Transcript: Bringing PHP to Mobile & Desktop with Native PHP with Sean Rosenthal

One of the greatest things that's ever happened to me was growing up

poor because it's really driven both of us.

He's very driven.

He's very successful in his line of work as well.

I got it from mostly from, uh, like according because sometime you are having a bug

and if you don't solve it, there is no one to solve it.

So you will sleep or maybe spend like a week off the computer and add the,

I, when you just like a go back, it didn't steal the bug.

So if you don't fix it, no one will do it.

So the native PHP products, which is currently PHP framework for building

desktop and mobile application is currently are a co-founder in this project.

When I was just a baby, I remember him going out for like 10 months at a time

on a submarine and there's a story that he has.

He was the computer programmer.

Like nobody, like not everybody knew anything about computers.

The computers are very new back then.

They couldn't move because of the computer and he stayed up for five

days straight and worked on this problem and he got, he got an award for this

because he technically saved everybody's lifetime.

It took me months at least, you know, and then that was just to like wrap

my head around the concept, let alone be profitable or, or, uh, be an asset

to a company or an individual.

This is my favorite thing to talk about these days.

So thank you for that.

Yeah, there's an app for that.

Uh, this is our logo.

Um, number one, it's, you know, the binaries are going to be way too big.

No one wants to download a gig for an app, right?

The, it's going to have to run a server.

It's going to overheat the battery.

It's going to, um, the, the processor, the battery is going to drain really fast

and the app stores aren't even going to allow it.

So no, I, unfortunately, I don't think it's actually possible.

He's like, I, I got mobile working.

I was like, what?

No way.

Like I just like shot through the roof with excitement and I was like, no

frigging way.

Like I just very, very, very excited about it.

And at one point he was like, Hey, are you like building the Android thing?

And I was like, uh-huh.

And he's like, are you trying to compete with me?

Or I was like, no, I want to contribute.

I want to help.

I want to, you know, welcome guys to the podcast, a podcast,

we interview software engineer to show the entrepreneur story.

And here we are on episode number 10 of season number two of the podcast and we

have Sean from native PHP.

He had got his degree in information technology at river, river central school.

Also, he have been senior developer as a couple of company, including 11th

church, past growing tree and Pfizer have been working full time as a lot of

the developers since 2013.

He is flying playing for fun and he's entrepreneur.

So let's dive into Sean's story after this week.

So thank you, Sean, for spending time with us this afternoon.

Can you give the audience some more insights about yourself?

Yeah, I mean, that kind of sums it up.

I spent a lot of time focused on work and people call it work.

I love what I do.

So I think the saying is if you like what you do, you never work a day in your life.

Um, I think outside of that, I have a lot of interest hobbies.

I've got a, I've got a son who's almost 16 and acts like he's almost 16.

And that keeps me pretty busy.

He's also active in like the Boy Scouts.

And so I'm actually going in a couple of weeks to a summer camp with him for,

for a week, which would be kind of fun to unplug a little bit and get away,

which I will be bringing my laptop for because there's actually some work I

have to do for the Boy Scouts.

But yeah, you know, I've got hobbies and I've got interests and

got a girlfriend and she's awesome.

And we have a cat that she likes a lot more than me.

But you know, that's how that's how it goes.

Okay, that's a great interaction.

So for you mentioned a couple of things that really interest me,

which is the first thing that you love what you're doing.

And I would love to get behind what is drive this passion.

So is it like a from your childhood, like how from where this passion came from?

That's a deep question.

So one of my one of my biggest mentors in life is my uncle, my dad's brother.

And one thing that he and I both have greatly in common that we have talked

about over the years is that we both grew up very poor.

And I like, I know that that's a relative statement.

I know that, you know, in other places in the world, what we call poor is,

you know, luxury living.

Yeah.

But there was there was a great period of my childhood where, you know,

we slept in a car or hotel or stuff like that.

And we didn't know where our next meals were coming from.

And that sort of mentality, I think, you know, really deep underlying a lot

of other ambitious behaviors I might exhibit is really kind of what pushes me

to like come hell or high water.

I'm going to make something work for my life and for my kid, my kid's life.

And, you know, the people that I love around me, I think that's probably

where a lot of the drive sort of stems from.

And I think so the phrase that my uncle and I say to each other is, you know,

the one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me was growing up poor

because it's really driven both of us.

He's very driven.

He's very successful in his line of work as well.

Makes sense.

Okay.

That's great.

I also like sometimes you just need to frame the problem or the stuff in

another way in a positive way.

And you will see something positive way in like in a positive mindset.

Because what you call poor, this is what drive you to be able to become

what you are right now.

So it just sometimes is just like how you can frame it and how you can get

most of out of the situation.

This is how you can make it so far.

Because if you are just thinking, I am considered poor and I'm just being poor,

I think you will be in the same place that you are into in this at first.

So just sometimes just how we are framing the situation or how you are

utilizing that it's like the thing that you mentioned is like a fuel for your

passion.

So this is what you're driving through all the stuff that you that you built

and that you work on.

That makes me have some like, man,

this is this is nice.

I like I like talking about this stuff actually.

And I think probably to answer your first question, like what am I what do I

really what what other things are involved in my life?

These are the kinds of conversations I really enjoy having.

There's so many things that come to mind when you say that the framing.

