind of how it started a few years ago. And it ended up being um an extension on PHP directly natively talking to the phone which is that's incredible to think that somebody just went I'm going to make this happen and then actually did it.
[12:57] You can just do things I know it's it's like somebody keeps saying that Simon I don't know who that could be. So Mike do you reckon these are the 2 people that may actually be able to make my dream happen a PHP driven fridge, I oh I've been saying I hope not yeah he's been banging on about that 1 I just want to do a PHP driven fridge because it's possible and I don't have time to find a fridge that I can program, I'll tell you I have a I have visions in my mind of the first time I turn on my truck and, the laravel home screen pops up on the on the dash I I really do like I I know that sounds like very far-fetched but it really isn't I know that it's not you should be scared if that's what happens when you you start your truck because then something's really wrong. Well oh no it's possible I mean that's that's 1 thing I knew nothing of this coming into it at all and Simon shown me kind of opened the doors like yeah it's possible this is kind of how we do it and uh.
[14:04] That was that was my intro to all of it actually well my intro I guess was a couple years ago but. Yeah it was just the excitement around native PHP when I first heard these words together I was in Nashville I think it was right Marcel. Posture gave a talk and I was I was I I had back surgery in November that year the the you know a couple months later and. Was uh excruciatingly in pain but I stuck around because I saw this and I was like oh my God someone figured out how to do mobile with laravel and that's what I thought and it was desktop but I was still excited and I went home and started a YouTube channel and got like a thousand subscribers the first week I think and, just all based on Native PHP stuff I dropped the ball after that I never really pursued much more into it just because I was now focused on the YouTube channel I guess a little distracted there in the back surgery that's something to do with that but,
[14:58] I met up with Simon the next laracon last year I guess 24 yeah, and we just kind of hit it off as friends and uh spoke a lot to each other and we chatted before then I think didn't we we did yeah I we still don't even remember exactly when we met I think. I could have been 30 years ago who knows but. No I mean we we started we just liked each other and talking to each other we both I think had also we had done like a bunch of our own sort of startups. Or SAS idea products that we tried on our own for years I had I had a dozen of them he had a dozen of them or so or whatever the number was. And we both were at the point where we're like I'm just done trying because I just I'm burnt out I'm burnt out on, having to do everything the marketing the support the the development the you know everything that goes into being a a 1-man show in a business and I'm like. I want to do something but I'm not ever going to do it alone.
[16:01] And this kind of I wouldn't say fell into our laps but we were both not really expecting it to be what it what it's become. And so we both are like I'm so glad we had these conversations before this right so we know we can trust each other we know our mindsets are, I know like decisions I can make without him and vice versa and what I shouldn't what I we need to consult with each other on and all that kind of stuff so it's very kind of intuitive and natural relationship. And the product is like I remember the first couple weeks of of starting it we just both had a very clear path forward of where we wanted to take it. The product the business itself and and all that we were just we knew we were both very excited about like once we get to this part then we can get to this and then this becomes the ultimate this is where we're going to eventually end up you know and. I think we've we've had our own surprises along the way as well too some some new interesting developments that we're discovering even today we're discovering you know this week some new interesting fun things that.
[17:03] Yeah it keeps it keeps it very interesting very fresh. Yeah that's 1 of the things I love about Native PHP is that there's constantly something new it's like every time I look at Twitter it's like you've released 3 different things and it's, I can't keep up because it does not feel like that from this side I feel like honestly even like this month the last 6 weeks or so I feel like I haven't done quite enough, and I think I even posted that in our own Discord was like we've done we've been just working and working on on getting things out that we haven't spent much time in the marketing stuff so now we're taking some of this week and next week to kind of trickle out some of these these things that we've been doing so. Yeah got to got to keep the the marketing train has to has always happened doesn't matter even if there's nothing to show which we always have something we'll find something there's plenty of content here you know.
[17:56] We had a pretty exciting video come out this morning yes I'm gonna try and see if I can share it but I'll probably mess this up so give me this if we share this. Yes here we go it's going to work. So this this video came out this morning which is going to excite quite a few people that I know yeah so we got a QR Reader. Is it is this out now or is that is this coming out in the next release this will be in V2 which we're planning for I think we're going to get it by the end of the month so it's it's done it's version 2 rb2 branch and if you have a Max license you technically can go and pull it down and play with it right now mhm oh cool guess what I'm doing after this episode Kane's play with a QR code reader probably we have Eric excited about the fact that we have QR codes I have no idea why Eric might be excited about QR code oh I have an idea why oh yeah we we do but and we have. We have all who says he saw that video this morning which see it's it's getting out there and then we also have quite a.
[19:05] Big question from Dan now I don't know if we'll see it or it won't so we have to we have to read it out so Dana said Simon and Shane what is the biggest shift required in the way that you would typically develop a laravel application to develop a native PHP application for instance your database if you have an application that connects to a DB would you just put your credentials for that DB into your environment that deploys the, to the app so that it can actually or would you build a rest API for it, I've not had a chance to try anything with Native PHP as of yet but I'm a huge fan of both of your work and it's honestly awesome to see what you're doing especially with the V2 stuff. Now if you want a bit of time oh sorry I was going to say if you want a bit of time just to digest all that big this is quite a bit there we can go to our partners and give you a few minutes just to think about that if you want.
