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Hey everyone, Mathias Hansen back with another episode of Countdown to Laravel Live
Denmark.

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And I'm really excited today we have Leah Thompson who is going to be speaking at Laravel
Live Denmark in August.

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Leah, how are doing?

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I'm good, how are you?

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I'm doing great, thank you for coming on.

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And thank you for coming, yeah, and thank you for coming all the way to Denmark, it's
quite a trip for you.

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Yeah, I'm excited.

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I actually have not traveled internationally before.

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I'd apply for my first passport to go to Denmark, so I'm really excited to get to like
travel more and actually see something that's not just the United States.

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That's awesome!

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I mean, we're happy to have you, so...

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And actually, one of the other speakers whom you might know, TJ Miller, I think he's
basically in the same boat, where I don't know if he's been to Europe before, so you both

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can be traveling from the US.

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That's exciting.

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I didn't realize he hadn't really traveled internationally before either, or at least to
Europe.

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I just listened to his podcast, mostly caffeinated, and he mentioned it there.

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Cool.

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Well, Leah I want to hear a bit about how you got into computers originally, how you
started coding.

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Yeah, so my background is actually in mathematics.

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So I have a bachelor's of science in mathematics from the University of Florida.

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I did not major in computer science.

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I did take two programming courses in college.

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I took one that went over C++ and then I took another that was for C and it was like intro
to programming for non-majors.

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So for like non-comp sci majors.

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My C class scared me so severely that I didn't touch any code for like.

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four or five years.

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that's pretty hardcore, starting with C.

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It was a bad course too because it was like led by a grad student and it was his first
time ever teaching.

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He was like two hours late to our final and then a fire alarm went off so we only had 30
minutes for the final that we had to like hand like hand write code on the final.

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And he was like he didn't want to curve it and he wanted to make us come back to redo it
and students were like hey we're kicked out of our dorms after this final we can't

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reschedule it and he like did not want to curve the class at all.

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I made like 40s on the exams and I ended up with a B minus in the course because he had to
curve it that severely.

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So it was bad.

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It was bad.

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was taking like, I took a modern physics course which was like special relativity, quantum
mechanics, all of that.

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So it was hard.

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I took my first like set some logic course which is like theoretical logic.

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I think it's kind of like the comp, the

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comp psych course you have to take but it's where you do like proofs for math and you go
over like what was it truth

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like, and and false and all this stuff or...

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Yeah.

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like unions and sets and we talked about like we truth tables and all that stuff.

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yeah.

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My brain's like eluding me on the other stuff.

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I was taking a lot of math courses and then that course, I like cried a lot that semester
and I was like, I suck at programming, I'm not doing it.

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So I actually was going to go into just applied math, but I graduated during COVID.

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So I ended up actually going into teaching.

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I taught high school geometry for a year and a half.

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And then when I quit it, I was trying to figure out what to do.

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And I didn't wanna go back just to grad school and pay a bunch of money.

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So I found a like free bootcamp to learn.

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web development and I actually started with JavaScript in the MERN stack.

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But that's kind of how I got to where I am now.

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I did that program, fell in love with programming, decided I actually liked it and got a
job within eight months as a web developer.

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incredible.

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What a journey.

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So what happened between doing a pretty awful sounding C course to suddenly loving
programming?

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What led you there?

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I love math.

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What do I sound like?

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That's not an answer to my question, but I loved calculus and stuff like that because I
really like problem solving and I like having like something really complicated and having

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to use like different theorems and rules to simplify it to something that you can solve.

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Like that part's really fun for me.

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So I was trying to find ways to like incorporate that to what I'm doing.

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And whenever I quit teaching, I was trying to figure out what to do.

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And my husband majored in computer science at the same college.

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So he started working as a front end developer.

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So he's the one who told me like, hey, why don't you try it again?

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Like, why don't you find something and try it?

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Cause you might like it.

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So I tried it and I realized like a lot of the things I liked about math, I can like get
out of programming because a lot of it's built on like mathematical logic, you know.

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Yeah.

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then I'm doing the same problem solving.

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have a bug, I have to go and like stack overflow or something.

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I have to read through docs and try to like figure out how to solve it.

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And to me that's just really fun.

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So that's kind of why I liked it.

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And then of course, like I started doing leak code and stuff like that.

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And you can do the like more mathematical versions with that.

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Like you can use, what is it?

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You can do like statistics and stuff for the different leak code problems.

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Like you can do...

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can't think of it.

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But it's the different like stats to solve the problem.

