Interview: Nuno Maduro, creator of Collision and Laravel Zero

An interview with Nuno Maduro, creator of Collision and Laravel Zero.

• Nuno Maduro
• Laravel Zero
• Collision
• Leiria
• Laravel Code Analyze aka Larastan
• AlumnForce
• Pecan Pie
• Laracon EU
• PeersConf

Transcription sponsored by Larajobs
Editing sponsored by Tighten

Matt Stauffer: Welcome back to the Laravel Podcast, season three. Today I am interviewing Nuno Maduro. So hard to say. Creator of Laravel Collision, Laravel Zero, and lots of other open source goodness. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to season three of the Laravel Podcast. I have another wonderful member of the Laravel community with me. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I went out on Twitter and said, "Hey, I want to make sure that I've got people from various communities represented, and I already have a long list of people who I want to interview." Nuno was actually already on that list originally, but somebody pointed out, "Well, he actually represents at least one of the communities that you're interested ..." Because what I said is, "I've gotten a lot of people from America, and there's a lot of certain areas where I've got a ton of people from. I want to make sure that the other geographic communities around the world are also represented."

This guy came up, so I said, "You know what? Let's take him. He's already on the list. Let's put him up at the top of the list and have an interview." First thing I want to do is, first of all, you're gonna say who you are, what you're about. You're gonna pronounce your name way better than I've been pronouncing your name, and the first question that I want you to also answer is, when you meet somebody in the grocery store, how do you explain to them what it is that you do?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. My name is Nuno Maduro. If I actually say to someone that is not from computer science, I would say that I work with computers, okay?

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: But basically I'm a web developer. I work with Laravel daily, so yeah. That's it.

Matt Stauffer: Where are you from originally, and where do you live now?

Nuno Maduro: That is a great question, because originally I am from Portugal. That is a small country in Europe. Right now, I'm living in Paris, France. Basically I spent my whole childhood in Portugal, my study over there, and now I'm living in Paris with my girlfriend, and yeah. That's it.

Matt Stauffer: Is Paris easy to live in?

Nuno Maduro: Paris is a completely different place from Portugal. People in Portugal have some kind of a slower life. You know what I mean?

Matt Stauffer: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Nuno Maduro: In Paris, people have like speed every single day. The difference is actually amazing. In Paris, you also have lots of transports, so to go to work, you actually spend one hour in transports going to work, and after work, you spend another hour getting home. The difference is quite over there on transports. Of course, the salary aspect is also quite different. In Portugal, you don't have the same amount of money after a month, and yes. I think those are the main differences. I don't have family in Paris, so that is also not that great, I think.

Matt Stauffer: Did you live in a smaller city? Obviously smaller than Paris, but was it a smaller city when you were in Portugal?

Nuno Maduro: Yes. Portugal, basically it has two bigger cities, Lisbon and Porto. In Portugal, I was living in Leiria. That is a smaller city, and yeah. I was there. I spent my whole childhood in Leiria. That is a small town in Portugal. Quite different comparing to Paris. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. I just looked it up, and Portugal has a population of 10 million people.

Nuno Maduro: Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: Paris has a population of 2.5 million people.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: There's definitely a little bit of a shift there. I've lived in both big and small towns in the United States, and even just between them, I notice a lot of the shifts that you're talking about. The bigger the city, the faster people move, and the more time you spend in transportation a lot of times as well.

Nuno Maduro: Exactly. The most difficult part that I had when I moved from Portugal to France was the fact that I didn't speak French at all.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: That was actually my next question. How fluent are you ... How well do you speak French now?

Nuno Maduro: Now I speak French great. I think I speak better French than English right now.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. All right.

Nuno Maduro: But at the beginning, I was speaking English all the time, and in Paris, there is not that many people that speak English. It was difficult, but after three, six months, everything went fine, because I eventually got forced to learn French.

Matt Stauffer: Nice.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: I want to hear these stories more, but we should start off by ... You know, I always want to make sure that before we get in your story, people know, why is it that I'm talking to you? Of course you're a very nice guy-

Nuno Maduro: Thanks.

