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- Laravel 11.28/29, Anthropic "Computer Use", How to figure out what customers want & more!
Laravel 11.28/29, Anthropic "Computer Use", How to figure out what customers want & more!
Ahmad
October 27, 2024
Wow, it’s been an action-packed two weeks, and we’ve got plenty to share!
Laravel keeps pushing the boundaries with not one, but two major version releases, 11.28 and 11.29, packed with incredible new features! 🚀
But that's not all the good news! The SaaSykit community is thriving and we are slowly but surely heading towards 300 happy customers! 🎉
And guess what? The Makers Make Newsletter is growing stronger every day, welcoming more developers eager to learn and build!
We are now 100 subscribers in the Makers Make Newsletter! 😍
Laravel 11.28/29 are released 🚀
Here are the highlights of new features added:
Composer run dev command: All new Laravel apps now come with a
composer run devcommand for easier setup. This single command starts the artisan dev server, a queue worker, the Vite dev server, and tails your logs.Tailwind default config: New applications include a
tailwind.config.jsby default, allowing immediate use of Tailwind without extra setup.CollectedBy attribute: A new attribute to define a custom Collection class for a model, simplifying the process by eliminating the need to override the
newCollection()method.
namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Attributes\CollectedBy;
use App\Collections\PostCollection;
#[CollectedBy(PostCollection::class)]
class Post extends Model
{
// Your model code here
}
Interactive env:encrypt and env:decrypt commands: Interactive support added for easier encryption/decryption of environment files.
php artisan env:encrypt
php artisan env:decryptNumber facade helpers: New
defaultLocale()anddefaultCurrency()methods to retrieve default locale and currency values.
// Get the default locale
$locale = Number::defaultLocale(); // e.g., 'en_US'
// Get the default currency
$currency = Number::defaultCurrency(); // e.g., 'USD'
waitUntilmethod added toProcess:thewaitUntil()method waits for the long-running process to reach a specific state by continuously checking the output. It keeps waiting until the given anonymous function returns true, allowing developers to respond dynamically to the process's output.
New at SaaSykit
In software development, writing code is just the beginning. One thing that truly sets exceptional projects apart is the quality of their documentation.
Clear, well-organized documentation not only enhances collaboration among developers/project stakeholders, but also provides valuable guidance for end users, making your product more accessible and easier to use.
For Laravel projects, whether you're building a simple app, an API, or a user-facing product, great documentation is essential, and luckily, there are plenty of tools that can help you with that…
From the Community
Nuno Maduro just released a new PHP package called Pan. Pan is a lightweight and privacy-focused PHP product analytics library. It’s designed as a very simple package that you can install via composer require and start tracking your pages or components with a simple data-pan attribute.
Currently, Pan tracks only the following events: impressions, hovers, and clicks. It does not collect any personal information, such as IP addresses, user agents, or any data that could be used to identify a user.…
The Laravel Env Keys Checker package checks if all keys are available across all environment (.env) files. This is useful if you have multiple .env files and want to ensure that all .envs have all the values expected.
For example, let's say you're working on a feature that adds a configuration value to your local .env file. Typically, you would need that value set in a new installation, thus, would add it to the .env.example file:
As one of the most widely used scripting languages for web development, PHP is known for its flexibility and ease of use. However, with complex applications and increasing traffic, PHP performance can sometimes take a hit.
Monitoring PHP performance and diagnosing bottlenecks is essential to ensure that your web applications are running smoothly and efficiently. In this blog post, we will explore several strategies for monitoring PHP performance, identifying bottlenecks, and optimizing your code.
For many developers, PHP conjures memories of tangled codebases, inconsistent syntax, and a language that seemed stuck in the past. If you’ve spent the last decade distancing yourself from PHP, you’re not alone. But as the JavaScript ecosystem becomes increasingly complex, it’s worth reconsidering PHP as a viable and even superior alternative for certain projects. This post aims to shed light on how PHP has evolved and why it might just be the refreshing change you’re looking for.
