Dan Herbert

RIP Reader! At this point I'm not sure I'll ever get over that one... GG Google. 👎

What do you use these days? I've been using inoreader for a while, but recently switched over to Thunderbird - giving good ol' desktop software a go again haha

Dan Herbert Development and production relating to: web, games, and music

New post: The importance of dogfooding.

It's really valuable process which should be employed as much as possible.

danherbert.io/blog/2025073...

Dan Herbert Development and production relating to: web, games, and music

Rebuilt my personal site using a Laravel package I recently released: Elide - a helper that makes Laravel + HTMX feel a bit like Inertia.

No JS, no build step. Just components and partials.

📝 danherbert.io/blog/2025072...
📦 Elide: github.com/danherbert-i...

#Laravel #HTMX #PHP

YouTube video by fabriclondon Pola & Bryson, Emily Makis - 'Worlds Apart' [fabric Records]

youtu.be/t-hsfvafzdo?...

Frisson every time with this one. The last half is especially 👌

I've found it pretty impossible to escape the AI posts - seems like it's all folks want to talk about.

Topic varies more here, though it does seem quieter.

The character count makes it hard to use words 😂 definitely meant to be an encouragement to be competent with your stack rather than anti ai.

For me it comes down to so assistance with boilerplate, planning, and quick learning. Still prefer to do the detail myself.

Interesting cache issue today (`Vary` header w CloudFlare). Figured I'd try my monthly "what does AI suggest?"

Gave up after 2 hours w no solve and suggestions like "duplicate all your routes to serve the req'd responses".

The fix was about 5 lines of handwritten js.

Know your tools.

Media controls with Google Maps Navigation are officially gone now - all I wanted is a "skip track" button.

So in the spirit of "you can just do things", I made a skip track button which can be dragged anywhere on the screen.

Problem solved in about 30 minutes.

To get good at something you have to do that thing over and over - practice! That takes time.

Paradoxically, you should also put time towards trying new things often so that you can work out what you should be practicing. Things change!

I love how lean and fast it is, it really does make a difference.

There are some small differences in autocompletion and key sequences which have been tripping me up a fair bit. I'll get used to it, but at present I'm still faster in phpstorm still because I don't have to correct everything 😅

Yes. Yes they should.

Cleaned my car. The lesson here is: don't clean the car!

Currently out of action due to a back injury, but the brain won't stop - so much code marinating. Going to be a deluge of commits once I can get back to my desk.

Got a Laravel package I'm keen to get out as part of that.

*feels good meme*

My little Laravel Pennant PR got merged 🎉

Gone a bit mad scientist the last couple days - had an idea for a game on my mind for a long time, might just be able to execute it with @nativephp.com. So much fun to experiment with novel things in ways they probably weren't intended to be used.

Any guesses as to when I started working for myself?

Been in web development since ~2000 - I agree with pretty much all of this. Modern state management in particular is a fragile tangled mess, especially when the HTML document itself is a perfectly suitable way to store and present state.

I understand why this is necessary, though it feels so dirty every time I have to do it... 🫠

Curious what things would look like in an alternate timeline where humanity almost always focused on quality instead of speed and/or quantity.

In PHP, `glob(...)` might be one of my favourite functions which I almost always forget about.

Outrageously simple way to find files on the filesystem.

This one's been a "holiday break" from my main project which is a very significant build. Probably too big for a first SaaS attempt (classic), but I believe it really has a shot due to what it is and who it's for.

Getting close to go-live for a small thing I've been working on the last ~2-3 weeks - it helps surface docs to website/app users.

I'll be stoked if it gets some traction, though mostly I'll be really happy to get something launched and out there - that's a big thing on a personal level.

Coming up with an SQL only approach for event recurrences (not materialised!) has been one of the most fun programming tasks I've had in a fair while.

Paired with #Laravel collections/relations it'll be trivial to queue/list actions for schedules.

Always been curious about this one, but never quite enough to commit to the purchase, must give it a go at some point.

Gorgeous looking game too

I wanna go back further. Vbulletin, phpbb, etc. bring back the classic forums.

Refactoring by Martin Fowler was a pivotal book for my programming skills and early learnings - bought this at (I think) Borders in Rundle Mall after perusing an expansive bookshelf full of programming and engineering books.

Feeling a lot of bookstore nostalgia today.

I miss when they had sitting/reading sections. More than that, I miss when they had a solid range of technical books - programming in particular.

A great *physical* source of ideas/inspiration/knowledge. Online isn't the same as thumbing through books.

Fathom Analytics is great!

Coming up with a name for this SaaS product might really be the hardest task on the list. 😂

Came up with a couple I was very happy with today, fairly obscure. Alas, both were taken, one even by an actual business here in Aus.

One of the .com domains was available though: US$15k via GoDaddy!