Matt Stauffer: ... so that's one thing, but there's other reasons. Can you tell me a real quick kind of intro to ... Now, I definitely know that Laravel Zero and Collision are two of the biggest ones that you're known for, but are there any others, and could you give me just a really quick pitch for each of those?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Sure. Basically, I spend all my time ... After work, I consider myself an open source package creator, and obviously the most noted packages I have created is Laravel Zero and Collision. Laravel Zero is kind of a micro-framework for building console applications. You can imagine Laravel for building web applications, and you can imagine Lumen for building APIs, for example, and Laravel Zero is for building just console applications. It's a very customized version of Laravel that have that specific purpose of building console apps.

Collision was a package that initially I've built just for Laravel Zero, but due to the fact that Collision basically shows you beautiful errors when you are interacting with your app on the comment line, Taylor actually liked that package, so it got included on Laravel itself, on the Framework itself.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: I also have small other packages on my GitHub account. Most of them are related to the console environment. Right now I'm working with a package called Laravel Code Analyze, though I'll probably change the name, but whole point of it is actually analyze your code and searching for bugs, or mistakes on your code. People at the beginning said it is impossible to do that, do all the magic on that systems, on Laravel, but I think I'm gonna make it right and make it work with Laravel. Let's see.

Matt Stauffer: Nice. I think I remember seeing, it's based on a static analysis package for PHP, right?

Nuno Maduro: Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: You're not inventing it all from scratch, so you're able to just customize that, just for Laravel.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Basically, I am writing extensions to make it, that package, make it work with Laravel. Make it understand Laravel behind the scenes.

Matt Stauffer: Very cool. I know that you're also involved in the Laravel Portugal Podcast. Are you a host, or what's your actual role there?

Nuno Maduro: I am the host of Laravel Portugal, yes. Basically-

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Sorry, not podcast, meetup.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. It is a live show, a podcast, whatever.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: But basically, every Friday I get into that podcast with my friends, and we talk about Laravel PHP, and sometimes we bring actually long-time members of the Laravel community. You already have been there, and Taylor as well. It's great. I have a great time over there.

Matt Stauffer: That's cool. What's your day job? It's AlumnForce? Is that still where you work?

Nuno Maduro: Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: What kind of stuff are you doing there?

Nuno Maduro: AlumnForce is a company that builds social networks for many of our cities. You can see it like a small Facebook for each university, so a private social network. I'm working there as a backend web developer, mainly with PHP, Laravel, and also Microservices. Yeah. I think that's it. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Cool. All right. We have a basic understanding of what it is you do day to day, some of the things that you do that you're known for, so let's get into the story of who you are, where you come from. You were born and raised in Portugal. I think you said it was called Leiria.

Nuno Maduro: Leiria. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: I've already acknowledged to everybody that I'm terrible at pronouncing everything, so I'll already own that. Tell me a little bit about growing up. What was your first interaction with computers? What was your first time, your first actual time using a computer, and maybe the first time that you really started realizing that that was something that was special for you?

Nuno Maduro: Okay. I must warn you, I don't have the most beautiful story, like most of your guests, okay?

Matt Stauffer: Everybody's story is interesting.

Nuno Maduro: Not mine. Let's see. Basically, I got my first computer when I was five.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, yeah?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Wow.

Nuno Maduro: When I was five, I got my first computer, but I can say to you that I didn't use it for programming or for coding. It was just for gaming, actually.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: All my childhood-

Matt Stauffer: What kind of games were you playing at five and six years old?

Nuno Maduro: Oh, those memories, man. I was playing like ... I can't remember early games, but I remember that when I was like 10 or 12, I was playing Age of Empires, FIFA a lot. You know FIFA, right?

Matt Stauffer: That's soccer.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: I've never played it, but I at least know the acronym.

Nuno Maduro: Exactly. Age of Empires. I can't remember, man, but I was mainly playing games on that computer. It was the same computer for 10 years, I think. It was great0t81es.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, nice. That's awesome.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: I just realized I call it "soccer." I'm sorry. Football.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. In Europe we call it football.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Okay. You played games. Was it a desktop, I assume?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. A desktop. Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Age of Empires, I've never played, but I'm trying to translate time periods. You played a lot of video games. Did you have computer education in school at all?

