Recently, our team attended the Laracon Conference in Nashville, TN where 800+ developers met to learn about and discuss the exciting future of Laravel – a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax.
What is Laravel?
Laravel is a powerful and popular open-source PHP framework used to build web applications. It is designed to make web development more efficient by providing an extensive set of features and tools for rapid application development.
Laravel is easy to learn, provides great scalability and flexibility, and includes a range of features to help developers create secure and well-architected applications. With the help of the Laravel community, businesses can quickly and easily create the applications they need to succeed.
Out of the box, Laravel has elegant solutions for the common features needed by all modern web applications – including authentication, user management, ORM, data validation, job queues, and many more best practices baked right into the framework.
What is Laracon?
Laracon is two days of fantastic talks and community networking with the most talented Laravel developers in the world. It’s an opportunity for developers to learn from experts in the field and collaborate with peers. The conference offered presentations that provided attendees with the latest insights and strategies for driving success on the Laravel platform.
Why Attend Laracon?
By attending conferences like Laracon, we keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape and gain a better understanding of the latest strategies and tools available for helping businesses succeed in the digital domain. This is invaluable information that can be leveraged to help our clients remain competitive in the market.
What Happened at Laracon?
From radically streamlined testing of PHP code using PEST 2, to getting unstuck when confronted with technical challenges, to exploring Enterprise Laravel – the first morning was like jumping into the deep end of a pool of knowledge and best practices.
After a BBQ lunch, we dove headlong into more testing (using Fakes this time), learned about a fantastic new Prompts system being introduced in Laravel 11, and finished out the day with the State of Laravel address from Taylor Otwell (creator of the framework). Laravel Volt and Folio were both demoed and announced to be launching soon.
Day 2 opened up with the introduction of Livewire 3 – one of several front end frameworks that can be used with Laravel to rapidly build modern web applications. Following that was an introduction to Laravel Data – a package that enables the creation of rich data objects for use in applications. We helped live hack a demo application and Th1nk Lik3 a H4cker after a Nashville hot chicken lunch. After a break, NativePHP was announced – opening up the possibility of delivering PHP backed native desktop applications. Laravel Precognition was next, which streamlines data and form validation to improve usability.
Finally, we were encouraged to publish our work by a speaker who had landed a dream job by – you guessed it – publishing his work.
We ended our time in Nashville enjoying amazing tacos at Velvet Taco — feeling excited to head back to LuminFire HQ to put all this into practice.
Claris FileMaker, WordPress and Laravel
LuminFire has been known as a Claris FileMaker and WordPress development agency for years – but this was our first Laracon due to Laracon 2021 being canceled due to Covid. While we’ve been developing internal and client applications using Laravel since 2020, it was great to finally get out and meet the community in person.
Laravel compliments our existing development strengths by offering a better way to build complex web apps and hybrid apps that work brilliantly on the web and on mobile devices, and that integrate seamlessly with WordPress websites and FileMaker apps via APIs, webhooks, and plugins. Our BrilliantPortal is one example of such an app.
If you’re looking for a Laravel development agency that can provide the best advice and services to help your business succeed, look to LuminFire. We’d love to talk with you. Contact us today…
Tim Cimbura – CEO, CFO and Software Engineer
Tim is an expert in creating custom business solutions that make businesses more effective, productive, and profitable. He specializes in rapid application development with the Claris platform including FileMaker, Laravel, and WordPress. He also knows Apple macOS technology inside and out.