Past Year and a Half of Tech Used and Loved and Stuff Built
Published: 2023-09-18 14:00:00

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title: Past Year and a Half of Tech Used and Loved and Stuff Built
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description: Laravel/PHP Developer sharing the tech used over the past year and a half. Will explain which ones I am sticking with and why. 
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published_at: 2023-09-18 14:00 +0000
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tldr: this is about my past year a half becoming a full time developer again and the different technologies I used and experience with them. I will share the tech I like the most still and the projects I used them on.

## Overview
Was updating my resume and my list of experience and just wanted to share here.  I will write more on the topic later about the "Developer to Director back to Developer" path since I think the first part of this "growth" happens often and not always for the right reasons as seen in the "Peter Principle"

>The Peter Principle states that, if you perform well in your job, you will likely be promoted to the next level of your organization's hierarchy. You will continue to rise up the ladder until you reach the point where you can no longer perform well.

Anyways more on that later for now a look at my time since April 2022 and becoming a full time Developer again. And now as I look back I also want to share the tech that has resonated the most with my workflow and thinking. Btw some of that time was spent at a full time job building a product for them so I did "lose" some time to that but I did learn a ton at that one both about tech and myself.

All these stacks use Github Actions for CI/CD https://medium.com/@alnutile/ci-github-actions-and-laravel-part-1-of-3-547d5515b116 honestly it is just one file and done. And https://envoyer.io to deploy with "zero" downtime. And then there is https://jetstream.laravel.com/introduction.html providing not only the foundation but some great starter components and patterns for Vue and Intertia. 


## 2022-2023 Tech Stack Winners for me 🏆
- Inertia https://inertiajs.com/ the form api makes life sooooo easy
- Vite https://vitejs.dev/ what a game changer for me and the dev workflow
- Forge + DigitalOcean https://forge.laravel.com/ gets the Ops out of the way so I can focus on the Dev
- Meilisearch https://www.meilisearch.com/ wow saved my 🥓 on a large database 
- Tailwind Yup Shane https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-rosenthal/ was right about me going with this over Bootstrap never looked back
- JetStream https://jetstream.laravel.com/introduction.html just what I need to get started on any project
- OpenAi PHP https://github.com/openai-php my TODO list for 2023-2024 is to make a "Storage" like driver so we can use any LLM but for now this is a great option!
- RapidAPI https://rapidapi.com/hub getting going quickly with some APIs like LinkedIn or Twitter and more like text to audio! Even a great webscrapper.
- PHPVector https://github.com/pgvector/pgvector wow so nice I could just enter this new LLM phase
- Miro https://miro.com remote whiteboard 
- Balsamiq https://balsamiq.com/ the downloaded version to keep MVP goals clear and simple.
- Envoy.io https://envoyer.io just works!
- Horizon all things https://laravel.com/docs/10.x/horizon 

## 2022-2023 Tech I appreciate but not using ❤️
- Livewire, https://laravel-livewire.com/ nice to have this option great work
- Vapor https://vapor.laravel.com/ so glad this exists especially when/if I get a client that needs this level of scaling.
- Nova https://nova.laravel.com/ glad it is here 
- Spark https://spark.laravel.com/ glad it is here as well just a bit too "simplistic" for most of my customers so far but still looking for a place for it.
- Statamic https://statamic.com/ very glad they are doing the work just did not fit my style. Great editor. 
- PEST https://pestphp.com/ glad this is here to help push our thinking about testing more.

## 2023-2024 Tech I want to try 🚀
- Filament https://filamentphp.com/ soon. I have so many Inertia Components to use at this point but this looks sooooo nice
- Alternative to Pusher.com though it has been the most affordable reliable service for the past 10 years it would be nice to use the newer free options the Laravel  Docs s talk about.



## Built internal system using People Data Labs 
System using People Data Labs to more effectively use that API to build reports as needed. (top secret stuff)
URL Is private

Tech:
Livewire 2, Tailwind, Inertia, Meilisearch

Thoughts:
Wow my first use of Livewire and Tailwind! Love Tailwind now but at first I did tooooo much adding of classes to get it "right" and not enough removing. As far as Livewire it just did not work with my brain. I like how 3 works since it has a Vue like Component feel.  Later on I moved new features to Inertia and it is going well. As far as Meilisearch wow! Using Forge I set it up with one click and the 3 million row database is just sooooooo fast.

## Gallery Anywhere
https://galleryanywhere.com/

Personal idea to have local art in AirBnb's did not go anywhere 🤷🏻‍♂️

Tech:
Laravel, Nova, Tailwind, Inertia

Thoughts:
Fell in love with Inertia and Vue just was more inline with what I was use to. Nova was fine, but for me it took some of the fun out of Laravel.  


## RecallsNow (use to be TotalRecalls)
https://recallsnow.com/

Fun project and "scratch my own itch". Lots of background api stuff and web scraping. 