Nuno Maduro: No. Not at all. Only on university.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. I assume you learned how to type at least playing the games and using the computer, but when's your first actual experience doing programming? Even anything as simple as building HTML or CSS?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I can tell you that, when I was 18, I wasn't actually sure about the study, what I wanted, but because I liked games, I pursued computer science.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, okay.

Nuno Maduro: I knew it was stupid, but at the time that was my thought.

Matt Stauffer: You figured, "Hey, I like games, so why not make them?"

Nuno Maduro: No. I didn't know what to do, actually.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, really?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I have to be honest, man.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: At the time, I went to computer science, and there, when I was 18-19, I started to work with HTML, PHP, and everything. But I must tell you that I wasn't the traditional geek or super talented developer. I liked computers, but I think I preferred football or be with friends.

Matt Stauffer: Is that still true today?

Nuno Maduro: Not today. No.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. When did that shift happen?

Nuno Maduro: That is a great question. While I was on university, I actually started my first job. I was doing my master at night, and have a full-time job on the day, you know?

Matt Stauffer: Wow.

Nuno Maduro: At that time, again, I was making money, and that is great, but I wasn't actually passionate for programming and for coding, and I remember that I was working on the local company, and I was working with Code Igniter, and PHP.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, okay.

Nuno Maduro: A friend of mine, because we went to start a new project, and I was saying, "Okay, another app with Code Igniter." And the friend of mine told me, "Why just don't you use Laravel?" I was like, "What is Laravel? Is it a new programming language?"

Matt Stauffer: Right.

Nuno Maduro: "Is it framework? I don't have any idea." I went home, I Google it, and I eventually got redirected to Laracasts. The big turnover was with Laracasts, because I wasn't passionate, like I told you, but with Laracasts I was actually consuming four, five hours a day.

Matt Stauffer: Wow.

Nuno Maduro: I was 24, 25, so I was consuming Laracasts like four, five hours a day, like a drug. Crazy.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: I was still in Portugal at that time, and yeah. I think I can say that Laracasts was my shift. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Huh. That's really interesting. I'm glad. Jeffrey's gonna hear that, and he's gonna love that. Do you think you could say something about it that is what made the shift happen? Was it the style of teaching, or was it being able to ... Is there something about Laravel, or something? Could you name what aspect of it that was hooking you so much?

Nuno Maduro: I think it was the fact that everything was difficult before, and when I started with Laracasts, I understood that words like "solid design principles," everything that was complicated turns out to be easy with Laracasts.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Uh-huh (affirmative).

Nuno Maduro: The knowledge that I was consuming in such a short period of time, it was crazy, honestly. I think with Laracasts, I found my way of learning. That was super important. It was a big turnover, honestly.

Matt Stauffer: That makes sense.

Nuno Maduro: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Matt Stauffer: This episode has been brought to you by Laracasts. Just kidding. This is not a sponsored episode. I promise. That's really cool to hear, that you were able to find your way of learning outside of the context of Laravel, or Jeffrey, or anything else like that. Just you found a way that makes sense for you to learn. I think that you mentioned it wasn't even necessarily ... You didn't say, "Oh, this aspect of Laravel was what got me most excited." What is it that motivates you? Is it code that motivates you? Is it products that motivates you? In 20 years, do you want to be writing code? In 20 years, do you want to be running a company? Do you want to be making products? What motivates you most about working in tech?

Nuno Maduro: Right now, I really like the aspect of learning. Becoming better every single day, actually, I really like that aspect. To be really honest with you, I also like the fact that people are using my stuff.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: That's also the main reason why I built Laravel Zero, because it's not a package. It's a framework, so people will build stuff on top of it. I really like the feeling of people using my tools, my packages. I like the feeling of people heard about me on public speaking, for example, and that I think is the real motivation why I work hard every single day.

Matt Stauffer: What is your dream job?

