Road to Laracon US: Speaker Spotlight with Kent C. Dodds

Okay, I think we should be live. Hi, everyone. Hi, Florian. Hello. Let's see. We'll give people like a minute or two to trickle in. Um, but I am here with Kit Dods, uh, who will be speaking at Laracon US. And this is kind of the start of a um road to Laracon US speaker spotlight little minieries we'll be doing on the Laravel channel um while we wait for people to join in. Um I think Kent and I are both in the same time zone, right? I think you're mountain. Yep. Yeah. Ern, too. It's really nice when because no one else is on mountain time. Yeah, they they do call us flyover states and I resent that a little bit. We're It's good stakes because you're Utah, right? Yeah. Yeah. We got the Rocky Mountains. They're so good. If you could see this view. Oh, wait. My shades are down. But when my shades are up. No, I saw your picture you posted on Twitter and I recently like moved a little bit and now I can see like the Rocky Mountains from my window. And I thought of your view. It's not quite as good, but it's similar. Yeah, you you got to like make your your regular working space great. And um I my my my current setting doesn't look it, but I actually like lots of natural light. And so I've got this big window right here and a big window right here. And both of them have just beautiful view into the Rocky Mountains. I live maybe a a 10-minute drive to hiking trails in the mountains. So like it's really close. I I will sometimes ride my onehe up um for that. And it is uh yeah, I love living here. So people may fly over. We don't have a lot of people in our time zone relative to the east and west coast, but uh they are missing out. And honestly, um yeah, I I want more people to to at least experience it because it is great. I do too. I So my first time going to Utah was Salt Lake City for Epic Web um the conference you did. Yeah. And then I went back to Utah this year, but I went to Moab and we went to Arches National Park in Canyon Lands and it was so beautiful. Yeah. that uh one thing that is I think neat about Utah is that northern Utah and southern Utah are very different uh climatically I guess like the just even geographically the the mountains here are a lot more rocky like what you would think of with like pine trees and stuff and then you go south and now it's like a desert and u red rock and yeah Moab is very much the red rock and it's awesome. I love it there. Yeah, it was very different, but I loved it. And we did like I think three or four hikes a day for two days in a row. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of hiking. Uh did you you do any slot canyons and repelling and anything like that or was it mostly hiking on top of the rocks? Mainly hiking on top of the rocks. We did a little bit of like scrambling for one of the trails we did. Yeah, cuz we got to it and we were like we were like, "Oh, look at those people going up the rock face. What if our our hike was that?" And we started laughing. It was that we then got to it and it's like straight up and thankfully like we hike in Colorado so we had like the camel backs and we had like hiking sticks and like our shoes and stuff so we were like set but we're like going up it and I had to try not to think about it because it looked like you were just walking straight up and like you were going to fall and die. Yeah, there there are definitely like I I took my sun repelling last year in a slot canyon and there was a bit of of hiking on top of the rocks as well and yeah, there are a couple of spots where you're like you could go this way or this way and die in either. So, uh I see Ashley is here. What's going on, Ashley? Good to see you. Yes, we have Ashley said, "Awesome to see Kent in the Laravel world." Yes, we're trying to get trying to bring Ken over. Um hi Silva. Hi Sandeep and hi Amir. Hi Amir, welcome in. We can probably go ahead and jump into it then. Do so. Hi everyone. Um this is the start of uh Laracon US or Road to Lacon US speaker spotlight series that we're doing to showcase the different speakers of Laracon US. And today we're starting with Can't See Dods. So, Kent, would you like to do a kind of quick intro of who you are? Yeah. So, uh I live in uh Utah with my wife and six children. And um we I've been doing software development uh as a profession for over a decade. Let's see. I graduated in 2014. That's when I got my first full-time job. Uh before that, I did like internships and stuff. So, been doing this for a long time. And um I have been an educator for that entire time uh working on the side and then I went full-time educator in 2019. I co-founded Remix and sold that to Shopify um and then went back to full-time educating. I uh uh started out teaching people on egghhead.io and front-end masters. Then I made my own course platforms uh testing JavaScript, epicreact.dev, and epic uh web.dev and epicai.pro. And actually, I'm starting a new one. I'm gonna need a new sign. Uh, that's uh epicengineer or epic product.engineer. Um, and yeah, just trying to stay on top of all of the the way that the world is changing. We'll talk about that a little bit