[19:53] And I can't find the right video now let's play the QR code video again that's fine yeah this is 1 right we'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you to our partners over at displaced Technologies. Building PHP applications is your passion managing Cloud infrastructure shouldn't be your headache displaces your partner in Cloud infrastructure orchestration. Giving solo developers and small teams the tools and automation to deploy enterprise-grade kubernetes clusters without the enterprise-grade complexity or cost. Their CLI tools streamlines everything from local development. To fully managed Cloud deployments on AWS Azure Google Cloud platform and more. Skip the Steep learning curve of Docker kubernetes and terraform let their automation free you to focus on your core business without losing control of your infrastructure. Get started at displaced that's d i s p l a c e. T e c h and discover how the right tools can eliminate the need for a full devops team thank you this place.
[21:03] That is the first time we said it in synchronization we're getting we're getting better it's only taking us 13 episodes to get there but we're getting there, 13 episodes plus all the ones that we haven't released that we've pre-recorded yeah there is a you guys have been busy we we have we have got 23 episodes in the bag. At different at different points the original plan was to to have an episode every other week, on a Tuesday and we are now releasing 2 a week we're doing the live 1 on Tuesday and the Friday will will we're releasing pre-recorded ones that we couldn't eat sort of sync and do live with so yeah we're it can just do things,
[21:54] I just we we we came up with the idea we pitched it to Eric and and John they were up for it and then Chris just went off on 1. And then all of a sudden I realized there's all these appointments in my calendar that that's a lot of recording today but we've done it well we'll have to slow down a little bit now. But so anyway uh we should get back to Dan's question which we should yeah let's see if take that there you go he might be able to see most of that. Take it away yeah well I I actually paid paid Dan to ask this question so well fundamentally. At the answer starts with a no so you don't have to change the way that you would typically develop a lariva application to use native PHP and that's 1 of the main goals of the project really is that you come at it sort of idiomatically to what you already know and and that's kind of 1 of the main value adds of using this over something else right.
[23:01] But Dan's right that you can't you shouldn't. You must not share database credentials inside of your application you shouldn't distribute, secure credentials like that with any application that you distribute to end users just think of it in the same way as you don't distribute like API Keys into your JavaScript application because that code ends up on the client. And you know in theory somebody could crack that open and start like abusing those keys so you need to be very very cautious about how you do stuff like that and the same applies in a native application because you're shipping the code to the client doesn't matter how many layers of obfuscation or compilation or, encryption you might try and use you're not going to ever fully protect a code base that's been, shipped to the end user somebody's determined enough that they'll get into it so you don't want to be shipping credentials with it and that means you can't really have you shouldn't really want to have your,
[24:07] end user you know the client application connecting to your central database directly. So you would put it through an API so you'd have an API layer that you can you know dish out credentials randomly or relatively often as as the clients need and then those credentials give them. The the level of access that's you know the minimum level of access that's required to the service and that kind of proxies those requests through to your central database but. When you're talking about databases like this there's a little bit of a wrinkle there because we do also have a database on the local device so you have SQL, 8 or sqlite however you want to say it you say SQL 8. Well yeah that's all I see no I say sequel I I was just trying to be silly but the. Yeah so you do you have access to a database locally and it's. You can use that in the same way that you use laravel and but you sorry you would use any database from laravel using eloquent or if that's your sort of preferred way of doing that and that's that's really really handy.
[25:26] But it's obviously not your central database so it's it's like useful for just storing configurations and little bits of data about your app for that user on their device and accessing that in a. You know a relational manner because that's what it's there for and that's really you know like you can use it for cash you can use it for, like large portions of data that need to be stored whilst they're maybe offline and then synced up later. And and that's like then full we're getting into distributed software and you know kind of wider systems thinking about how you build. Ecosystems that may are made up of like server-based applications and client-based applications which I think. A lot of us maybe in the phb community haven't had to do very much of because we've been well my applications on the server and you know a little bit of it gets shipped over the wire to the browser and mostly I don't have to worry about it.
[26:29] So it does it does take a little bit of getting used to. Yeah sorry that is the very long version of the answer to that question but I I think aside of. Databases and kind of centralizing data access mostly the the big difference is you have access to all these features of the device. Right that you don't have when you're running PHP on a server because it doesn't have a camera it doesn't have you know a flashlight or vibration functions Etc so. You know we we get all of that and and that's something to just kind of wrap your head around as well. So in effect you sort of describing the the older style of building but in the new way of. Effectively an API on 1 side and a separate front end on another except this front end has cool features which is seriously useful, yeah it's a front end that's not just JavaScript which is a lot more powerful in my opinion I think you can do a lot more with PHP,
[27:34] running on the device if you're familiar with PHP so. So at another question throw in there by Eric as well are there any specific optimizations you do to the PHP source for mobile. Mmm do you want to take it Shane I mean there's not a lot on the PHP side I think that because again we start with laravel we looked at, like what are the minimum extensions required for laravel to boot essentially you know give me the MVP let's just get this thing kind of working and then if we need to or want to add things on for that now that's not optimizations I understand but.