Nuno Maduro: I don't have an answer for that. I think right now, I'm really happy about my current job and my current situation, because right now I'm doing remote work. I'm still in Paris, but doing remote work, and I'm really about my current situation. I work eight hours a day. At night, I have time for my own things, my packages, to read. I also go a lot doing Crossfit. Do you know Crossfit?

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I'm doing a lot of Crossfit at night as well. I think I'm really happy about my current state.

Matt Stauffer: Awesome.

Nuno Maduro: Of course I would like to be rich, but yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Sure. Sure. But the day to day experience of working the type of job you have right now is something that you really enjoy?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah, exactly.

Matt Stauffer: That's very cool. All right. Let's go back to early days. You were five years old. You had a computer. You were playing video games. Your first exposure programming was primarily in university. Did you have any classes at all? Did you even learn typing in school, or was there literally no tech of any sort in school prior to university?

Nuno Maduro: Prior to university, I didn't have any interaction with computers at school.

Matt Stauffer: Wow. Okay.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah, because I actually, on college, I was doing the mathematic course. You know what I mean?

Matt Stauffer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nuno Maduro: We didn't have actually access to computers at my course. So the only computer I'd interact with was my home computer, and it was for gaming mainly.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. What age is ... Because I don't always know how every different country handles it. At what age were you in college, and what age did you enter in university?

Nuno Maduro: 18.

Matt Stauffer: 18 for college?

Nuno Maduro: No, no, no, no. Basically, to college, I think it is 13, I think.

Matt Stauffer: Okay.

Nuno Maduro: And when you are 18, 19, you go to university.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. I don't know if you're familiar with the American concept of high school, but if you are, is that similar to what college is for you, or no?

Nuno Maduro: I think so. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Got it. Makes sense. All right. When you were in college, you did specialize a little bit. You said you specialized, so you kind of picked a subject to focus on in college, or no?

Nuno Maduro: I think, yeah. College for me, it's like high school for you, so at that time I was, yeah. It was mathematics, science, but I didn't like it at all, as well.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Like I told you, I wasn't the traditional geek, or something like that. I just preferred to be with friends, so I didn't specialize in something, something concrete.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Outside of computers, outside of ... Wait, do you still play video games?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah, a little bit.

Matt Stauffer: What are you into most right now?

Nuno Maduro: League of Legends. Do you know?

Matt Stauffer: I know it's about superheroes, right?

Nuno Maduro: Exactly. It's really, really cool. I play a lot of League of Legends. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: I was into video games a lot until I moved away for ... Actually, I played some video games in college, or in university for me, but after that, I haven't played anything at all, so I hear about them through friends. I know I'm older than you. I don't know by how much, but when I was in college, we were playing Half Life 2-

Nuno Maduro: Oh. Those times.

Matt Stauffer: ... to give context to that.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I also have played Half Life 2.

Matt Stauffer: Nice.

Nuno Maduro: I probably finished the game more than once. It was great.

Matt Stauffer: Nice. Yeah. It's worth it.

Nuno Maduro: I was actually, when I was in high school, I actually made a lot of sports, so if you type "Nuno Maduro football," you will find me, and I was actually doing a lot of sports at that time. I really like football.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. That was actually my next question, where I'm going, is, outside of Crossfit, outside of computer programming, and outside of video games, what's the thing that you do that gives you the most joy in your life? What do you enjoy the most?

Nuno Maduro: Oh, I don't want to be ... I think I really like to be with my girlfriend as well. The weekend, for example, I am always with my girlfriend. Like, the complete weekends.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Saturday and Sunday, I spend all the day with her. I go into the cinema, shopping, a lot of shopping. Yeah. Being with my girlfriend is probably one of the things that I really like to do.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. What do you think that is the most underappreciated or under-known aspect of writing a good application in Laravel? What do you look at the Laravel community and say, "If only everybody else knew this, their lives would be so much better"?

Nuno Maduro: I think the community aspect is probably one of the biggest points of Laravel. I believe that people underestimate the fact that Laravel have a great, great community. We actually helps a lot of each other. I can tell you, for example, Laravel Portugal Slack, we talk every single day about ... We ask for opinions for ... We have questions. On Laravel Portugal, for example, we talk about a lot of work. With the international community, for example, on Twitter, I use it a lot as well. I learn a lot with the Laravel community, and I think that is one of the strong points of Laravel, I believe.