today. Side note, I love the sign. Oh, thank you. I love it. I I've got I actually now have three of these. I have one for Remix when I ran Remix Conf. Uh, and then I got one for Epic Web for Epic Web Comp. And when I switched over to Epic AI to talk about um MCP and stuff, I was like, well, I gotta have a new sign. Um, but now I'm doing uh you can actually go to epic product.engineer and you'll see what the logo looks like and that that's what's going to go right there um in the future. That's great. And you mentioned Epic AI and MCPS and stuff. And Ashley actually said, "Can't helped with a lot of my MCP thinking. Love how he thinks." Yeah, I appreciated that email conversation, Ashley. Uh, I've been doing some pretty wild things with MCP recently. Uh, I don't think that I'm gonna uh talk about that at Laravel uh in um in Boston later, but um I am going to be talking about that at um AI engineer uh Miami next week. Uh so if anybody's going to be there um yeah, come to my talk. I I've been doing some pretty pretty interesting things with MCP recently. And the AI engineering one is Monday and Tuesday, right? Yes. Of next week. Yeah. So, I think you did a great intro. Um, and already kind of like went over what you do, but for anyone who doesn't know you, how would you describe what you do? So, it actually is kind of changing. Um for the last over a decade I have been accelerating the acquisition of experience for uh software engineers uh through intentional practice. And so lots of what I have done is create uh a environment where people can practice the same sort of skills that they need on the job. Um, and so that involves a lot of exercises, lots of written content, uh, lots of videos, um, uh, kind of before, after, uh, like here's here's the situation you're in right now. Here's the code for that. You need to write the code to get it to this place. Um, and all the guidance involved with that. Um, and I've got a really, really awesome system for that. Um, things have changed though because we're not really uh, writing the code as much as we used to. Um, and I expect that to that trend to continue uh to the point where yeah, maybe you're still reviewing the code, but maybe not. Like we we don't I I have no guarantees that um we will even be looking at the code in a year from now. I I feel like there's actually a pretty good chance that that um that trend will continue. And even if there's not um uh the the whole idea uh of my business has always been taking an experienced engineer and just helping them acquire experience in a a domain that they're not familiar with yet. So React or testing or full stack uh node and and Typescript um and like and MCP. Um, but uh if you're an experienced engineer, you don't really need that kind of guidance anymore because the the AI agent is just going to do that implementation. And so now the thing that you really need to um to acquire is just experience in um being able to direct the agent. So I actually on my name here, you see I've got a little arrow uh a bow and arrow. the that is the metaphor that I'm kind of going with in this new direction is engineers have this quiver of arrows and that's the agents and the skill that you develop is how to point that arrow at the right thing to hit the the right target. So maybe you've got like a thousand targets in front of you. Yes, there's a bit of skill in directing the agent in the right place, but I think that in the future these arrows are going to be like mostly homing missiles. Like they'll be able to hit their target pretty well. It's mostly a matter of what target do you uh actually aim for. Um and so anyway, that's kind of what epic product engineer is going to be about. No, that's really interesting. Is it more about shaping your prompts for that or is it also about like building skills or different things that would also Yeah. Yeah. So that is um that was one direction that actually a lot of my peers are going into um and a lot of um Yeah. A lot of people are um thinking like it's a it's a very natural thing but I actually think that the agents are um they are changing so much that um learning those specific skills is not very durable like it's useful for today but will it be useful in four months I don't know like the way we develop software even four or five months ago uh is is so different from the way we do it now. So I I kind of fast forwarded in my mind. Okay, what does the world look like in five years from now? Let's assume that like being a software engineer is still a thing. Like we still have software engineers. What makes a software engineer valuable in that world? Um I think that the last skill that you need to develop as a software developer is actually product engineering. And uh product engineering is um getting clarity around a problem. Um so like how to talk to stakeholders. Um and then iterating on a tight feedback loop between the users of your software and or all the stakeholders of your software. Um and knowing the the right way to solve problems rather than saying okay we'll we'll just accept user feedback as a prompt and like just build that pipeline and anything the user