[28:19] The bigger the library ends up becoming the slower it's going to be to process any single request for the most part and there's there's different ways to handle that, we and we do have plans for you know like we're not we don't have ZTS we're not thread safe at the moment so it's everything is on a single thread so there are things we can do, moving forward but I think I mean 1 thing that came up for me I got an email from Google saying 1 of the apps that I've got I have until November. First to get it aligned with 16 kilobyte page sizes and I'm like I don't even know what this is but it's not just me this is going to affect everybody using Android so I had to recompile PHP for that and the way we compiled for Android is Android provides an indicator it's a native development kit, that you can compile PHP against the Android you know for the Android environment and so the the ndk I was using was maybe a year or 2 old and so I had to
[29:21] grade to a different version which required me to go back and change some of the ways that I was doing some of the other things that brought in more functions that I had access to that I didn't need to. Implement on my own and a lot of headache that went in with that but. I was able to get that out I don't I don't think really there's probably there probably is some room to optimize PHP there but again at the end of the day I look at number 1 is it working that's very important are the majority of the things that not just me but most users are expecting to work with PHP are they working and then what is the size, and how slower responses or how fast are the responses for me on and I can I can rub Simon's face in this a little bit because I do shared embedded compilations it's 6 7 megabit for for my whole PHP binary so it's pretty small. And it's pretty quick as you can see if you've built 1 or if you if you're playing with 1 at all or if you've seen anybody else use 1,
[30:20] there's really not not much downtime in between things for Speed or, you know I think memory management might be a little bit and a lot of that stuff is actually on the Android side and people have asked us for here's a good example like, in Magic how do you pronounce this is anybody ever real like figured out how to pronounce it is it I magically, imagine CK a majestyk if you want to store it in your sqlite database you probably could figure that out anything we got. PHP running on a on an Android right and an iOS phone but you know they've asked us for this and it's like could we figure that out we could figure that out. Is it optional is it going to bloat or or could we check the OS and see if it provides something that's already on the device that can. Function do the same functionality and provide a nice API wrapper to those to those calls so you know we're always looking at as the architects in this what's the what's the right solution not just the 1 that we're most familiar with.
[31:28] I for me the question is kind of ambiguous because. I mean there have been some optimizations we've had to do I'll say maybe it's not optimizations it's more just changes but to the PHP source code it's like the the the C source code for PHP itself before we compile it for these platforms. Particularly on iOS because iOS doesn't allow certain things that are kind of typical on a server environment like spinning up separate processes and that kind of thing so we have to patch PHP in places to to make it compilable for for the platforms. But then like the other side to it could be are we optimizing the user land PHP code like your PHP code you know we compiling or transpiling that in any way at the moment and the answer to that is no so. The code that you write that you like you would ship to your server you know. Is exactly what gets shipped onto the device and that's quite cool in some respects because it means that what's on the device.
[32:38] Is is changeable you know put it simply like it can be updated. Without having to update the application itself via like an app store. And that's something we started exploring very early on and we've done quite a bit of work to get to it but it's not quite ready yet but you know we want to be able to do things like over the air updates where you can actually ship, essentially a new version of your PHP your laravel application to all of your users. And they won't have to go you know like it will automatically go and check in the background and pull that down and update their application whilst they're using it. Which then avoids the App Store problem for like minor bug fixes and UI changes that you might want to do you can do without having to deploy a whole new release through. The app store or the Play Store which is really really exciting stuff for you know and that's something that PHP sort of inherently enables just by being PHP you know being a scripting language,
[33:43] so Yeah sorry that I derailed that away from the original question but I think it's like really it was really a yes or no question if you look it's because we're not we're not doing those kinds of optimizations that that sort of stuff is possible you know we're not transpiling PHP into native code or anything like that because that would shut the door to to that kind of stuff so it's it's not off the table though. Yeah yeah there's some angles there that work. Going to be interesting to see that as an option at some point you can either have it scripted or compiled that that'd be an interesting place to go with it. If there's 1 thing that I've learned in this last God I I guess it's been a year just about a year that since Simon started with the mobile side and anything is possible. Anything is possible you need a lot of caffeine and you have to hate your family and I'll be fine with them hating you know I'm just kidding that's it.
[34:47] But anything's possible it's all doable yep. I still can't get over the fact that we can just write code for mobile name in a language that we all know and there has been a rain for 30 years. It's incredible I think that's the biggest appeal I mean that's that's that's been the biggest appeal. There's a whole market then right of of how many hundreds of thousands or millions of developers right, that already know how to how to do this and it's like I I I've done talks before the titles where you're already a mobile developer you just don't know it yet you know or let me show you how and it's, really the same language you're already doing you do have to think about things a little bit differently State it's stateless right so. It's not completely stateless you can build apps that you're not using any API or any data outside of the device itself and when then you're completely in control of State on the device so.