So there's a there's a there's a Bible verse and it's it's translated in other

languages and in other it's found in other texts too.

But as a man thinks or as a man thinketh in the King James version,

as a man thinks so he is.

So you are what you what you consider.

There's this whole context of, of, you know, you know, thinking I'm poor or

whatever, wherever it is, I can fly and like you think you can.

And so you can write and I figured that out too.

There's this great sense of like accepting the fate you're kind of given

versus saying, I'm going, I'm greater than this.

I feel a greatness inside of me and I'm going to pursue and achieve what

that is and not let my, my circumstances around me kind of dictate who and

what I'm supposed to be.

So, um, yeah, I think, I think growing up, um, in America, there's this great

sense of like the American dream and, you know, like making it to some, to

whatever degree of success that that is for everybody.

I think it's kind of different, but I think it always involves like having a

lot of money, right?

I think that everybody thinks if you're successful, you have a lot of money.

And I think over the years, that's that definitions meant different things for me.

I think that's, uh, naive, naively, that's kind of what, what you would think.

But, um, no, I think spending time with people that I love is a greater sign

of success than having money.

I think you need to kind of have money.

You have to have your bills covered, right?

So that you can do that, but you can spend time with people, even if

you're homeless, right?

Like technically you can, maybe you have more time.

And so there's, there's varying, uh, differences of, of what success

actually can be and how to achieve it.

Yeah, it makes sense.

That's a great point.

And also one of the things that I mentioned, and also you agree on, which

is how we are framing this up.

For example, this mindset, like, uh, got me, I got it from mostly from, uh, like

according, because sometimes you are having a bug and if you don't solve it,

there is no one to solve it.

So you will sleep or maybe spend like a week off the computer and add, uh, when

you just like a go back, it didn't steal the bug.

So if you don't fix it, no one will do.

So this is like, uh, sometime, this is one of the things that I love about the

stuff that is like a software development or coding is like a, it's not just

about the code.

It's also like some mindset that you will develop with this code.

And also how we are seeing the problem is like how you are seeing the bugs.

So if you are solving a bug, it's similar to solving a problem in real life.

If you don't solve it, if you don't make progress, if you don't do this, if

you don't try it, it raise, try to like refactor it.

It's similar concept that you can apply to the real life.

It's just like a matter of, like the, the context and the environment.

It's like a production versus staging or development.

But at the end it's like, uh, this is how, how everything should work.

I think this is one of the things that I love about coding.

And also one of the things that I recommend people to learn coding, not just

to get like a job or like a, to be good at coding, but just to develop this mindset

of the problem solving mindset that you will have, that you will need at some

point in your daily life, especially for someone who just like, uh, starting

out in life and, uh, he's like a still like a child, like for young people in

general, I think that coding, it will be something that will be helpful, not only

like a career wise or in a professional career wise, but also in your personal life.

Uh, that's very interesting.

And I wonder what the correlation is between people that are quote, unquote,

senior developers or great developers or really just, that brings up another

whole topic, but, um, you know, like the correlation between a good or great

developer and how they actually operate problems in their personal lives.

And that's, that's something that I, I had struggled with, with different

relationships as well, cause I'm a very much a problem solver.

And sometimes, uh, women specifically, uh, at least in my, my, um, my experience,

they don't like just having the problem solved.

They like to just be heard.

And so that I have to over years, many years, uh, realize, okay, don't

just solve the problem, which is so hard to do, right?

Like that is so hard for, for a developer, maybe specifically to not try to solve it,

but that is the way to solve that problem.

So I've had a trick my mind, I guess to say the right way to solve this

problem is to not solve the problem, which is, you know, uh, not intuitive, I guess.

But, and I think the other point that that brings up is like, what is a senior developer?

Just because you've been doing something a long time, doesn't mean that you're

a senior developer, right?

Um, I tell my son all the time, I know 60 year old boys just because of the

decisions they make in their life.

Just cause you're old doesn't mean you're a man, technically, right?

Yes.

Uh, and then on the other side of that, there's people that are 15 year old, uh,

that, that are men, like they've, they, they have the experience and the know

how to solve problems or whatever it is that defines in that culture,

region, whatever, what a man is.

And so I think the same thing could be applied back into development.

You might have only been developing for a couple of years, but you're handling

complex tasks and problem solving like a pro, who cares if you've been doing it

for two years?

It's hard to put that in a resume though.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, this is one of the things that is hard about, like, especially definition

of someone who is like a developer, a senior developer versus, I would say

normal developer, like, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say a junior, but like, uh,

for example, someone who like has spent like a four years working in a multiple

startup or like a one startup that's handle like a complex stuff.

Uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say like a something specific, but complex stuff.

And someone working in a corporate drop, like, uh, but I would say something

that is not really something that is difficult, just a fixing bug here and

there, and it's like a spending the same amount of like a time.

It's like a four years for it.

Should I consider both of them senior?

It will be hard because they are not exposed to the same problem.

Also, they are not exposed to the same environment because sometimes the

environment and also how, how well you are exposed to challenges.

This is how you can define that you are senior or not senior, not based only

on the number of years.

As you mentioned, because it will be hard to be able to justify someone who

like, uh, being in like, uh, a lot of complex stuff with someone who just

like a fixing some, I would say simple bugs or just having some technical

support to get here and there.

Nothing like, uh, I would say complex that is will be worth solving.