wants we build. um but actually thinking about the system as a whole and how you can like eliminate a whole category of user pro feedback problems um by uh exposing the right primitives. Um, so that's kind of I and I've got a podcast that I'm running right now to um uh help bring awareness to what this category of problem of um skills actually is and also fill my own gaps in what this is and then I will soon be turning those uh skills into a set of uh intentional practice-based um things so you can actually develop the skill of being a a good product engineer. No, that sounds great. I was like whenever you were mentioning the user feedback, I was like I think I just saw something about that, but I think it was your like a clip from your little podcast episode you did with Will King. Uhhuh. Yeah, that was just today. Uh that came out today. Yeah. So, uh I also the the crowd watching this will be delighted to hear that Aaron Francis his podcast episode was released last week. Uh and he had some really excellent things to say about what his work on solo and other things that he's done in the past. He had he worked in a uh um I think it was a real estate or like a tax office. Um just a small office. He was right next to his users and so they're just like hollering at him all the time like here are the things that need to change. Um so yeah he gives some really good good insights and so uh yeah I think this is the last skill that developers need uh to develop and it's interesting because it it was valuable 50 years ago uh as well. So, it's not like let's say that the future is not what I think like agents are never going to get as good and we're always going to need to be there steering them. Uh, if you develop product engineering sense, then it's still actually really valuable uh a incredibly valuable skill for you to develop and so um yeah, so I'm pretty excited about that. No, that's great. I was trying to go find the link. So, I have pinned the YouTube link for the episode with Aaron Francis. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Go take a look and subscribe and all that good stuff. Yeah. And also the Will King one, too, because Will King is also speaking on us. Definitely one of my favorites. He has a a background in um industrial design. Um and so like it's quite a different background, but very very applicable. And um I'm actually tomorrow going to be interviewing uh Don Norman, the author of um the u the book The Design of Everyday Things, which is kind of like a staple in any product uh industry. Um it's a really really great read. So recommend that. Uh and I'm really excited to to talk with him too. So yeah, definitely follow the the podcast. We've got some really good guests coming on. Yeah. And you're obviously doing a lot of great things. um a lot of educational things and doing more with AI. But in kind of the sphere of things, would you say you're more in like the JavaScript TypeScript ecosystem or Sorry, I just I I just got a I'm getting a phone call and I need to Why is it not hanging up? Okay, there we go. Sorry about that. You're good. I heard it and I was like, it's an alarm. Is it me? Yeah, I'm I'm gonna just double check that my do not disturb is on and then hopefully that doesn't happen again. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I want to double check my do not disturb. Um, so I was asking you're doing a lot of great things. Um, a lot of educational stuff and Epic AI like you're focused on MCP and AI stuff, but for like the kind of ecosystem you're in, would you say you're more in the JavaScript TypeScript ecosystem? I guess communities like online. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm I'm very much entrenched in the uh Typescript ecosystem. Uh that's I I decided early on in my career. I'm just going to like focus on this thing and get really really good at this, really well known for this and all that. And that has played out really really nicely. Um AI of course changes it. I'm having conversations on X with people who are in completely different uh worlds from me. Like they're building Go programs and stuff. I don't know anything about Go but um uh the thing that brings us together is just the fact that we are building with AI and AI is kind of the the common denominator for all of us now. Um and so yeah, while I am very focused on or I have traditionally just been focused on the TypeScript and like node ecosystem, uh now I find myself um broadening uh quite a lot and especially with Epic product engineer, I'm getting to the point where it's like anybody who builds a software product um is kind of those are the people I want to talk to. Yeah, because I was going to ask like coming from the JavaScript TypeScript community, how did you end up speaking at a Laravel conference? But I feel like you kind of answered it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so the the actual story is I'm I'm friends with Hank uh who is at Laravel over marketing uh stuff. Uh we go uh back actually um we were invited to a dinner together uh that was kind of a a fun fun little story. It was at a conference and it was kind of a