[35:42] Yeah other than that it's sweet I like building apps now yeah I mean the first time I saw anything. Sort of serious about this was saying when you talk to Tech earlier this year I'd heard, of native PHP beforehand didn't know much about it I I happen to be. The 1 daily uh doing the live stream for that talk for you and that I can't. Help but my mind just raced since I'm like this is actually possible my and I was we were talking slightly before the show with with Simon that although I haven't actually delved in. And tried to build any apps yet I've got a long list of apps I want to build now, I just try and keep that quiet for my wife because yeah well I'll never leave this room I guess anything's possible yeah but not only have you guys made it possible for people like us not to have to learn another language and Frameworks to be able to build apps you've made it almost. Start 1 Click to be able to deploy those apps with bifrost that so you released a few months ago now.
[36:55] 2 months and 2 days yeah that's my baby was born yep, I was expecting you to go 2 months 2 days 3 hours 12 seconds he's actually got a clock on his desk that just has been counting up no I have an app for that hang on if only you knew a framework that would let you build that oh wait 3 hours 12 seconds you hit it right on the nose Chris good job wow so we have got a few more questions coming in we we have so, I'm going to let Chris read him because to be honest Chris knows this I'm dyslexic so he'll take me half an hour to read 1 of these questions so so, I can I want to hear I want to hear Mike's version though no it's not I mean I want to hear Mike's version now not live not happening you have to do it with their accent too I can't even do that I can't no accents definitely not so the first 1 from Eric is the idea of allowing other PHP Frameworks or generic PHP to run on mobile using native PHP on the radar if so is there a timeline for when we can expect this.
[38:07] Yep so I want to answer this 1. I think and I don't think we've really like you know said it out loud I think our our hearts are in the same sort of Direction yes it's possible. Anything's possible Right, if you hate enough people and and there are plans to do I think at least Symphony and vanilla PHP there's going to be there's going to have to be some rules and guidelines around that because you can I mean you can try to do something that is just when you say vanilla I mean that's like you're opening up to the world and it's like. How do I know where you want to boot from like I'll all sorts of like boot processes you want to do they are it is possible. I will say our goal right now is to get the the apis our our our backlog, well scratched before we attempt any of that because they'll transport immediately over to those so there's no point I I mean and that that's a that's a pretty big assumption but it's it should be fine it should that should work that way.
[39:15] There yeah I just don't see a point in in going right for that when we have all the work already in front of us to just get these things done because then you'll have another whole group of people asking for the same things right. So I think that it can be done it's just not a priority until we get. A good chunk of what we have in front of us out of the way and we're getting there we're getting there V2 is going to be so sweet I'd like to add a couple of things to it because you know we we have talked about this quite a lot and and we thought about the different approaches we we have to the first thing for us is like it's got to make business sense because this is a business and you know we're not it's not just an open source project that. Is is just trying to get this sort of stuff done in its spare time or I have spare time, you know I I kind of made a decision about that before even Shane came and joined in with with stuff that.
[40:13] For the mobile I knew that there was enough value there to to build a business around like it was something that people would be. Prepared to pay for because building apps is is an industry you know like. You guys work at an agency you you know that people will come and pay you to do this stuff so from my point of view it was like well if if we're making that easier and faster and cheaper for everybody then you know like it's only fair that we have. A way to monetize that from the off but even with that you know we have to then prioritize things that that kind of keep that business, going and paying our bills and and all of that kind of stuff but we we want to, we we built it in a way that it is just PHP under the hood you know it's it's not like it only works with laravel no no this is PHP, and and it it's got enough stuff that it will work with laravel and it can work with other stuff so there's nothing really stopping anybody kind of,
[41:18] cracking it open today and sort of figuring out like how how are you booting up laravel in here and just changing all of that you you know like you get the Swift Code you get the cotaling code you can read through it all if you know what you're doing or you can use Claude code you can like reconfigure that and, whatever it just won't be part of the core of that. Solution at the moment so that's yeah it's it's completely possible today to do it. But yeah it's just not it's not something that we can justify. And the other reason is that technically those other as as Shane's alluded to those other. Options if you like for doing this they're very loose you know like. People build symfony apps in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways I've worked on on quite a few Symphony apps over the years and every single 1 of them has been completely different from the last 1. And that's not a bad thing when it comes to you know just like the flexibility that Symphony provides but it's a terrible thing when you're trying to build a project like this that like it relies on things being in a known place.
