Lobster rolls, boom parties, and crashed workers

In this episode, Michael and Jake recap Laracon US Boston, from Malaysian food and an undefeated dodgeball run to Laraprom, the great nachos-with-rice debate, conference logistics, Aaron Francis stepping into Laravel’s VP of Marketing and Community role, and a reminder to make room for silly software.

Jake shares his work rebuilding Boom Party, the fast-paced Bomberman clone his team used to play after stand-up, along with hosting decisions and a creative workflow involving Claude, Gemini, and Suno.

Michael closes things out with what was supposed to be an easy Pest 5 upgrade but turned into a much bigger test-suite adventure: converting old PHPUnit-style tests, untangling inheritance, tracking down mysterious parallel test failures, discovering the pain of stray exit statements, and ultimately getting repeat runs across an approximately 18,000-test suite down to just eight seconds.

Show links

• Pomplamoose
• Spindrift
• IZZE
• Laracon US
• Aaron Francis
• Sidecar
• Whimsy-driven development by Christina Martinez
• Boom Party
• Fly.io

Creators and Guests

Host

Jake Bennett

Christ follower, software dev @wilbergroup using @laravelphp. Co-host of @northsouthaudio and @laravelnews with @michaeldyrynda

Host

Michael Dyrynda

Dad. @laravelphp Artisan. @LaraconAU organiser. Co-host of @northsouthaudio, @laravelnews, @ripplesfm. Opinions are mine.

What is North Meets South Web Podcast?

Jake Bennett and Michael Dyrynda conquer a 14.5 hour time difference to talk about life as web developers