random event actually. was I think it was in Miami. Um and uh and so uh I think actually we may have even known each other before that but uh he um and I both had the same best friend growing up. Uh he was friends with him first in Boisee, Idaho, and then that friend moved to my hometown and I became best friends with him. Um but we never knew each other. Yeah, we just made that connection a couple months ago. Um, so anyway, uh, Hank, uh, reached out and just said, "Hey, like would you be at all interested in speaking at Laracon?" And I said, "Absolutely." Because, um, the Laravel community has always just from the outsider looking in, like, wow, what a friendly group of people. I would really like to associate with those people. And even though um I have been known in years past to make snarky jokes about PHP um and like that that's long past um and uh and Laravel never particularly interested me from a technology standpoint. I'm just so entrenched in the TypeScript world. Um the community is awesome and like I said the actual implementation is so uninteresting to me now um because it's it it's not about the implementation anymore. It's about like how to build an excellent product for users and I I feel like Laravel is a perfectly reasonable choice uh for building products for users. So, I'm much more interested to talk with people about how we build excellent user experiences, and I think that we're gonna get a lot of that at Laracon. Yeah. No, I love that. And I love like how AI allows us to kind of step away from like the actual technology, you know, where it's like, oh, I haven't I've never actually written anything with Laravel. It doesn't really matter because with AI, I could do that. Also, we have some funny comments. Jason said, "I kind of need to see the snarky side." Yeah. Well, okay. So, this like in my defense, this is back in like 2015. Um, and so like PHP is a little bit different than it was back then. And also, in my defense, when in 2015, I was in the industry for like a year. And so, I'm pretty much just like going along with everybody else who's making jokes about PHP. So, you're not going to see any uh any at least specific PHP snark from me. And I I try to mo like generally be a genuine and honest and uh kind person. So I hopefully I um I don't uh let any uh snarkiness come out. That wouldn't be nice. Yeah. Yeah. No, sometimes I don't know. Sometimes I'm like I hate JavaScript or JavaScript sucks, but I love JavaScript. Like I started as a JavaScript developer, so sometimes sometimes I just like making posts like that like as a joke, but like hoping people will know it's a joke. But then it like blows up and then people are like not realizing it's a joke. That's the thing on on the internet like you share it with your your friends and then it gets outside your follower circle and all the context gets lost. Yes. Always. And it's always the thing you think won't Yeah. I don't know how you got that from what I said, but okay. Exactly. Sometimes I'm like like am I the problem? Like did I write it wrong? like how how did they get this from what I wrote? Yeah, it was so funny. It's good to see you, Jason, by the way. Yes. He also said, "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't call out Kent." Let's see. So, I know you said that you like thought the Laravel community was really nice. What did you kind of know about it going into this? like did you mainly just know of the Laravel community from um like the conferences and stuff or like on social media? I know you said you knew Hank. Did you know like any Yeah. Yeah. So, uh I knew Hank. He was at Versell at the time. Um and then he's actually been to my house. Uh he ate my wife's cookies. Um but uh yeah. Um and then uh just listening to Taylor on podcasts and things. Just like very pragmatic, cool, chill person. I'm looking forward to meeting him in person. Um and then uh like the the sevs um I really like um both of them. They spoke at the conference last year and so seeing um their experience there. I love Aaron Francis just like Heart of Gold genuine person. Um so yeah it was like seeing the conference, hearing people on podcasts. Um Ashley also Larass um very a lot of respect um for for that. So yeah, it's um when you've got a genuinely great uh group of people who are actively producing good work, uh people will notice and um like being in the the JavaScript ecosystem, it's kind of a a unique ecosystem because um we are like the melting pot of of everything. Like whatever software you're building, you will run into the browser at some point and you've got to write JavaScript. Uh, and of course there are ways to get around writing it and there will be okay we're just going to use the libraries and now we don't have to write the JavaScript but like we're all in in this like ecosystem e like if you're writing software eventually you'll probably have to do something on the web and so that's where we end up. Uh and as a result um we get a lot of everything and it's it's not a cohesive um eco uh community like even many Laravel devs are also members of not only JavaScript ecosystem but also the React ecosystem