I recently hired a new instructor for Laracasts. Now that the team has grown to four people, including myself, I thought it might be interesting to discuss my personal hands-off approach to running a small and low-stress team.

Four words can derail any programmer's day. Those four words are "If I could just..." Ask yourself if you frequently fall into this trap. "If I could just configure my code editor properly, then I could get some work done." Or what about this one? "If I could just get my office the way I want it, then I could begin this new feature." Have no doubt; this is a form of procrastination that infects most of us.

As parents or teachers, if you want to instill a joy for learning or reading, it's important that you meet them where they're currently at in life. The goal, as we've discussed in past episodes of The Laracasts Snippet, is to get them excited.

I recently came across a month-old YouTube channel with two million subscribers. The content...was fine. The audio...was fine. And, yet, two million subscribers! Often, the way in which you frame your content is significantly more important than the content itself.

Few topics in the programming world spark debate quite as much as TDD. There's enough dogmatism from the evangelists of TDD to warrant an equal and opposite reaction from those who aren't on board and are tired of being told they're doing it wrong.

We're living in an interesting time, when one person - anywhere in the world - can start a business without leaving their bedroom. Even better, this business has the potential to bring in revenue while the person sleeps. This is the secret sauce to wealth, and it's now available to anyone with an internet connect and a decent idea. As a result, we have now regular folks - often with little business sense - running highly profitable small businesses.

Every open source project begins with the best of intentions. In fact, they usually begin with excitement. One developer has an idea, and thinks, "Hmm - I can do this!" So why is it that, more often than not, these projects eventually spiral out of control?

We can all surely relate to the sense that our ability to focus has slowly deteriorated over the last decade. If this scares you as much as it does me, let's talk about how we reverse the process through habit forming.

I think you'll find that intermediate-level developers tend to be the most passionate and rigid of the entire community. It is at this stage of your learning when you are most susceptible and attracted to programming "rules," or instructions from above that, when followed, lead us to clean code. But that's okay. While we all eventually realize that rules are meant to be broken, in certain phases of our training, rules very much serve an important purpose, and we'll talk about it in this episode.

To offer something different this week, let's tear down and inspect a recent conflict on the US presidential debate stage.

In this episode, I offer a brain dump on the intricacies of raising two little kids, and fatherhood in general.

Too often, we hear politicians spew the tired "learn to code" slogan in response to difficult questions related to disappearing jobs in remote America. Let's talk about the logistics and practicality of a middle-aged coal miner making this switch.

I've thought quite a bit about types in the last year or two. I know - borrring - but I find it interesting to observe how intensely talented developers can disagree with one another on this particular issue.

Developers passionately disagree with one another on most programming issues. For every tutorial on class inheritance, duck-typing, naming conventions, and mutability, I'll show you another resource that argues vehemently in the opposite direction.

Every developer should develop and manage at least one project themselves. Doing so not only harnesses your discipline, but it also forces you to flex product-related muscles you've never used before.

One of the more frustrating aspects of front-end development stems from the fact that even the smallest of alterations has the potential to derail your entire week. In this episode, we'll discuss how to track browser-specific CSS performance issues.

That simple rule we all learned years ago in school may not have stuck properly. Why else would we, decade after decade, incorrectly and constantly draw "cause-and-effect" lines from one variable to another?

It occurred to me recently that I've likely recorded more programming screencasts than just about anyone. In that time, I've picked up a number of small tips and techniques.

Traditionally, there are three primary locations when most friendships are formed: school, the workplace, and church. But what if you're unable to tick any of these boxes, as is increasingly the case for remote workers.

A recent study found that a small percentage of individuals are largely responsible for the widespread sense that online interactions are hostile and toxic. Assuming this is true, is it possible that muting a handful of people will instantly remove the negativity in your feed?

In this episode, we'll discuss a series of performance improvements that you can apply to your own projects right now. You'll learn about everything from image lazy loading to inspecting the cost of an NPM package.

No, this isn't the last Laracasts Snippet. But we will be discussing PHP's final keyword and the arguments for and against applying it by default.

In the last few years, I've noticed that my eyes simply aren't as resilient as they used to be. After staring at a computer screen for so many years, the daily eye strain and headaches have been getting worse. Much worse. In this episode, I discuss the steps I've recently taken to improve my situation. If you're in the same boat, have a listen!

Each of us is born with a unique personality that defines much of how we view the world. Is it possible that this also cascades down to the code we write? Maybe!

Today, I have four completely unrelated topics to discuss with you today. As a (cheesy) way to connect the dots between them, we'll call this episode the four P's: Personal, Professional, Political, and Parental.