Matt Stauffer: All right. One of the things that I always do when I'm gonna interview somebody on the podcast, I ask people in the Titan Slack, "What are some questions you want me to ask?" And it's always funny, because some of the people know the person I'm gonna be talking to, and so they say, "Oh, I've always been interested in this thing." Some of the people don't, and so they just throw out random stuff. "If you had to choose, would you prefer cake or pie?"

Nuno Maduro: Pie.

Matt Stauffer: Pie? All right. Taking it further down the road, which pie?

Nuno Maduro: Raspberry pie? I don't know.

Matt Stauffer: What, you're not sure? All right, so raspberry pie.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Is that a programmer joke? Raspberry Pi?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I think, yeah, it's a programmer joke.

Matt Stauffer: Really, if you had every different pie that has ever existed in the history of the planet, right sitting in front of you, which one would you pick? He's totally Googling pies right now to find a picture of all the different options.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah, honestly. I really like chocolate. I like chocolate.

Matt Stauffer: Okay, so straight chocolate pie?

Nuno Maduro: I would probably choose ... Yeah. Yeah. I would probably choose like a black chocolate pie.

Matt Stauffer: Wait, black chocolate?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: The only time I've ever heard black and chocolate in the same term is when they're talking about, like, German. Is that the type you're talking about?

Nuno Maduro: I don't know. Actually, I don't know if it is in the States, I believe so, but there is different types of chocolate, so you have like the most-

Matt Stauffer: Oh. Oh, oh. You mean like a less milk, more dark?

Nuno Maduro: Exactly. Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. We call it "dark chocolate." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Okay. Dark chocolate.

Matt Stauffer: Got it. Okay. All right. A dark chocolate pie. Okay. Have you ever had pecan pie? I think it's probably a very American thing.

Nuno Maduro: Never heard about it.

Matt Stauffer: Do you know what a pecan is?

Nuno Maduro: Nope.

Matt Stauffer: It's a nut. P-E-C-A-N. Yeah. Go Google that. I'm from a place in America where they don't have those, and I moved for school to a place, the south, where they do have them, and I live very close to where they all are. They make this pie that is essentially just like sugar and some kind of gelatin, and then pecans, and then the crust. That's basically the whole thing. I don't even know if it's suspended in corn syrup or something like that. You're just basically eating, like, pecan-flavored sugar mush, and it is one of the greatest things I've ever had in my entire life. If you ever get a chance to try that, you should.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I'm gonna save it, man, to show it to my girlfriend, maybe.

Matt Stauffer: Very nice. All right. More questions for you. Next question for you is, "What advice do you wish you had gotten when you first got started programming, and what advice would you share with new developers today?" Kind of the same question.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I think the most important thing to new developers is definitely, "Find your way of learning." Because it was the turnover for me, and I think if I knew that earlier, in my early days, I will be even better right now. Another thing that I consider also super important is the fact that you should open your ... Expose yourself to criticism. I can give you an example of open source, for example. Due to the fact that you do open source, you are actually exposing implementations, exposing your way of coding, and you are actually receiving criticism for free, you know?

Matt Stauffer: Right.

Nuno Maduro: You are understanding what are your weakest points for free, and you can evolve really quickly doing open source. I think, yeah, finding your way of learning, and also expose yourself to criticism, is two key points of being a better developer.

Matt Stauffer: That's good stuff. I like that. What prompted you to move to Paris?

Nuno Maduro: Great question. At the time ... Actually, my girlfriend, she's French, okay?

Matt Stauffer: Okay. Well, that can do it.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. She was in Portugal with me, but she always liked France, and when I was in Portugal, I had the feeling that I had to move to a bigger town, because I was a software developer, and after my first job, I had the need, actually, of moving to a big town. Since my girlfriend really liked Paris, and I had that need, we choosed Paris because of this reason.

Matt Stauffer: Got it. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. That was the big-

Matt Stauffer: You wanted to be somewhere big, and she wanted to be back in France, and it was kind of a good spot for both.

