Build with Livewire, Filament provides a robust framework for building out dashboard and reporting tools (and much more). Since my business is focused on building tools for business to help improve their operations, it was a perfect fit. My company officially switched to the framework in 2024.

At Laracon US in 2023 Caleb announced Livewire 3 and Volt. Volt has a very similar approach as SFC in Vue. However, it's all PHP! After trying it out with some personal projects, I decided to make it a primary tool for most projects.

I believe Vue was introduced to me by way of reference in the Laravel docs. I'm not sure. But after picking up the framework and using it on several personal projects I was hooked. Almost all my apps up until 2024 were build using Vue.

PyroCMS was transitioning to a new core framework called "Laravel". After announcing the change, I quickly started building projects in Laravel to prepare for the switch. However, I was so impressed with Laravel that I dropped WordPress, PyroCMS, etc and went exclusively with the new framework. A decision that changed my life and development career for the better.

Since I was using CodeIgniter, it made sense to me to find a CMS that leveraged the framework. PyroCMS fit that perfectly and for the next several years I build custom themes and plugins exclusively for PyroCMS.

I had a client who needed a more sophisticated web product. CodeIgniter ended up working out great. So I used it for any "web app" type projects for the next several years.

This PHP blogging platform was gaining popularity. So I adopted it in my workflow and started building custom themes, plugins and even help workshops.

During the day, I worked as a software developer for an engineering company. However, my personal websites were getting attention and requests for services were getting hard to ignore. So I left the world of Mechanical Engineering and started this company.

I started working with DB driven projects and ended up adding MySQL to my toolbelt.

Frustrated with the WYSIWYG tools to build websites, I decided to learn how to code them from scratch. I bought a book, read it over the weekend and was hooked.

I am now building personal websites using RapidWeaver. It provided a very easy method for updating templates and deploying. It worked great but had limitations. So, I decided to learn more web technologies to further my projects.

During college, I worked as a student office helper. I was tasked with making updates to the website. The tool they provided ... Dreamweaver. This is my first introduction to web development.

While attending the School of Engineering at KU, I was introduced to MATLAB. MATLAB took my development skills to another level and eventually lead me to my first professional development job.

I'm not sure why, but I remember building native MacOS apps using this platform.

In High School we had Apple IIe computers. All the TI-99 coding skills were used to easily adapt to learning Apple Basic. Once again ... hooked! I designed and wrote countless games and tinkered as a hobbyist for years using Apple Basic.

This is where is all started. It came with a learn to code book. I read every page and did every exercise. After that, I was hooked.