So it will be hard for to be able to, to like have the same badge.

That's as the other one.

You know, uh, was, was starting native PHP.

My, my LinkedIn blew up from like, nobody following me to now I get all

these followers every day are, are, are paying attention to the work I'm doing,

which is awesome.

It's an honor, uh, to be honest, but every time I see them, it always pops up.

Senior developer, senior developer, senior developer, senior, and I, I probably

for the one of the, one of the first times in my life.

So I've done a lot of hiring for other companies and stuff before, but usually

things were kind of filtered a bit before they came to my desk, uh, so

that, you know, maybe we would get a thousand, uh, resumes, but somebody was

there in front of me to say, these are the top 10 or whatever that you should

look at.

And they always had senior, but I think like now I can kind of see what maybe

a recruiter see a lot or people that do a lot of hiring, uh, which has maybe a

tip for just the listeners for your, for your, um, for your podcast.

But if everybody's a senior developer, nobody's a senior developer.

It's like, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, right?

If everything's an emergency, nothing is cause you can't, there's nothing to

differentiate.

So for me, like, uh, you know, going back into, um, if ever I'm going back into

like the job market, looking for another job, I don't think I'll put senior

developer, I'll put something very catchy just to get the click, right?

Because really what you're trying to do is draw attention to yourself.

So I would put like, uh, I don't know, I don't know, just something like maybe

opposite of what everybody would think, stupid developer or foolish developer.

Maybe just to be like, wait, what?

And then they, you know, click and look into that a little bit more, um, you

know, I've made more mistakes than everybody else.

That's, that's probably a good way of putting things.

Cause you, with mistakes, that comes the opportunity to learn.

So that's great.

I think this is a great point.

And also I would love currently to dive into your story.

So I think we cover some good ground for like at the, the session.

And I would love to get like currently we are talking about the native PHP

products, which is currently PHP framework for building desktop and mobile

application is currently our, uh, uh, a co-founder in this project.

And then we interview the other co-founder in the, the previous episode.

So currently I would, I would love to get like, uh, the previous experience

that you have been into before starting this product.

Yeah.

That, that's interesting.

So experience as far as work, I mean, I, again, I started, I think with

Laravel, I started 2013 and I guess we got some time.

We can talk about some of these things, like how I got into development in the

first place is kind of an interesting story.

Um, yes, my dad, my dad was, uh, he was in the Navy in the 1970s and he was a

developer and this is before they really had computers.

He was on submarines and he has a story that one of the, one of the, he was the

first crew of a certain, um, submarine.

It's the USS Jacksonville and they, he would go out and I was just a baby.

I actually, I was not born in the seventies, but, uh, when I was just a baby,

I remember him going out for like 10 months at a time on a submarine.

And there's a story that he has.

He was the computer programmer, like nobody, like not everybody knew anything

about computers, the computers are very new back then.

And so he was, uh, they actually were, uh, stuck in the water.

They were underwater and for whatever reason, the computer, they couldn't move

because of the computer and he stayed up for five days straight and worked on

this problem and he got, he got an award for this because he technically

saved everybody's life, but he stayed up five days straight.

He solved the bug and they all survived because of it.

And, uh, you know, like for me, growing up, my dad, I remember, you know,

sitting on his leg at, you know, three and four years old or whatever, playing

like very primitive MS DOS kind of games, like very primitive, like

graphical, uh, kind of games.

You hit the space bar, you type a command and jump.

And so the guy would jump at the next thing and, you know, stuff like that.

So I kind of grew up with that all, all my life.

Um, uh, I guess my first career though was, uh, sales.

I did door to door sales.

Um, and that came out of a need to like just want to make more than

the minimum wage, uh, someone, someone told me about it and, uh, I started

and I started making more than I was making, you know, washing dishes

or something at a restaurant.

And so that was, you know, my early mid twenties and I did that for like 10 years.

I led teams.

I, I would motivate a team to, I got really good at that and managing people.

And I didn't like it, but I was good at it.

So, you know, if you're good at sales, people think that you should be a manager,

which is kind of weird because I'm really good at the sales side of it.

I don't really like, you know, tell, I don't know how to tell somebody else

to be more personable at the door, you know, in front of strangers, but.

So at one point I was, I was actually living at my dad's house and I was

doing door to door sales and I was using his truck and I was on the way to

this neighborhood to do door to door sales and the head gasket and the

truck blew and I was furious.

I was pissed.

I didn't know what to do.

You know, um, it was very hard.

It was commission only.

So you only make money if you sell something.

You can go out for a whole day and not make anything, right?

Or several days and that's happened before.

And so he, at the time he had, uh, he was a couple of years into a new, uh,

his own company, um, and he had a client in England or, or something

like that in London where, uh, they had a project where they were just,

they were converting, uh, program from C sharp to C plus plus or C plus plus

to C sharp and, um, the head gasket blew.

I'm pissed.

I go back to home where he was at and he was like, Hey, can you copy and paste?

And I was like, well, yeah, I can copy and paste.

He's like, all we need, there's a, there's a program running on the computer

that every random time about 15 minutes, they take a screenshot just to make

sure we're doing the work.

And all we need to do is copy it from one thing to another.

Cause that's all that it requires for a while.

So I did that and I did that and I did that.

And at the end of the day, he gave me $400 and I was like, cool.

Is this like an advance for the week?

You know, I thought this is a whole week's pay or something.

