This week at Try Hard Studios - March 6, 2026

Hello, my friends. I am back from a whirlwind trip to Europe where I went to Laracon EU, and my podcast co-host and I threw a party the first night for all the conference-goers that wanted to attend. It was an absolute blast to see people and meet people in person, many of whom I don't see terribly often, given that they live in Europe and I do not.

The Laravel team planned out the whole thing, and all Ian and I had to do was show up and mingle with the people, which was exactly the level of responsibility that I wanted to have! This is the first Laracon I've ever been to where I haven't been speaking or hosting or both, and as much as I love to say that you can just do things, sometimes it's pretty awesome to not do anything at all.

I got absolutely wrecked by jet lag. I slept until about 1:00 the first day, which admittedly was not ideal, but I tried to keep the trip super short so that I didn't put undue burden on Jennifer. Even though no matter how long I'm gone, it's still pretty tough to take care of all four kids as one person! I'm very grateful that she signed off on me going on this trip.

While I was there, I shipped what I think is the final beta of Solo to a few people and even added a few extra people to the beta group. I'm about ready to cut the release to the wider audience, which is very exciting. This is something I've been working on for a super long time. This is the version of Solo that goes from just the dev stack manager all the way up to kind of like your agentic development environment.

I'm glad to be back in the office. I've got so many videos to record, so many things to build, but the energy is still very high and the work is still very exciting, and so I'm feeling super grateful for that.

Thoughts this week

One thing I was thinking about while I was at Laracon EU is I'm really wondering what the future of technical conferences looks like. Because there were a lot of really great talks at the conference, but I'm wondering how many of the low-level technical talks will continue to be a thing. I still enjoy them very much, but even this year I felt like some of them were less relevant because I'm just not operating at that low level terribly often anymore.

I think there will be a natural kind of market pressure applied where the speakers will realize that the thing that everyone wants to talk about is less in-the-weeds code and more maybe, I don't know, product building or higher-level AI kind of stuff? I also think that conference organizers might have to do a little bit of that pushing as well.

I just wonder if from the point of view of the general public, if that's going to remain the valuable thing.

Aside from the talks, I think the most valuable thing is seeing people in person. I think the talks are a convenient excuse to get people together, but what really is the value of going to one of these conferences is meeting new people, seeing your internet friends, scheming up ideas, projects, businesses, etc., while you're there in person with all of that energy.

So as long as conferences still have at least a plausible excuse for people to gather, I think conferences will continue to be successful. But the ones that are purely technical and don't put any thought or energy into kind of the interstitial programming where people can connect with each other, I think those are going to slowly go away, if not quickly.

Things I found this week

Just a heads up that each Twitter/X screenshot has a link to the original post if you want to go follow the account.

This very much aligns with my article called "An Argument for Logging Off." I don't necessarily think that being politically informed will ruin your day. I think that can definitely be true. But I do think allowing yourself to be barraged by information that you can do nothing about and have no control over can absolutely ruin your day.

A little while back on Mostly Technical, when Ian was considering returning to Twitter, I explained my theory of politics on Twitter. I'm not abdicating my responsibility to be civically involved. I just don't want to get that information from Twitter. I want to get that information from a slower, more thoughtful news source, and I simply don't want to see that on Twitter all day, every day.

That has helped my mental health quite a bit, to not just be bombarded with every terrible thing that's happening. I still think it's good to be informed, but you get to decide through which channels you are informed, and being informed about politics via Twitter might be the most stressful channel that I could possibly think of.

"To have a child is to fall in love with a thousand strangers."

I've never heard it put this way before, but in my short, almost five years of being a parent, it does feel somewhat like this. The kids are changing so rapidly, but there is a constant through line of their personalities.

Even from when they came out of the womb, they had certain distinct personalities that I can still see to this very day, but they do change all the time. It is constantly like getting to know a new person, which is quite a delight.

I think one of the best things you can do for your own life and your own success is realize this very early on.

You think you're performing for some audience that's paying very close attention to everything you do, when in reality everyone is only paying close attention to what they do.

I have no idea why I would ever use this, but that's not the point! It looks beautiful! I can imagine it being useful. And so it goes into my bookmarks for the day when I need this exact thing, I'll be able to reach for it.

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That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know.

Talk soon,
Aaron

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