Laravel 11 gives you a handy way to enforce returning JSON on API requests for exceptions without any extra middleware. I think it's really nice if you are using a web browser to test API routes and always get JSON even without setting the Accept header to application/json or using the above middleware…
In the past, when building Livewire components for our Laravel applications, we needed to keep our backend and frontend code split up into separate files. This can sometimes get a little confusing, especially with larger projects. But with Volt, we can now build single-file Livewire components where the backend and frontend code coexist in the same file.
In this article, we'll look at what Volt is and how Volt components differ from traditional Livewire components. We'll then learn how to write tests for your Laravel Volt components.
By the end of the article, you should understand what Volt is and feel confident using it in your Laravel projects.
Whilst recently working on porting a legacy client application to Laravel we needed to implement a pipeline of jobs to generate a temporary file, run several processes on the file and then remove the file afterwards. As per the Laravel docs, this is possible via Job Chaining which:
Job chaining allows you to specify a list of queued jobs that should be run in sequence after the primary job has executed successfully…
In the last article, I compared two ORMs: Eloquent mostly related to Laravel, and Doctrine associated with Symfony. I presented a comparison on why reading data from the database would be much more performant using read models instead of slow ORM models with slow hydration. Read models, of course, are the best way to read data from the database, but I didn’t properly present the comparison of ORMs, which was pointed out by one user on Reddit.
All about SaaS
A few weeks ago, Paul Graham published Founder Mode, about a management style practiced by Brian Chesky at Airbnb that was at least partially inspired by Steve Jobs.
As Paul states in Founder Mode, "It seems to be working. Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley."
So, what is founder mode? The article rang true to me, but was purposefully unspecific.
This is my attempt at proposing something more truthful by being more specific: GOD mode…
At a recent SaaStr Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin lays out how SaaS companies are now faced with the challenge of delivering more comprehensive, automated, and efficient solutions than ever before. The bar has gone up, and it’s not just in AI. With SaaS spending accelerating overall, why have some SaaS unicorns slowed?
Before launching the StartupGTM newsletter last year, I explored several tools, including Substack, Beehiiv, and ConvertKit.
I subscribed to ConvertKit’s trial version, and I was hit with one surprise after another.
Their email sequences, articles, and videos taught me more about newsletters than any other content out there.
As I dug deeper into their story, I discovered that they bootstrapped their way to an ARR of $35 million.
They’ve pulled off some brilliant growth hacks over time and persevered through tough challenges.
Let’s dive into their growth story and the secret sauce behind their success...
A common piece of startup advice from the last 10-15 years is: "Make something people want." It resonates because it effectively distills the core job of a founder into a phrase. Unfortunately, it’s not very actionable. It’s sort of like telling an investor: “Beat the market.”
In both of these cases, the obvious next question is: “How?”
You’ve heard it a thousand times—pricing is the ultimate growth lever for any SaaS company. And that makes the pricing page one of the most valuable pages on your website.
It’s where product meets strategy. Your pricing page isn’t just about numbers—it’s where you showcase your unique blend of your product, positioning, and pricing. It’s the heartbeat of your business, giving any visitor a snapshot of what you're aiming for and how you’re doing it…
AI News
I think and talk a lot about the risks of powerful AI. The company I’m the CEO of, Anthropic, does a lot of research on how to reduce these risks. Because of this, people sometimes draw the conclusion that I’m a pessimist or “doomer” who thinks AI will be mostly bad or dangerous. I don’t think that at all. In fact, one of my main reasons for focusing on risks is that they’re the only thing standing between us and what I see as a fundamentally positive future. I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be.
Today, we’re announcing an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and a new model, Claude 3.5 Haiku. The upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet delivers across-the-board improvements over its predecessor, with particularly significant gains in coding—an area where it already led the field. Claude 3.5 Haiku matches the performance of Claude 3 Opus, our prior largest model, on many evaluations for the same cost and similar speed to the previous generation of Haiku.
We’re also introducing a groundbreaking new capability in public beta: computer use…
Videos
Why Software Developers Make the Best Entrepreneurs
Discover New PHP Attributes, Number Defaults, and Taylor's New Composer Script
Bootstrapping an email service provider (with Jesse Hanley)
So I've tried 3 popular Laravel CMSs...
Keep building, keep rocking! 🤘