[42:32] And and building it to make it account for all of that flexibility. Is a job unto itself like that would just be a whole stream of work just to be like how are all of the different people building their Symphony apps. I don't care and I don't want to care about that I just like laravel is a known like structure and it yes it's opinionated. And that makes it great for stuff like this because I know that I can just take a laravel app as long as it's you know vanilla laravel and I can make it just work in this context to me this huge value in in doing things that way not just in the context of native PHP but also like within a business you know like I want all of my apps to be the same structure so that any Dev on the team can come in and just start cracking on, like they know what they're dealing with day 1 and that's that's actually like 1 of the big. Like levers I think laravel managed to pull over the last 15 years so.
[43:36] If if Symphony and and other tool you know like let's say vanilla it wouldn't be vanilla it would still be a framework right but vanilla PHP. That could work with Native PHP was to come it would just have to be very opinionated I would say you know it's like you can do it without a framework but it looks like this you have to have these folders and you have to have these files so it looks like a framework or you do it in Symphony but you do it with this Symphony starter kit or whatever it is that they've got that makes you do your applications like this. Which I think would be antithetical to the way that some of those projects actually work and the way that people want to think about them. I was going to say too to add to that maybe a little defensively or offensively depending on what side of it you're looking at it but why not just learn laravel. It's PHP and it's it it I I promise it can do anything that any of the other Frameworks or vanilla can do.
[44:33] So it may even just be easier for you to do it in this way to get the benefit of having mobile at least for now. So Playing devil's advocate their 1 of the reasons you might not want to do that is you might already have an app. That is built in say symfony to bring over I wouldn't do that anyway even if you already have a laravel application and that's and that's 1 thing that we kind of tell everybody it you can do it you can have a. Even if I have a laravel app now I think 1 of the first things I did just to test things out was I just cloned the. Native PHP site and just shoved it in and just ran like my Android start whatever command, that is not the command at all the 1 that I type 10 million times a day install and run and it just booted up right but we don't recommend that because you have to think about so many things in a different way anyway so plus you're going to have a lot of assets that are going to bloat the app potentially images and videos possibly I wouldn't say you just have your app and bring it over and run a command in your mobile now you got to think about things differently anyway,
[45:37] so you may as well right Port your mind over and then Port your code over. That that kind of answers 1 of the questions I had was uh so 1 that 1 of the uh ideas I have for nappies I've actually got it as a web app already that I've been building and I want to have mobile version of it and basically what you're saying is I need to start from scratch and just. Doesn't need well not not start from scratch but I've got I can't just clone. And just run I need to make think about things so that that's that's very interesting yeah yeah is is this the 1 I think it is. I don't know which 1 you're thinking of is it is a stress 1 yeah on that 1 change database structure and you'll be fine. Yeah well we don't need to. There's there's lots of things in these changing no come on bring it out let's hack put it up on the screen oh God no some of that code I wrote about so. I've I've only been coding since about,
[46:41] 2019 and some of that code I wrote in about 2020 and I now look back at it and and Chris has looked at it and goes we need to change this so I know it's there's a lot of work to be done in there before I start moving over to, I think I think too to add to that is. You know when you when you start to think about things a little bit differently in this way if your API if using API you're not really relying much on local database. You can start to think about how to shift some processing to your server externally as well yeah so that's going to offload a lot of the workload on the device that could, drain a battery or blowout the app or I mean a lot of different things so again there's a lot of things you want to think about and consider hidden API endpoint sometimes to. You know make a PDF out of something and stream it back versus on the device yeah makes sense makes makes a lot of sense.
[47:38] So 1 of our other questions Has Come From Another colleague of ours Joe when it comes to monetization you're still beholden to the app stores for cutting them in for a slice correct.
[47:49] I think as much as anybody else would be so there's there they have rules and they have, they have recently been sued enough some of them to allow certain things yeah we're not we don't have anything to do with that and again like this is a paid product people are like oh so I have to pay a hundred dollars to Apple every year plus pay it's like that's not I mean we don't benefit from what Apple, charges at all. Yeah Simon you'll have more details you can explain this pretty well well I mean I first of all you know. A lot of this is wrapped up in the legals of those different platforms like the the the companies that run them that own them. I've tried to create environments that make it so you have to play in their play pain and play by their rules and. You know if if you can avoid that that your opportunity but it's also like your risk you've got to figure that out between you and your lawyers or whoever else you know the,
[48:55] what when you think about what's happening at the end of the day we're we're still building native applications they just happen to be able to run. PHP inside them so aside of that nothing else really changes. That you know it's just you you've now got the advantage that you can use PHP in that context which lets you do things that you weren't able to do before. Yeah and I guess that answers the other half of his question so is there any code changes required around the larvae and only in the sense that you you need to track it. Yeah I I mean obviously there's going to be the the stuff that interacts with those native apis to be able to to, trigger those functions so you you couldn't again to the point of like can I take my my laravel app that already has Integrations with stripe and just ship it onto a phone, no not really because you're going to you're going to need to ship. Things like API keys to stripe to all of your end users you definitely don't want to do that again principle of don't ever ship Keys like that to end users via an app.