He's like, no, that's for the day.

And I was like, whoa.

Uh, and so for the next two years, um, my dad paid me a salary to basically

start learning the ropes.

And I always phrase it like I, I was able to gain my inheritance before my dad died.

You know, cause what he provided for me and my family, my future was a, yeah,

this environment that most people don't get.

And, and I, a lot of people have asked me over the years, like, how do I

start with development?

And I think things have sped up, but I know initially it's like, you know, you

have to, you have, it takes a long time to really understand conceptually what

you're doing.

It took me a long time.

It took me months at least, you know, and then that was just to like wrap my

head around the concept, let alone be profitable or, or, uh, be an asset to a

company or an individual that would pay me anything to do anything.

Cause I had no idea what I was doing.

So I kind of stumbled my way into it, but I was paid essentially, you know, uh,

I think a thousand bucks a week or something like that to pay my bills and

work.

And I didn't take it for granted.

I, I know that other people in that situation or similar situation might just

sit back and just take the, take the paycheck and not do anything.

But I felt this like burn of eventually this is going to run out.

I need to do what I can with the time that I'm given so that I, you know,

at some point can sustain myself and I did that.

It's exactly what happened to the client that he had, the project ended.

He had another client that went bankrupt and so he lost funding and he was like,

I can't pay you anymore.

And I was like, that's okay.

I'm going to build WordPress sites.

And I think that's where I started with WordPress themes and, uh, some plugins

and stuff like that.

And that's where I first got my, my taste of PHP and, um, things have grown from

there, obviously that's, that's the beginning, the origin story, I guess.

Yeah, makes sense.

That's great.

And at which year we are talking about, like, since you build the WordPress

stuff and from progress, you have been with your dad and after that, you have

been working with the WordPress and the building at which time you are talking

about, so I worked with my dad for two years before I started doing, well, I

started learning.

So basically like he, one of the clients, the one that went bankrupt, um, he,

he didn't actually get along with the guy running the company.

Like every time he would go there, they would get into an argument and I'm

like, let me, let me take a crack at it because I've got a sales experience.

So I, I know how to like talk to people and, and address concerns.

That work was being outsourced to China.

And so I would go once a week to this guy's house.

I would meet with him to say, look, this is all the updates from last week.

What fixes do we need to make for next week?

And I would relay that information and kind of project manage that with the,

the guys that we had hired in China.

And that's really, it was one day a week.

I would drive like an hour to the guy's house and an hour home and spend six

hours with them.

And then every other day was only like a half an hour in the evenings when we

had some overlap with China to go over the project and the details.

So really I had most of my days were free.

Um, and that's, I started getting into like logos, a little bit of Photoshop,

a lot of illustrator, I prefer illustrator just for whatever reason.

Vector makes more sense to me than Rasterize.

And then, um, like learning CSS, HTML.

And I went to, there was a, there was a website back in the day.

I don't even know if it's still around called, um, the new Boston, the new

Boston.com it's a YouTube channel also.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I don't, I think it wasn't before, but he converted a lot

of those videos into, into YouTube over the years.

I did look at it a few years ago when I was telling my son about it, but yeah,

that was like just in the, the thing was the only other tool I had at my

disposal at that time, my dad had a subscription to Pluralsight and nothing

against Pluralsight, but back then it was very dry and I didn't understand

even what they were talking.

It was very difficult to understand.

And I would like fall asleep, literally watching these videos.

I would put them on before bed just so I could fall asleep.

Um, but, uh, Bucky from this, the new Boston, he was very entertaining.

He was like, look, we're going to make a div.

What is a div?

Think of a div, like a box.

All right.

And so let's think of it like a litter box and what goes inside of a litter box?

A cat.

So he had like this class litter box and inside of it was an ID of cat or whatever.

You know, and, um, like it was entertaining for me to, to kind of wrap my head around that.

So that's kind of how I started HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

And then, um, I realized at some point, like I can stay kind of front end, but if

I really want to make more money, I will have to learn some backend technology.

And WordPress, I guess it just, to me, my dad's a.net developer.

Uh, he was very, he's like, we're not going to, we're not going to do WordPress.

And I was like, yeah, but I feel like this is kind of the future.

This is like most of the internet uses this.

At least that was a phrase.

Um, and I think that's kind of true to some degree still.

Um, I think that the, just the simple fact, like Microsoft's, you need licensing

where with Linux boxes, you can run PHP and WordPress and you don't kind of opens

it up to being more accessible, which means there's going to be a lot of people

and a lot of help that people will need around that.

And I think that was kind of my drive to go towards the PHP path.

And, uh, that's what I did.

Makes sense.

That's great.

I think that's given me like a good understanding of the, like the early days

of our development.

And also I have been working with the WordPress as early days.

Not, I couldn't remember exactly when, but I have been playing around with

like a WordPress PHP at my early days of learning development.

It was, it wasn't fun, to be honest.

It's, it's, it's popular to hate WordPress nowadays.

So yeah, I choose to the problem.

It's like, it's the mall, like they, they mentioned that it's the most hated

technology, the PHP and WordPress is one of the most used technology.

It's like a chord.

Like it's the most hated at the most.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, look, I mean, I think that's, that's a sign of success too.

If you start getting haters, I mean, that means that you've done something

that kind of disturbs the flow of things.

That's right.