and you also have Ruby devs in there and you've got like Django devs like because everybody's going to be using either React or maybe they're using Vue but you like you just get a lot of people in um from different backgrounds in these ecosystems and so it makes it really hard to um have a cohesive uh ecosystem with like um just a a good set of like here's how we behave in the world and I feel like Laravel has managed to um be like we're we're just like a chill group of people who want to build good things and encourage each other and so I I admire that a lot about Laravel. Yeah. And you mentioning the names also reminds me. So like I spoke at Epic Web last year. Josh Siri also spoke. So Deborah Laravel, I forgot to mention Josh. Sorry Josh. You were also awesome. Love you. Shout out to Josh. Also JavaScript to Laravel too. But yeah, that just reinforces we were already kind of in the JavaScript TypeScript ecosystem already at your conference last year. So it makes sense now you're coming to Laracon. So what would you say that you're bringing to the Laracon stage this July and who is the talk for? Yeah, my goal is uh as as usual is to talk to software developers um the and uh whether you be like really experienced or just getting started. I want to talk to all software engineers who are u maybe a little bit nervous about the future of our industry and getting replaced by AI. Um I cannot predict the future but um I have um I've been around for a while and I've seen um trends that I think um I can share with the uh the group. So um ultimately my my goal is to teach people uh that product engineering is a thing that they should invest intentional time and practice on. Uh, and that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Um, if I didn't think that this was a valuable thing for people to learn and like develop, then I wouldn't be pivoting to that as like my my business. Um, but um, I genuinely do feel that way. And so I'm going to talk about what product engineering is. Um, how to uh, develop better product sense like specific things that you can do. and um and hopefully that the outcome will be better user experiences for all of our users. Um and and just have more joy and optim optimism about the future rather than being a little bit worried about what uh could possibly transpire o over the next couple years. No, I think that's great and I think it'd be like a great talk for the Laravel crowd, too. What do you want people to walk away with specifically from the talk? I I'm hoping that like I give them not only hope and optimism for the future, but like very specific uh things that they can intentionally do to practice uh these skills. And that's ultimately what I'm going to be building. So by the time I'll actually probably have workshops that they can if they want to go through um to to really learn this and that um they're welcome to do that. Um and I'll probably have tons of stickers uh as well so they can literally walk away with stickers. Um but yeah, that so like hope, optimism, um and like direction. That's what I'm hoping they walk away with. Hopefully koala stickers. I love the koala ones. There will be koala stickers. That's for sure. I've got my koala sitting on the couch over here. He's just taking a taking a little break. I love that. You take them to conferences, would you? Right. I do. Yeah. I know. And if I remember, most of the time I remember I'll bring him up on stage and set him in front of my laptop. Um just it's kind of fun. Oh, no. I love that. Um what are you most looking forward to at Larcon US? I'm definitely looking forward to talking with people. Um I th the this industry it has it's always been better when you you have real relationships with real humans and I think that's becoming more valuable now. Um and so there was a little while where co just kind of destroyed all events and everything and then it just took a while for people to get back into the flow of going to events. And now with AI um dehumanizing so much of our interactions like we're just now we just ask the AI questions instead of going to a Discord or you know Stack Overflow or whatever. Um and so I personally I actually uh I have like weekly office hours and I've got my own discord and I've noticed all ch and and um like people can email me. I've just noticed all these channels. Oh yeah, I even have a podcast where you can call in and ask a question. I'll respond and that turns into a podcast episode. It's called the Call Kent podcast. Just all these different channels I've seen a reduction in the number of people reaching out. Um and maybe um it's because I'm no longer relevant or something like that's possible. Um but I think what's more likely is that we're just kind of tired of this online um interaction model. Um yeah. Um, so I'm really looking forward to just being in person. Um, and and yeah, in person can never be taken over by Claude. Um, so that's what I'm looking forward to most. No, I agree. And there's something special about being at a Laracon and just being connected with everyone because it's basically like our flagship conference. So we have people who come in