[50:05] Let alone the store's rules you know there's just like complications there that make that impractical so, you know the the the guidance there for that kind of stuff is either you direct users to a website and they subscribe through a website, which again there are rules in there are rules about how you can do that or whether you you can't do that or like you know what Apple will do if you break those rules and all that kind of thing but essentially like you can you can still try and figure out how to to guide them that way or you use that the in-app purchase tooling which okay we don't have some of that just yet but there will be.
[50:50] But the the goal really isn't about that you know the the goal is to make the best end-user experience because. The the proof is in the pudding for the years that people have been doing apps native apps this way and and kind of you know having access to the wallet and being able to do payments quickly through face ID and touch ID and whatever else that it's better it's is a better solution because customers have less time to think about it and they they will pay more quickly and and they'll live with that decision more rapidly than they do when they have to go from their phone to their laptop, 2 website fill in their card detail you know like it's just it's obvious that, it's a better way and so it's kind of worth the premium in in a lot of cases. Yeah and so we're just like again opening the door to all the PHP developers to be able to do that. I think there's 1 there's 1 large thing that we're we're wanting to tackle pretty soon and that's background tasks and scheduling that are not built into native PHP yet
[51:58] and I think the goal there is to eventually just tap into and I I'm speaking out of my. You know I we haven't thought entirely through this we haven't explored it enough yet but I mean both of the of the devices have some sort of crown mechanism and so if we can wire the scheduler laravel scheduler to that. And also like you know when some event happens to. It's and I have explored this a little bit to direct traffic from some external process in the background, we have to boot PHP up in the app while it's being backgrounded in order to do any of the processing of your code so there's some hurdles to jump there we're looking forward to getting to that in the next few months probably but like you said we have by Frost we have to go back and revisit that and bring in some of the tooling we want to add there and balance all that stuff out so. Yeah yeah so it's quite a lot that's coming soon which is the fact that it's moving forward and,
[52:57] I know that we hear that a lot with different people if it's coming soon but the the thing is everything that you've said is coming soon I've seen movement on and yes okay I do have the slight advantage of being in 1 of the early contributors groups on Discord so I see it's slightly before Mike does but I mean there as well, how are you okay yeah he's not that special, fight that happens after the truth and that's on only fans yeah. The the thing that I really like is that you are constantly talking to the people using this and. Yes okay it is a business and the main aim of this is so that you can actually have some income and you know eat. But the the fact that you are treating this also like an open source project is you're interested in what the users are interested in, for sure yeah that's I the way I my mantra for this day in and day out is. I want to compete directly against react native and flutter with this there's nothing there's no limitations technical limitations keeping us from that.
[54:05] From that point the cool thing is especially with something like bifrost there's also no reason we can't do react native or flutter builds with bifrost and they can't do Native PHP so like I'm looking at this is like. I look at like I got the McDonald's at the other day and I'm looking at like all the different animations and all the different stuff and I'm like how would I do this, with PHP how would I do this with with Native and like to get to these goals where I like this opens the door for anybody could make literally any bespoke. Custom you know app that they can dream of like they're get handed a figma design from somebody and they just go to town because they know how to do it that's where I want to get to and so the the the people that are using our app. They're they're giving us direct feedback a lot of them have businesses they have paying customers themselves that are. You know asking for additional things to to go in and we absolutely care about that specifically we don't want anyone to fall to the Wayside,
[55:02] or lose clients or money of their on their own because we we're not doing something on our side so. If we can prioritize and get something in for for somebody else absolutely that's that's the whole name of the game I think yeah and. And I've seen you answer back to people and say like that's on the road map here so you're you're already saying we've actually thought about what you're wanting anyway and even that's huge that you're you're ahead of the curve on what people are going to ask you for. I I will just leave with this I'll have a video out tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day I think every day this week I've got. I've got a video coming out so there's more there's more to come there's more to come. So it's a it's a it's like the drop week I guess it's so so we have 3 more questions 2 of them on there and 1 of them from me firstly we have Arthur Who Says greetings from Brazil that 1 actually a question I misread
[56:00] and secondly ofs wants to know why we go live when he's having dinner and doing the dishes. We plan that that yeah and it's specifically for you Shane yeah we specifically plan that around you oh yeah exactly definitely and the question for me is when are you giving me access to the video camera. You have to stay tuned it's on the road map it is on the road map I will say that. Is it on the road map for B2 is it on let me let me let me just check the road map real quick hang on a second I have an app for the road map of course. You mean this camera that that's the 1. That's the 1 if you if I could get access to that I have an app I want to build this week perfect. So you got the sneak peek you've seen it here first seen it here first there you go folks yep. Yeah yeah that that was that was a pretty highly requested 1 the QR codes too I think I think inapp purchasing that's going to come a little bit later after the release it'll still be part of the version 2.