I think PHP does have problem with developer experience, but not like in

terms of like a business use case or like a business, like a perspective,

it's different.

Yeah, for sure.

It's, it's easy for people to go in and add a page and, you know, make, make,

make some menu item up here or something like that.

But to support that, it's, it's a little bit, it's a lot trickier.

It's a lot more difficult on the back end of that.

That's true.

Plus all the below.

And one of the things that we, like I mentioned over the intro, you have

been working on like other company evaluation, church, fast growing tree,

Pfizer, which is the pharmacist company.

Can you give us, I need like a, I would say an insight about all this

company and how was the experience working there?

And this is like a, one of the, one of the company that you work on, it's not

all of them, but this I mentioned a couple of them.

Yeah, sure.

Um, so elevation church is a, it's one of the, I think it's top 10 in the world.

One by like size, um, like of the congregation.

It's a, it's a, it's a mega church.

If you want to call it that, um, I think it's in the top top 10 in the United

States or top 10 in the world, whatever it is.

Um, I worked there, um, several years, I think 2017 I worked there.

Um, and it was, that was a tricky job, um, because it is a church and that

goes back into like faith and all that stuff and things that I believe, but

then there's, there were some issues that I had with like what they enforced

and, and that kind of stuff.

But as far as the tech goes, um, some of the really cool things that I was

able to work on, my job was to make sure they do a live streams.

Uh, this is way before COVID ever, like it wasn't popular.

They were actually one of the first churches to do live streams.

We would live stream three different channels.

So there was, um, the pastor had his own channel, the church had its own channel

and the band that played for the church had its own channel.

And each one of them was streaming on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

I think there was, at one point there was another one, but I can't remember

what it was, um, but they were all streaming simultaneously.

And so we, uh, my team, our core function was to make sure the streams were

up and running, we were answering questions.

We were gathering analytics to report back and, and so that's like nine.

We had nine Mac Mac computers set up, you know, monitoring all of these

simultaneously to make sure that, you know, everything was, was working

smoothly essentially, but in my, uh, that was really just on Sundays in my other

spare time or the rest of the weeks, we, we had to work on a lot of different

projects, uh, but then there were some times that we could work on our own thing.

One of the first things, and one of the, one of the things I'm most proud of,

and the reason why I love putting that up there, what I like to talk about,

they had this service that they were paying $100,000 a year for that allowed

them to live stream, but also they could chat with users.

Um, they could administrate some of that chat.

So if somebody was saying something, they shouldn't, they could

ban them or block them or suspend whatever.

And so there were like different roles and managing that.

Um, also like the whole website would change at nine o'clock on Sundays from

this YouTube video of last week to the live stream and chat would open.

And so it was all, it was using web sockets.

And so pusher was becoming really popular in the Laravel ecosystem.

And I was a couple of years into view JS and, uh, I saw that they were spending

this money and I was like, I'm looking at it.

And I was like, I could, I could build this thing.

I could save you guys a bunch of money and just rebuild it.

And they let me do it.

And, uh, it took me about seven months by myself to rebuild this whole

experience for them.

Uh, there was, I mean, just to get like a version one until they were actually

using it took seven months and there's a lot of work.

And I look at the code, uh, I go back to the website and I can inspect this

source and, uh, I can see they're still using some of the work that I did.

Um, you know, way back when, so that was, that was really cool.

That was a big win for me.

I think for my career was to say that I single-handedly built this thing and

it's look at the functionality.

It's emails, it's analytics, it's the chat, the web sockets.

It's, you know, live streaming and, you know, all the, all the headaches and

problems that go into that.

So that was pretty cool.

Um, fast growing trees.

Uh, so they are actually a local company, but they're, uh, they're local to me.

So they're, they're maybe a half hour from me, but they are, uh, very much a,

a large national business.

Their model is they, they have 40 something acres.

At least they did when I was there, 40 acres of trees growing in plant, in

planters and, you know, little pots, all different varieties of trees, all

different sizes of trees.

And they get in order and they put the tree in a box and they ship it across

the country.

And to me, like, I don't know.

When I explained this to people that like, yeah, well, that's, you know,

trees, I guess, to me, it was wild.

I was like, you actually put a tree in a box and ship it.

Like that didn't, I don't know.

It's wild to me.

You know, they hired me.

They had a, they had a site on X cart, which I still don't really know anything

about cause I didn't really interface with it, but it's a, it's a PHP e-commerce

sort of platform and they were, uh, they use that to, um, suck in orders and they

would, uh, spill it out to, um, they had a CRM or a, uh, what's it called, um,

whatever the central place to manage all of their orders.

Wherever it was coming from.

And they wanted to migrate from X cart over to Shopify.

And so I helped them do all of that.

I didn't build the actual site, but I, I did add like all the variants and all of

the, I did all the data around Shopify.

I interface with the API, the Shopify API with Laravel.

So we were able to, um, I was able to get the data from a database, which was it was

PHP 5.6, MS SQL, uh, database.

And I mean, it was a nightmare.

Actually, it took me like a week or two just to get my environment set up.

Um, and they gave me a windows computer, which I hated.

And then I was like, I want a Mac book.

Oh, why didn't you say it's so in the first place?

I was like, really?

They gave me a Mac book.

But yeah, that was a huge undertaking, a big project.