Tech:
Laravel, OpenAi API for Tagging, Tailwind and Inertia, OpenAi API Finetuning

Thoughts:
Just wanted one idea of mine to go from start to end (subscriptions - just me at this point🙂 )
The stack was great, still learning Tailwind as you can see in the CSS. 
Some of the APIs I used lacked good tags or data so I used OpenAi Finetuning and some tags I had to train it on what a recall might be tagged if it lacked a tag. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/fine-tuning 

## My Blog
https://alfrednutile.info/

We all have to do this! Really wanted to "show off" my Github stats.

Tech:
Statamic 

Thoughts:
Like Livewire I appreciate the community and effort. As a long time Laravel dev I feel it was too different. I suck at design🙂 

## Well Registration Site and Clean water search site (Two of them)
https://cleanwater.kaweahwater.org/start
SECOND URL is in QA mode

Working with a partner in California to build clean water / well registration sites. The internal part of the site is actually quite complex.

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean, Postgres and GIS plugin.

Thoughts:
Found my stack and it has been working really well. This site just helped me to grow in this skill and then appreciate GIS, Postgres, and MapBox, Twilio for SMS

## BountifulTravel
URL still closed other than a few standalone payment and management areas.

This client site is moving a HUGE Wordpress site to Laravel that manages Group Trips.

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Vapor!, Integration to Monday.com , Plaid (great tech stack for payments imo) and AFS for other payments.

Thoughts:
Overall it reminded me of why I need to work with the customer and not a person between me and the customer. No matter how good we all are at our jobs and intentions communication is key and building the right thing really means the developer in constant contact (jargon) with the customer. The tech stack is good but this was my last Vapor and I would move it if I could back to Forge and DO. I like Vapor and glad I know it is there when needed.


## Book Creation and Ai/LLM
https://nextchapters.com/  (this is the sister site that leads into the site I made)

Lot's of work on a sister site still in QA to help authors write books using OpenAi as an assistant. Really fun stuff.
Kind of like GitHub but for a community of writers.

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean

Thoughts:
The stack just works and delivers. I am getting to the point where I have a nice folder of components to share with all my projects. Using Echo and Pusher the user gets a very dynamic experience.

## LaraChain Open Ai LLM Integration
https://larachain.io/ and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL8JVuiFkO9I1EgzjPKKZNz-ZVbcBJWF9 

This an open-source project with a focus on use LLMs and "blocks" to quickly make a backend for any person or company take advantage of Vector databases and OpenAi API (or other APIs).

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean, OpenAi PHP https://github.com/openai-php

Thoughts:
Amazing the tech stack and libraries we have as PHP developers. I was really worried with the rise of https://www.langchain.com/  if PHP and Laravel could keep up. After my deep dive into this it is clear we can 🥂


## TOP SECRET PROJECT
One other OpenAi API LLM Project that was MVP and did not make it past that stage but was a great try. I learned a lot and worked with someone who showed me a lot about building the right product, and staying focused on the MVP and just how to think about solutions.

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean, OpenAi PHP https://github.com/openai-php 
RapidAPI https://rapidapi.com/hub

Thoughts:
Again Horizon, Batches etc all lead us to make some amazing tools. And RapidAPI allowed me to get some data quickly.

## LLMAssistant
https://github.com/alnutile/llm-assistant

This is my big effort to scratch my own itch of storing articles I like, helping me with my day to day work planning (Bullet Journal like) and since it knows a lot about me it can reply to Job Posts in a sensible way!

Tech: 
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean, OpenAi PHP https://github.com/openai-php 
RapidAPI https://rapidapi.com/hub

Thoughts:
The RapidApi webscrapper is solid https://rapidapi.com/proxycrawl/api/proxycrawl-scraper I tried PHPRoach but ended up with this and was done in under and hour.  Otherwise it is a Forum like system (eg me and the LLM) to go back and forth about a topic like a reply to a job posting, or an article I want to tag. You can see more about that here https://medium.com/@alnutile/openai-function-calls-and-laravel-a2f8db9b0f97 

## Colosseum Crew Gaming Tournament site
https://colosseumcrew.com/ 

This is one of my favorites. It was me trying to be a VC type partner but putting up my dev time for later payment. 🤞

Tech:
Nova (but moved away from this), Tailwind, Inertia, API integration to https://challonge.com/ and Spark at first but moved away from this as well to Paypal

Thoughts:
Nova was a good start but the data is quite complex so I moved away from it and just built a ui.
Spark too just was not flexible enough so I moved to Paypal (which fit some of their needs better)
Very very hard site for me, the domain was all new and the data structure was harder than I imagined with matches, teams, players, stats etc. Really a good bunch of people to work with too looking forward to it being used an being an enjoyable system for the users to use.


## SimpleRecipes (personal project)
https://simplerecipes.io/

With the LLM Craze I had to try some ideas. 

Tech:
Interia, Tailwind, Forge, DigitalOcean, OpenAi PHP https://github.com/openai-php, Nova

Thoughts:
Nova worked here cause I stayed within the lines of what it can do. And did not push it to a place where I had to learn a ton with Nova. The art is all Dalle-2 with a prompt that focuses on food in watercolor style. Still never certain what you will get! Fun project.

There are others items, like one customer used Larachain as a backend and we are still integrating some chat and doc search into their frontend etc.  But this is the list of tech used, stuff built and the happy path back to a developer.