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So you can usually solve in a programmatic way, but you can also solve it with like kind
of more just like math.

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So I found a lot of similarities between math and programming and that's why I liked it.

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And I didn't have a professor who was giving us impossible things to solve within like a
week to make me hate my life.

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So you found the joy in programming, like you found the bright side of, cool.

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and I also found a community while doing it because I started with 100devs which is run by
Leon Noel So there's a bunch of us doing it at one time and I was able to like band

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together with a bunch of people So even if something was hard I had that community to fall
back on so it made it even more fun for me because I was also able to like Teach it to

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other people as I was learning it myself.

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So it also like leaned into my teaching background

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man, so I've spoken with a handful of speakers already and it seems like a really common
theme is the community.

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Also in terms of getting into programming and into layerable and stuff, community keeps
coming back as being the main thing.

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So that's really why you found your spark too, was having a community to be part of,
right?

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Yeah, exactly.

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It's the community that like kept me going.

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And then that I was starting with JavaScript.

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I didn't start with Laravel till last year about last summer.

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And it was the community in Laravel that like really pulled me in as well and got me to
like fully commit to using Laravel.

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Yeah, and I think fully commit, can kind of underline that and put that in bold because
you joined Laravel earlier this year, right?

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March 24th.

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Yeah.

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So how's that?

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It's been great.

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I really enjoy working at Laravel.

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It's just like working there.

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All the people are great.

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The things I'm doing, I feel like fully aligns with my interests.

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So that's been great too, to just feel like I'm in a position I really like fit in.

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You know, where like sometimes you work somewhere and you're like, I can do the job,
people are great, but maybe this isn't like exactly what I want to do or it's not like the

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perfect fit.

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So like to end up somewhere you feel like, this is actually a good fit.

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It's just like a great feeling.

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to have and then of course the Laravel community is great, like the other developers who
use Laravel.

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So being able to be part of that by working here and like going to Laravel Live Denmark
and doing things like that is just great as well.

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Yeah.

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So when I dial back a little bit more, um because I'm wondering, were you always, or is
this interesting programming and stuff like that is, you know, within last couple of

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years, right?

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Somewhat recent-ish.

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um So was wondering, just growing up, were you into technology or computers or anything
like that?

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Or was it not really a thing until programming?

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So it became, you know, a focus for you.

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was like...

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I'm trying to think how to describe it.

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I wasn't like one of the people who like built my own computers and like programmed a
little bit.

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Like my husband was like that.

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Like one of the people who like in high school was like wanting to do his own computer
build and like really into video games and like doing maybe like mods for Minecraft and

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different things like that.

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I wasn't like that, but I was like, by the time I was like.

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I don't know, eight or something.

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Like I was one of the main people who knew how to work the computer in my household and I
knew how to get it to work to like play my video games.

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They were like Barbie games, but I could play my video games on it.

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I knew how it worked.

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I'd like upload the different things like iTunes and stuff.

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Whereas like my mom didn't even know how to like change the channel on the TV to get it to
play the Blu-ray.

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So I had to like do that.

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I was like the IT person at my house to like get that stuff to work.

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So it was always like that and my family would tell me I should go into programming, but
like, obviously we know now those are two very different things, just being able to work a

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computer and like program.

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I would do little work arounds, like I did have MySpace, so I would like find the like
layouts and copy and paste the HTML into MySpace.

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And I didn't realize it was HTML at the time, but that's like what I was doing.

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And then I also like would do little hacks I found online where it's like.

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Maybe like a website you have a subscription and you can see what you got in your bag
early if you put this little like html blurb in like you inspected the page and you

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changed like some settings and I would do stuff like that, but didn't know I was actually
like quote unquote programming, know

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So you are always very technically inclined, but maybe not really so conscious of it, or
it wasn't like a main thing.

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It was just part of who you are.

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That's really cool.

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Yeah, I was always like part of my life and I used like Excel and different like Excel
hacks that you can use for like stats.

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For my stats class, we would put in the different like equations and stuff and then use
Excel to be able to like easily calculate the problems.

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And of course I use like TI-84s and stuff like that.

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And like, I think had like sometimes little games programmed in and stuff.

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So I did, I...

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was used to using technology

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That's awesome.

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Speaking of games, have you been into gaming or playing video games and stuff like that?

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little bit.

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I used to be into it more when I was younger than I am now.

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I've always been more like Nintendo and stuff like that.

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Like we even still own a Nintendo 64.

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We have one of those and we have Super Mario 64.

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We have Smash Brothers on it I think and we just got like the Switch 2.