Nuno Maduro: Exactly. That, it's, exactly.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: I'm right in Paris for two years, three years now.

Matt Stauffer: Okay. It's funny, because I know you live in Paris, and a lot of my questions are there, but I also am sort of interviewing you as a representative of Laraval Portugal, so I also got some questions there. Let's say ... At least for Americans. I don't think this is probably true for most Europeans. For a lot of Americans, we know about Portugal either because of soccer or football, or honestly because there's a lot of overlap between American and Brazilian cultures. There's a lot of Brazilians in the US, and our economies and cultures are often very similar. We learn about Brazilian Portuguese. Obviously, that's just a language. It's not even necessarily exactly the same language.

Let's assume that people who are listening don't know much about Portugal, about the people, the culture, the food, the country. If someone were to visit Portugal, where should they go? What should they see? What should they experience? What would you want them to know? Prepare someone to go ... First of all, prepare them, and second of all, sell them. Why should someone come to Portugal? Tell me about it.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I have to say that I really love Portugal. Every time I'm on vacations, I go to Portugal.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Most of because of my family, of course, but basically because I really like the country itself. Starting things off by the food, the food is just crazy. Everything is like homemade, you know what I mean?

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: It's really, really good. Each small town in Portugal have his own way of doing food. You can basically pick your car and eat different stuff every single town. It is really great.

Matt Stauffer: Okay.

Nuno Maduro: Something that I really like as well is the beach. Portugal is near the ocean, and you have beach all the time.

Matt Stauffer: Very nice.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Very, very nice. The weather is also magical. Yeah. In summer, for example, I'm always on the south of Portugal. Everything is not expensive, and I really enjoy those moments, to be honest.

Matt Stauffer: Huh.

Nuno Maduro: Also, the people. The people have a ... Like I told you at the beginning, people have a slower life. I don't know if this represents what I am exactly trying to say, but people are not that depressed, for example, comparing to Paris. You know what I mean?

Matt Stauffer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nuno Maduro: Not that stressed. That is also really good, because people are all the time smiling, for example. I don't have that in Paris. You know what I mean?

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Do you get the sense that people in Europe understand that Portugal's a nice vacation destination?

Nuno Maduro: Yes. More and more, to be honest.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: People are actually trying to go to Portugal when vacations comes up. Just to go to the price of going to States, come from States to Portugal, I remember that I checked the prices to go to Laracon West, and the price of the tickets just for the plane itself, it was 2,000 Euros.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: It was super expensive, man. It was like, "I just can't afford this."

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: The conference ticket was the last ... It was the cheapest.

Matt Stauffer: Yup. Yeah.

Nuno Maduro: Being there, and the price of the tickets was the most expensive.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. I mean, for Americans, I know a lot of what we do is, you save up for a long time, and then you pay for that expensive ticket, and then you stay in Europe as long as you can, and just go see everything around there. Because once you pay to get over the ocean, you don't want to have to do that too often.

Nuno Maduro: When was your last time on Laracon EU?

Matt Stauffer: I wanted to go this year, and it overlaps with my son's birthday. I wanted to go last year, and I think it also overlapped with my son's birthday. Maybe the year ... This is 2018, so maybe 2016? But I'm not actually 100% sure. That's a really good question. It's been a while.

Nuno Maduro: Anyway, did you enjoy it?

Matt Stauffer: Oh, Laracon? Oh, it was amazing. Amsterdam is beautiful. Shawn knows how to throw ... Shawn and company, they know how to throw a really incredible conference, and I got to meet so many people that I'd known just over Twitter. Laracon EU was actually the first Laracon I ever spoke at, so my first conference I ever spoke at was PeersConf in the US, and then soon after that, Shawn gave me a spot being the opening talk at Laracon EU, even though I had never spoken at a Laracon before.

Nuno Maduro: Oh, you are lucky.

Matt Stauffer: I have a lot of love for Laracon EU, and every year that I miss it is a sad year for me.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Amsterdam is beautiful.

Matt Stauffer: Oh my gosh. Amsterdam is amazing.