internationally, too. It's just nice to get to like see everyone. I think last year it was like 1,200,400 people and just everyone exactly like online just super nice and welcoming. Like when I first went to Larcon I didn't work at Laravel and I was mainly a JavaScript dev and I was like these people are going to hate me but they were so nice. I felt like being like adopted. So I love it. Yeah. What would you say to someone who might be on the fence about attending conferences in general but specifically Laracon too? Uh I would say like there are a lot of reasons to not go to an event. Like it's very easy to to come up with reasons and some of them are very good reasons. It is not cheap necessarily especially if you have to come in from out of town and now you're playing for a hotel and all of that. Um and especially if your company is not paying for it. Um and so I can definitely relate to and understand reasons why you might not go to an event. Um, but I would say like from my own personal experience, every job I've gotten, every professional opportunity I've gotten was through a relationship that I had uh with with somebody. And all of those like specifically all the jobs, those relationships I got from events and I think they were either meetups or conferences. every one of them, every job that I ever had was from a real life relationship that I got from an event like a conference. Um, and so if you're just thinking about like job security, I think it's a really really good thing. Like just purely from a practical, pragmatic, like I care about my career standpoint. going to an event is a fantastic way to set yourself self yourself self yourself self yourself self yourself self yourself self up for the kinds of relation professional relationships that you need uh and then from just a purely human standpoint it's a really great place to get to know some of your best friends most of my best friends now I met at events like this and of course I know some people online that I only know online and we've never met in person uh but uh like the the best relationships are the ones where we've had a human connection And what's really interesting too is if you have somebody online that you like they kind of rub you the wrong way, you don't really get along, you meet them in person and maybe you still disagree on everything, but you feel so much better about that person and they will likely feel better about you. Uh it just like has a way of um greasing the wheels on um on relationships. So, if if any of that sounds interesting to you, then see if you can make a way to make it to the event. Yeah. And I'll also share the laron. US link in chat. Um you go to laron. US to see more information about um Laracon US which is in Boston this year, July 28th and 29th I believe. And you can also buy your ticket from there. Um, but I agree tone is really hard to read on the internet and so in person you're able to like realize that oh I actually have something in common with this person or like oh they just don't use exclamation marks and emojis they don't hate me. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. it like you just you hear their their posts on X the everything platform um in their voice and it just it it it makes the entire relationship better going forward even if you still don't like really jazz with them or whatever it still makes it better. Yeah, I 100% agree. And then also not with um Laracon US but Laravel we are doing little road shows like in-person um popup events and our next one is in New York City this month is April 30th. So that could also be a good way to kind of dive into going to in-person events like Kent was saying if you're kind of scared to go to a big conference first you could go to a smaller meetup and the link to register for that is here. It says Luma. you can go to it and register if you're in New York City or any surrounding areas or you're sure that you'll be able to make it April 30th. But yeah, thank you so much, Kent, for agreeing to be on stream and kind of introducing yourself and telling us what you're talking about. Do you have any um kind of closing comments you want to make as well as where people can find you online? Yeah, the the if you do one thing, what I want you to do is go to epicproduct.engineer engineer and give me your email address so that I at least as long as um AI spam doesn't just completely destroy our emails. Uh so I can um let you know when I've got uh interesting things in uh in that space. Um that's going to be a really big focus for me in the future. Uh I'm also on xx.comkentcods and I'm I'm Kent Cods on pretty much everything. So, um, yeah, kydods.com, too. Got a lot of, uh, good stuff and that links out to other things there, too. And this is the right link, correct? Epic product. That's it. Okay, that is the link Kent would like you all to go to and give him your email. And you can also find him on Twitterx.comkods. And thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much everyone. I'll be on stream again tomorrow, I think, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time for Laravel Cloud office hours with Devon.