Um, we got to brainstorm a lot of different ideas around building our own

pin, which is a prod products inventory management system, because what they

had was not just a site, they had two Shopify sites plus they had, they were

selling on Etsy, Amazon, uh, Walmart.

And so they had the other thing, the other really big problem around their,

their business inherently was that if, if they have a tree that's out there

growing, it might be a three foot through your tree, but in six months, it's

not a four foot through your tree.

And so they have to move inventory.

The whole skew changes, right?

Which is crazy.

Oh, the skew didn't change.

That was the rule that we defined.

The skew doesn't change, but the model changes.

So like we had to, and then like we had, we came up with ideas for like

mapping out the fields with drones and having RFIDs on the drone and RFIDs on

the thing to like collect data.

So we could actually in the morning fly, I came up with all these ideas and

like started playing with it, like fly over the fields and, and take

inventory of things that we have in the field and report that back to, it was

a lot of really interesting and, um, a lot of interesting issues, problems,

concerns, and solutions ultimately.

So you got to, I got to think outside the box quite a bit.

I think the other one you mentioned was Pfizer.

Yes.

No one's ever heard of that company.

That's, I mean, who cares about Pfizer, right?

Pfizer was, who wouldn't care about Pfizer, especially during COVID.

During COVID.

And that's when I worked there.

I worked there for three years during COVID.

I was a COVID hire, quote unquote.

That was, uh, yeah, it was interesting because I, I was hired as a

Laravel developer, but the first six months I didn't touch Laravel at all.

They, they stuck me on, um, I forget what the name of this program was.

They wanted me to research basically, um, I can't remember what it's called.

Red something or I don't remember what it is, but it was a, uh, automation

platform, essentially.

So it would receive web hooks, uh, payloads of data.

And then based on that data, you could trigger any number combination of

automations.

So that was interesting.

Um, the other thing about that was like that it needed to be containerized.

It was all hosted AWS.

And so getting that environment set up and established and then having with all

their millions of different rules, uh, for security, like getting data properly

to the right places in the staging environment and then a production

environment eventually.

And so that was, there was a lot of challenges with that.

I asked nicely if I could be moved from that specific thing because I missed

Laravel so much.

And I am like always kind of putting Laravel at the front of my career

because that's what I've built my career on was, is Laravel.

And to get away from it for so many months, I'm missing out on some of

these new things that are developing with, with Laravel.

So they did, they put me on, uh, we, I created this thing with, uh, one of my

buddies I was working with for a couple of years.

We called it ticket hub.

Essentially, um, the team that I was on, we provision servers for internal

facing Pfizer website.

So if you were in some department in Pfizer and you needed a site and there's,

you would think there's like maybe, you know, what do you got?

10 sites, there was thousands and thousands and thousands of not just like

simple splash screens.

These are like full architected, sometimes Laravel, sometimes not.

Usually it was Laravel sites.

And so we would take the request from a department.

We would spin up a repo.

We would automate a lot of these things.

That's what I was initially doing.

And up a repo, we use like Ansible, YAML scripts, um, or cloud

formation to, to manage some of that stuff.

Uh, but what I, what they ended up moving me into was creating this ticket hub,

which allowed basically it was a seamless, one department might be using

Zendesk, another department might be using Jira, another department might have,

they just want an email sent to them or, um, maybe they get a text message or,

or whatever, when somebody has like support issues, right?

Um, so what we did was we created a, um, a view, uh, custom, uh, component that

you could install on any site.

You just installed some JavaScript in the head and it would just absolutely

position in the bottom right and had this very consistent experience, no matter

what site or what department you were on.

And then the back end of that was a Laravel site where you could create,

it was a form builder, essentially.

And so you could, uh, say, I want a text box and this is an email and this is the

validation rules for, and that got very elaborate very quickly, but that's,

um, ultimately what I spent the majority of my time working on there.

Hmm.

Interesting.

I love one.

It's, uh, one of the things that she mentioned, especially about the, the,

the fast growing trees, like, uh, how you solve the problem of, uh, like a,

because, uh, like the usual, like for inventory, it will be the same, but for

trees, especially it will be, it's, it's the longer they are in the inventory,

the longer that they will get.

And like, they, they will like have a different form.

So also you need to take that in consideration for the packaging, for

the description of the product.

So it's like a diff, it's like a special case for, for a e-commerce specialty.

They were very much alive and living products, right?

So, yes.

Um, there was also, I mean, a lot of other things, like you could not

ship certain trees or certain size trees to certain states, or if they did,

they had, they had to come from a different state.

So we had holding facilities in some states so that we could ship to other

states.

I think the biggest challenge, one of the biggest challenges though, was like,

if I had 10 of a certain, if I had 10 of a certain model of a tree, a certain

size and type, uh, and I sold them all, I had to let Walmart, Amazon, the other

website, Etsy all know at the same time, right?

So like having those lot, like coordinating all of that stuff together,

that was, that was very challenging to, to do, to have this central place.

And so what we ended up with, I think the, the biggest thing was like, have a

buffer in case we know what's going to sell, what's not going to sell.

They know the products very well.

Uh, no one's going to come in and buy a thousand marigolds, right?

It just doesn't really happen.

Not at our price point.

Some people do that, but not at, we're more retail price.

So, or they were more retail price.

So, you know, there was always a buffer though, for every plant, we had a

different buffer rate.

So we would say, Hey, there's only nine left, but there was like 39 left.

