Why Most Developers Overcomplicate Everything w/ Aaron Francis

This week, Robbie and Chuck talk with Aaron Francis about developer education, Laravel vs. Rails, and the evolution of full-stack development. They explore the trade-offs of opinionated frameworks, the practicality of PHP, and why simplicity often wins. Plus, Aaron shares his hot takes on modern web dev trends, and the joys of working from a home-office-that’s-not-home. In this episode: (00:00) - Intro (01:19) - Meet Aaron Francis (03:28) - Whiskey intro and rating: Green River Distilling Co. Full Proof Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (14:32) - The home office that’s not at home (17:44) - Tailwind vs Vanilla CSS (18:52) - Git Rebase vs Git Merge (21:44) - Let vs Const (25:40) - Rails vs Laravel (33:23) - Challenges of full stack frameworks (48:18) - Aaron’s staycation birthday present (50:38) - Two sets of twins (56:56) - Family vehicles (59:59) - What Aaron would do if not in tech (01:01:20) - Plugs Links Mostly Technical: https://mostlytechnical.com/ Laravel: https://laravel.com/ SQLite: https://www.sqlite.org/ Postgres: https://www.postgresql.org/ Rails: https://rubyonrails.org/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com Try Hard Studios: https://tryhardstudios.com/ Ryan Reynolds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Reynolds Green River Distilling: https://greenriverwhiskey.com/ Norlan: https://norlanglass.com Tailwind CSS: https://tailwindcss.com/ Taylor Otwell: https://x.com/taylorotwell DHH: https://x.com/dhh/ Tuple: https://tuple.app/ Ben Orenstein: https://x.com/r00k The Car Mom: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCarMom Connect with Aaron Website: https://aaronfrancis.com X / Twitter: https://x.com/aarondfrancis Mastering Postgres: https://masteringpostgres.com/ High Performance SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com/ Connect with Chuck and Robbie Robbie Wagner: https://x.com/RobbieTheWagner Chuck Carpenter: https://x.com/CharlesWthe3rd Subscribe and stay in touch Website: https://whiskey.fm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-web-and-whatnot/id1552776603 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/19jiuHAqzeKnkleQUpZxDf Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1552776603 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhiskeyWebAndWhatnot Whiskey Web and Whatnot MerchEnjoying the podcast and want us to make more? Help support us by picking up some of our fresh merch at https://whiskey.fund. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.