[57:13] We just want to have that in time for the release but you know there's a couple other ones to come into. Plus all the native stuff I mean I mean if you if you know anything about anything the native the real native stuff that's yeah that's where it's at yeah, and just remind us when version 2 due to drop we are doing our best to align it with a Black Friday deal so we we really are trying to get it done by the in the next couple weeks. So I've just seen Eric's question oh, he like he likes to he likes to troll Us in the in the comments and John put us off while we're recording especially when we're light or when we're like so so you're trying to bring out a Black Friday deal and hopefully dropping version 2 that's, that's where we're at okay that's awesome that that would be awesome so that actually make me forget about my degree and just, apps and that's what you should do yeah forget you find find you should mention
[58:22] we are native because the module I'm doing for my degree. Is react native and I'm not I'm really have to do that please don't make me do this luckily it's only for about 6 weeks. So it's just just to get a taste of doing mobile development you know how many ads I can build in 6 weeks man I'm sure you can build a lot and I tell you what I'll I'll just get that bit out of the way and then I'll forget all about react native because I'll never use it because I'll be I'll be using the pitch B to build my apps, so you're doing it for 6 weeks right about 6 weeks I think yeah yeah so 7 weeks that's about 5 weeks 6 days 23 hours too long. Yes I know but but I I I can't turn in a native PHP project when they're actually to try but I think I might fail that module if I did that, in 6 weeks with Claude code you could build it with Native PHP and have a transpiler that backs it into a reaction yes it's not only if you've got the got like the pro subscription on $200
[59:34] yeah however I'm doing it through the open University that has a controlled condition place to write your code. Yeah so I've seen that what I'm planning what I'm planning to do is. Rights and prompts for Claude writing to Maps whilst that's doing that I'm then going to jump over and do my bit of uni work and then I'm just going to jump back and forth, see see how many apps I can build whilst doing the 1 native react 1 I think it's just a it's just a matter of time and they'll they'll have native PHP courses and. No I'm I'm going to write to them and tell them that that's what they should be teaching not yeah I reckon there's this 1 Guy we should introduce him to that will happily do the lessons won't you shein. Yeah by the way the best conference in the Chicago area is whatever has. Pizza from that place Illuminati oh my God that was so good. PHP tech for sure and now JS Tech is that what they're call is that what it's called yeah JS Tech it's actually pronounced jsx I think.
[01:00:51] Yes it's uh it's something yeah we we announced a couple of weeks ago that yeah we're gonna have another John announced and Eric found out on the show no no John announced and the whole team found out when we were watching the show it's like oh okay so yeah we we're gonna have a whole other conference running alongside, it's in the same Hotel just in just another side room it's probably the broom cupboard down the down the corridor that will just stick them in there so Shane I reckon your first talk that you submit to that should should be how to build a react native app in with Native PHP because it's clearly better well actually the thing with Native PHP sorry I'm getting really technical now, the thing you can do with Native PHP that you can't do with react native, just use react and I know it's it's kind of the same but. Yeah you can you can use any like JavaScript framework on top of native PHP so.
[01:01:56] I think that's a good shout you should do that talk at jst X that would be great it's Java's Java's Crypt. Yes I'm sure I've seen some talks react native for a PHP developer what you should do is a native PHP for a react native developer, going going to hijack all their conferences yeah yeah I'd be lying if I said we haven't thought about this.
[01:02:36] I I'm sure there's loads and loads of people familiar with PHP who go to those things they just yeah yeah maybe it's not their primary thing or, maybe they're only at the conference because it's a react native thing and whatever but maybe they're hiding under the tables. They don't say to anybody that they do pH so guilty pleasure. Just imagine them opening a little purple box with PHP inscribed on the top The Little Elephant that they pet. Yes well we are running slightly long and I did promise Simon we'll try and finish off, within the hour but we failed at that promise so sorry Simon that's probably my bad the yak a lot I don't I don't want you to waste away because you haven't had your dinner this evening yet I want thank you, a good 1 at a conference in Chicago shein. Say again there's this really good pizza at a conference in Chicago we could go and get I I plan to go get some I think I'll be dead by then
[01:03:45] that's just going to take too long I would imagine they deliver door Dash or something I think it would be cold and I'll be dead,
[01:04:04] I believe so there's a couple other I mean there's some tentative things around that same time that I'm just waiting for but my plan is to go for sure I I really had a great time that was my first my first 1 and yeah I don't want that to be my last for sure and I really want some luminosities. I have a feeling that I know 1 of the things that's around there because I submit to that 1 too ah Japan, that's the 1 yeah my son's learning Japanese so he he's excited about that but who knows who knows. And Simon what's it going to take to get get you to come out and join us. I don't know how how expensive are the flights that's a good point I I don't know I just keep giving the tickets and I go over but. Lucky know you what you need to do is that now submit a JavaScript talk, yes and if it gets selected we'll fly you over I don't want to talk about JavaScript know but you don't have to talk about,
[01:05:09] yeah I mean I don't know if I'm brave enough for that yet. Also I like I'm I'm curious is JS Tech is that running concurrently with yes. PHP Tech yeah yeah so it's kind of another track that's just going to be dedicated to JavaScript but we just giving it a well John's giving it a fancy name. I don't know how it all works. Ticket wise I can't really say because I don't know if John and Eric have worked with everything out yet but yeah from what I understand it's going to be another sort of a sidetrack. With with the 3 tracks it will have for Tech is it going to be like a musicales standoff between between the 2 groups of people the Watson but there is now it's interesting it's kind of on we have talked I don't I don't know if anything's going to oh my God we've got Westside Story going on now exactly the model yeah so we'll see we'll see I I don't know all the details and guessing John's not watching now so he jumped in the chat and giving us a few more details and let's see he doesn't know the details yet but so what we'll do is we'll let you know when we know.