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So I do play some games.

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It's more like Nintendo games or like cozy games kind of like

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Animal Crossing or Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

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Stuff like that I'll play.

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huge at home here.

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Everybody can get behind that.

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That's so much fun.

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I'm hoping they'll come out with one for Switch 2.

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I did play Final Fantasy, probably 60, 80 hours of that.

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Final Fantasy 14.

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So I guess more than other people I game, but I'm not like, I don't play video games every
single day.

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Right.

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Well, nobody has time for that, right?

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My husband does.

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He works, he gets off at five, video games for three hours, and then bed.

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Alright, I'll take the words back then.

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Yeah

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Cool, well, Leah I wanna hear a little bit about your talk you're giving at Laravel Live.

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We're gonna hear about Inertia and how to use it with React, right?

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Mm hmm.

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Yep.

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So the talk will be focusing on using React with Inertia JS.

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Of course, like the Laravel community is more familiar with what Inertia is.

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So I'll be focusing more on like the React side to of like using them together and the
benefits you would get from that.

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Because I know there was like a lot of talk in the community about React because of the
Laravel team using it more, which they are still using view as like James has talked about

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with they're still using view for

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Forge, but like we are using React on some different tools like Cloud and I think for
Nightwatch.

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So just kind of talking more about it and the reasons why someone might wanna use React.

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Is it a case of trying to find the right tool for the job depending on what you're
building?

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Yeah, definitely that and just like talking about the cool things about using React with
Inertia and hopefully like a demo of an app, of an app using React and Inertia.

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I still have to cook up what fun things I can do with the app, but.

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Cool, yeah, maybe there's people like me out there who's tried to use Inertia and got kind
of scared or like not really sure how to approach this because it's a little bit different

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than your, you know, super vanilla old school, you have a back end here and a front end
here.

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So I'm really looking forward to trying to learn more about that and really better
understand how it works.

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Yeah, I think the monolith can look scary sometimes.

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Like it's like, it's all together.

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don't know where it's like whenever I saw it, I was like, yes, give me that.

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Like I want it.

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I don't want to have to worry about how I'm going to get these properties.

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I can just send it on the backend to my front end component and just have it as a prop.

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Like to me, I loved it, but I can definitely see how it can be intimidating.

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Yeah, that's definitely how I felt for sure.

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Cool.

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Well, Leah, you're saying it's your first time going to, even going to Europe, right?

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So, I'd love to hear is there anything you'd like to see or do or experience or eat when
coming to Copenhagen?

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Yeah, I'm hoping I have time to just kind of like walk around and explore.

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know there's like the Tivoli Gardens and stuff like that.

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I'd love to go to really just walking around, because I think it's really walkable, right?

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Yeah, definitely.

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I was definitely going say so, yeah.

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Just being able to like adventure would be nice.

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And then for like eating, I'm not huge on seafood.

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I do like some seafood, like fish and stuff.

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Obviously I'm gonna try it.

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If I'm in Copenhagen, I'm gonna embrace it and try it.

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I don't know if I'll be eating any oysters, but I am excited.

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Cause whenever I was reading reviews, the food is supposed to be incredible there.

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Yeah, I mean Denmark is not really known for its great culinary exports but yes, seafood
for sure and Copenhagen is very multicultural so that should be something for everyone

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there.

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And actually the venue for...

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Yeah.

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sick of seafood, I have something else.

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Yeah, and actually the conference venue is right next to a big area with tons of food
trucks.

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uh So there is like tons of options for different cuisines to try for lunch or for later.

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uh And yeah, I would definitely recommend visiting Tivoli Gardens.

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It's...

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It's just something for everyone, whether you like roller coasters or just walking around
hanging out and seeing the gardens and stuff.

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It's lots of fun and easy to get to.

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It's like in central Copenhagen, right?

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And it's an old park, really, really old park.

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I'll definitely add it to my list because like everywhere I looked people mentioned it.

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So I'm like, okay adding that.

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Yeah, I can't really go wrong going to Tivoli That's for sure.

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Yeah, well, Leah, we're really excited to see you in August and have you speak at Laravel
Live Denmark.

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And yeah, we're happy that you're making the trek over and looking forward to it.

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Thanks so much for having me on here today and having me speak at Laravel Live Denmark and
it was great talking to you.

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That was Leah Thompson.

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If you want to hear more from Leah and our other speakers, come join us at Laravel Live
Denmark on August 21st and 22nd.

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We still have a few tickets left.

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Buy yours at laravellive.dk