Nuno Maduro: Anyway, year. Laracon EU is moving next year.

Matt Stauffer: Is it?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: That makes me kind of sad, because I love Amsterdam, but I'm sure it's a good thing so that I can kind of try a new place. Have they said where yet?

Nuno Maduro: Yes. It's a nice opportunity to visit another places in Europe. No. I think Shawn have made a poll on Twitter or something like that.

Matt Stauffer: Oh, okay.

Nuno Maduro: He is eventually deciding another place to go.

Matt Stauffer: Very, very cool. Yeah. I have very little interaction on Twitter these days. I'm hoping that will change soon enough.

All right. Since we're getting long on time, I want to see, are there any things that you wanted to have the opportunity to talk to people about, to share about, that you wanted to make sure we covered today?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Basically, I'm working on the new package that I think I told in the beginning of the episode, called Larvel Code Analyze. That package, we're probably gonna have another name, but the whole point of it is actually to catch bugs and mistakes on your code, and I think it will be a really kicker for Larvel, because you can integrate that on your continuous integration, for example. It returns, like the exit code will be green or red if you have mistakes or not. I think the package will be really, really great, and I can't wait to realize it.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. I'm very excited. I saw you Tweeting about it a little bit, and I got excited. I mean, anything that allows us to have less problems in our code is great, but this almost seems like it comes for free.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Because it's not even like writing test. It's just static analysis, and so-

Nuno Maduro: Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: I'm very, very excited to see what you do with that, and I'll make sure to put show links.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. It goes even deeper than PHPStorm, for example. People used to compare that with PHPStorm, because PHPStorm itself have some static analysis, but it is not even compared. It will show up every single mistake on your code. It's just great.

Matt Stauffer: Very cool. I'm very, very excited to see it. If people ... Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Nuno Maduro: I have a suggestion, actually. I would like to ask you when you will be the guy on this side? Because I think-

Matt Stauffer: Oh, when am I gonna get interviewed?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah, because I think since the beginning of this season, or actually all seasons, you never got to have the opportunity of being interviewed, so we don't know as much of your backstory. I think it's a good suggestion, no?

Matt Stauffer: Well, thank you. A few people have asked that. I think the biggest question is, I just gotta figure out who's willing to do it. I mean, I've said for a long time that I think that Adam is one of my favorite podcasters of all time. I might have to just kind of see if I can kind of twist his arm into doing that for me one day. Thank you for bringing it up. I will be in the hot seat one day. That's a good reminder.

Is there anything else you want to talk about today, or do you feel like we covered most of what's on your brain right now?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. I think we covered the most.

Matt Stauffer: This was a ton of fun. I really appreciate you spending some time to talk to me about your packages, and also about your story a little bit. You said you didn't have an interesting story, but I think that if everybody tells the same story, it would get boring, honestly. I mean, if I just interviewed 20 people and every single one of them said, "I got a computer at 13 that I, blah blah ..." Even Neil's story, which was one of the most interesting ones I've ever heard, if everybody said that same story, it would be boring. I love it. I love hearing different ways about people, and I mean, I don't know a lot of people who are programming today who had a computer at five. I think that's pretty fascinating.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. For gaming, anyway.

Matt Stauffer: Thanks for sharing all that stuff. Yeah. Hey, it's a computer still.

Nuno Maduro: Yeah.

Matt Stauffer: Thank you for sharing all this. If people want to follow you, what's the best way to follow you?

Nuno Maduro: On Twitter.

Matt Stauffer: All right, and what's your Twitter handle? Just say it out loud.

Nuno Maduro: Let me-

Matt Stauffer: Gotta remember your own Twitter handle?

Nuno Maduro: Yeah. Just type "Nuno Maduro" on search on Twitter.

Matt Stauffer: It's @ENunoMaduro, right?

Nuno Maduro: Exactly.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah. Exactly. I like the way you say it a lot better, just because it kind of rolls off the tongue, like "Nuno Maduro."

Nuno Maduro: Nuno Maduro.

Matt Stauffer: All right, well Nuno, thank you so much for your time. It was a total pleasure talking to you.

Nuno Maduro: Thanks for having me.