[01:06:33] So what you said we'll just keep watching just need to go to Chicago, yes sometime in May at 10 about the 90 just like experience it as it happens in real time yeah and then I'll know for sure that's that is the best way just just turn that I went to Chicago and I got to have you know sushi with Shane, there was also some good stuff I love it's so difficult to say shushi with Shane. Oh Shane as I like to call him or what you can do or you can do what I did and fly all the way over there to to meet someone that you're now kind of talked to almost every single day and they're only a mile drive not M an hour drive away from you. Wow that's that's how Merry Christmas we live that close to each other but we met at Tech flew all the way out there just to meet so we're being asked for a link to the conference you mean. Like that 1 or maybe that 1 I can click it though. Yeah but the video link then it's not very good with technology it's a bit of a technophobic not a prerequisite
[01:07:52] be smart to do the stuff we do you want your we're going to, game night 1 of the game nights we're going to get we're going to have to get show up on stage dancing now, yes try to try to stop me I'll do it I'll do it well Eric's talking oh God I can just imagine you just walk behind him start Moon walking behind him you know I have to learn how to moonwalk now. Oh I'm I'm so looking forward to to Tech next year now yes just on that bring it, cool okay we should start to to wind up now because I'm I'm I'm getting hungry as well so I'm sure Simon is so we need to go and eat, so thank you very much for both of you for joining us today it's been. Long time in the making trying to get opinions guys down to do this so it's great that we've managed to do it and I'm sure if we do something in the New Year you'll have a hundred other things to talk about because it seems to be so much coming out it's so exciting and I've said a few times on the show that,
[01:09:00] this is probably the 1 thing that really excites me about PHP at the moment to be able to write, on for almost any platform you can think of is it is so cool, we do say that PHP keeps moving forward but this this is 1 of the big jumps there's a lot of cool things coming out all at all the time but yeah for me personally. This is 1 of the big jumps that's really exciting I mean I I keep telling people about it, so it's it's hyping up p p so thank you very much for first of all thinking of the idea and then running with it and working so hard on doing what you're doing so yeah it's it's been it's been great so yeah thank you very much if you are not in our Discord Channel please come and join us it's not just for during the live shows you can hang out in the week and you can ask questions. Talk chat post photos of your cat whatever you want to do but there's loads of people there Shane you're in our Discord as well Simon you in there,
[01:10:00] yep after you don't you don't not their sort of in the I don't say she's only there during the live stream yeah we've got Pitch P called core contributors in there we've got people that make. Packages I like these 2 and so there's lots of brilliant guys and ladies and all sorts everyone's in there so great conversations throughout the week head over to our YouTube Channel please like And subscribe. That helps us out a lot so please do that don't forget our magazine discount a live, I was waiting for it to come up on the screen to make sure I was saying it right a live 3 gives you the first 3 months of an annual digital subscription tickets for PHP Tech 26 are now on sale be great to see as many people over there as possible. Uh cool papers for JS for JS Tech uh is open so please uh. Pop over there is submit your talks um we're looking forward to seeing what what uh people come up with and don't forget to head over to our store and check out the t-shirts and things over there I did see something about.
[01:11:12] Eric saying that he might try and make some, solo tops available which we don't have at the moment so yeah there you go so you might be able to get Polo top that's a lovely modeled by Chris there yeah so again thank you very much everyone for watching listening however and thank you very much Simon Shane for giving us your your time today. And no thanks for having us yeah it's been no it's our pleasure it's been great chatting to you and and delving into all this native stuff you're you're working on. So yeah we I'm waiting for those videos every day I'm going to check see what the videos you got coming out I'm excited so yeah. Yeah now what I haven't done is cue the final outro so hang on hang on I'll just dance yeah. Need to I we're now just need to to have some West Side Story music playing while they dance show a video Simon dancing actually actually please please don't he said okay well thank you very much to you both and hopefully we'll catch up soon and thank you for everyone watching and listening,
[01:12:21] and so we'll uh don't forget we've got we've got the Thursday night with Eric and John and you'll hear all about the. The pains that we've gone through to try and select talks for Tech out of 545 options.
[01:12:44] Chris has decided to drink just some masking request who we got on Friday we have done noon it's Dan news is is going to be on the show on Friday so yeah look forward to that well thank you very much and we'll see you soon bye.
| Air date | November 11, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Hosted by | Mike Page, Chris Page |
| Guest(s) | Simon Hamp, Shane Rosenthal |