Right.

We had more just in case.

And so once a day or a few times a day, we would update inventory throughout

all of the, the different systems that we had.

It was, it was very, very challenging and very unique, uh, company to work with

for sure.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

And one, the, the, the next thing that I will be talking about is what is

in your, in your t-shirt and in your hat.

There's an app for that and the native PHP logo.

I would love to get your side of the story of how the native PHP was founded

or like, uh, how did you meet with Simon and how was the experience?

This is my favorite thing to talk about these days.

So thank you for that.

Yeah, there's an app for that.

Uh, this is our logo.

Um, I don't remember who designed the low.

I think, um, there's a man named Kineco.

I think he designed the original design for it.

He, uh, leads, um, all of the Lara con EUs.

He does a bunch of other stuff too, but that's, I think what he's most known for.

I think he did the logo for us, the initial logo for us.

And so I was like, you know, let's get it on a hat.

Let's get on a shirt.

I got stickers and, you know, all sorts of stuff native PHP, uh, I guess the

timeline of that and what it is.

So native PHP, what is native PHP native PHP in a nutshell is a way to build

native apps, desktop and now mobile, uh, with PHP.

And I think you can consider it somewhat as far as the mobile side is concerned.

I don't have a lot of experience, honestly, with the desktop side.

I came in, uh, with Android and we'll talk about that in a second.

The mobile side of it is you can kind of think of it like capacitor.

If you're familiar with capacitor JS, but it's using PHP instead of, uh, JavaScript,

which very opinionated here, PHP is a much more robust and less easy to break

language than JavaScript.

Um, we also adapted it completely for Laravel.

So if you're a Laravel developer, you can literally just write a Laravel

application, run a command and deploy it to a phone.

And, uh, in addition to just having a Laravel app on a phone, we've also created

custom extension, a custom extension for PHP, for our own builds of PHP, which

that's inherently the issue is getting PHP to work on these devices.

The extensions allow us to call into Kotlin and Swift to run native functions on

the device.

So you can, uh, anything that you can think is technically possible just

because we have a way to hook in to the device, uh, native functionality.

So we can, anything your device can do, we can technically support that.

So it opens up this whole worlds, right?

Of this whole unexplored potential, uh, what, what's nice is like we have

things like capacitor and react native and some of the ecosystem that they've,

they've built because they've solved a lot of the problems for questions

that we might have.

Like how do people like interfacing?

Cause they've adapted over the last 10 or 15 years, they've been doing things.

So we can say, like, what's the current recent version of how, how people

are interfacing with that?

And we can just quickly adapt that now that we have our foot in the door, so to

speak, of actually building apps.

Um, so the timeline of that, um, and that's kind of a whole story in and of

itself, uh, for me, for my, my perspective, I guess.

Um, so I was at Lyricon, um, US in 2019.

That was the first time that was in New York city.

And then 2023, there was COVID and then 2023, 2024.

And I'm going again in a few weeks and I'm very excited.

I love Lyricon.

If you haven't gone to Lyricon or if you just have it just go for so many years,

I thought, I just don't belong in a place like that.

Please go.

Like I was the guy that like, I got kids.

I've got bills.

I've got this.

I've got that.

All these excuses, why shouldn't or can't go.

I wish I would have just gone because, you know, if it's a money thing, you

will make money by going to these, not directly, but you will meet people that

will, and just the inspiration of app ideas and stuff that you'll get just from

the different talks, which I actually don't even really go for the talks

because they're going to be on YouTube anyway.

I go to see now friends and colleagues and, um, really just collaborate and

being in that environment.

It's like Silicon Valley, right?

Like everybody's driving towards like, what's the next big thing, right?

And, um, and then you get to find other people with that mindset.

So I always make new friends every time I go and my Twitter, uh, followers

or ex-followers always increases every time I go, just because I, I like the,

the people around it.

Um, but 2023 Marcel post it, um, had a talk, uh, from stage called, uh, native

PHP, I think that's what it was called or building apps with, uh, PHP,

something to that effect.

And at the time personally, um, uh, this was June of 2023 or July of 23.

I was actually waiting for back surgery and I was in a lot of pain.

Um, people didn't really necessarily know that around me, but, um, I, I had

back surgery November of 2023.

I actually had a couple of back servers before that.

And I was really just wanting to get back to my hotel room to, and I also

like dehydrated, had a migraine or something.

Like I was just in bad pain, but I saw this talk title and I was like,

I got to stick around for this.

And it was a second to last talk of the day.

Right after that was Aaron Francis and I left right, I didn't get, I didn't

watch Aaron Francis cause I just, I couldn't, I couldn't do it.

Um, and I was glad I stuck around what my thought was at the time was

that they've cracked a way to run PHP on mobile because when I hear

native, I think mobile apps like react native and native, uh, scripts and,

you know, all that stuff.

So I thought that they, we can now build mobile apps with PHP, with

Laravel and it's a LaraCon.

So they must be talking about Laravel, right?

That wasn't the case.

It was really desktop apps and that was, that was really the extent of it.

And I, Marcel was even asked at the end, like, what about mobile?

And he's like, well, I've got a proof of concept in my pocket, but

it's never going to work.

And that's like, you can go back and watch the video.

He's like, it's never going to work for all of these reasons for mobile.

Number one, it's, you know, the binaries are going to be way too big.

No one wants to download a gig for an app, right?

The, it's going to have to run a server.

It's going to overheat the battery.

It's going to, um, the, the processor, the battery is going to drain really fast.

And the app stores aren't even going to allow it.

So no, unfortunately, I don't think it's actually possible.

And that's fine.

I actually got very inspired by the desktop side of things.

And I went home the next day and started a YouTube channel.

So I have a YouTube channel.

I haven't posted there in a while, but it's Laravel online.

Uh, so you can take a look at that and you can see the first.

It will be in the, it will be in the, in the short description.

Thanks for that.

That's, that's cool.

I haven't, I haven't been there in a long time.

I, I, yeah, it's, it will be a good thing to be back right now.

Yeah, I have posted some native PHP stuff on there.

Um, and I get a lot of really, I get a lot of views and I get a lot of

likes and a lot of comments and stuff.

It's just, I'm just so busy building everything right now.

Um, I do have to take some time and, and you know, um, prioritize that a little bit more,

but we also have a native PHP, uh, channel as well.

So we're, we're going through some of the thoughts for like, like, where do we put

some stuff and where do we grow more thing, you know, that kind of stuff.

But I went home and I think if you go to the channel, you'll see the first, like

eight or nine or something videos is all native PHP desktop.

And I just, I had no good camera.

I had no good mic.

I just like had a crappy 720p, uh, desk, uh, you know, MacBook camera.

And I, but I was just so excited, like, check out what you can do, you know, and

they just went in and started building stuff.

And I think the rest of the world followed, followed along with me because I

grew, I think I was like a thousand or 1500 subscribers the first week.

Like this thing just came out and I'm talking, I'm one of the first people to

talk about it was like, cool.

So I started like building on that traction and started doing some other videos.

I even did an interview with Dan Herron, which is the creator of filament.

And that was pretty cool too.

Like I, I started doing some stuff.

Then I had surgery and, uh, and I'm very, I'm very open about this.

And then I got divorced.

Uh, so like three weeks after I had back surgery, uh, it was like, you know,

this isn't working.

We already knew it was not working for whatever reason, uh, sold my house.

And on January 1st, I moved into the place I'm in now, which is just a townhouse.

And I, I spent six months on the couch, not really so much for pain, the pain

from the back surgery, uh, cause the back surgery was actually very, very successful.

Um, it's one in like a thousand have as good of a success that I, I had with

this specific surgery, which is another whole topic, but I spent six months on the

couch, kind of just like trying to figure out what I really want to even do in my life.

Um, do I want to develop, I think too, like I had started and stopped so many other

SAS opportunities, SAS projects.

And, um, I was just very much burnt out and not just burnt out.

I think it was burnt out for like 10 years, honestly.

Like I just was done like everything.

And like, I had this office, uh, I had my computer set up, but I didn't

even turn it on for like four months.

You know, I didn't even like get on my computer.

One of my friends who now works for Laravel, uh, Jason Beggs, um, like February

March, he was like, Hey, are you going to Lyricon this year?

And I'm like, no, I don't think so.

And he's like, dude, you really should.

Like you're part of, you should go, you know, and I bought a ticket, not knowing

if I was going to go or if I wanted to go, but I bought a ticket and I just

watched Breaking Bad and like I just sat on the couch and just unplugged completely.

And I'm glad that I did that.

And if you go back and listen to Caleb Porgio's story about how he started

Livewire is kind of a similar mindset, I think where he was just, he quit the job

he had, he didn't know what he was going to do.

And then this whole idea of Livewire came about and then Alpine came from that

and now flux and like it's been growing on itself, but he's built his whole life

in livelihood around, you know, the fact that he had to just step away for a bit.

And I wasn't intending to do that, uh, or to like start Native PHP with that.

I just needed a break.

I just needed to get away.

I did go to Lyricon.

I was already kind of friends with, uh, Simon Hamp, who's my partner for Native

PHP, and we just hit it off.

We hit it off right off the bat.

We just became like best friend.

Like we just look at each other like, are we best friends now?

Like, yeah, we're best friends now.

And, um, leaving Lyricon, um, we both had this, um, desire and it was like this,

this very strong drive to do something with each other, to do some sort of work

with each other.

We didn't know what it was or what it should be, but we just, we liked being

around each other.

We still love being around each other.

Uh, we just have a very similar energy and vibe.

And it's like, it's like, you know, there's this like saying of like one horse

can pull 2,000 pounds, but two horses can pull 10,000 pounds.

And it's kind of that synergy that we have with each other.

So we leave wanting to do something with each other.

And we weren't sure what it was going to be.

And we started a podcast together with a buddy that we met actually right, right

before Lyricon, I met this man, uh, Steven Fox.

And so Shane, Simon, Steven, there's three S's.

S three, the bucket.

That's the name of the podcast.

So that's where that came from, right?

Uh, I, I, I came up with that, by the way, that's a great name to reflect.

So, uh, you know, in some capacity, we were working with each other.

We got to spend time once a week for a couple of few hours talking about stuff.

And there was other little projects that we had working on and, um, you know,

side projects and stuff like that.

Um, and I had asked him about native PHP, about mobile a few times.

And at Lyricon, I, I hung out with Marcel quite a bit.

We were staying at the same hotel.

We ubered a lot with each other and, um, you know, I talked to him a lot about

herd and, uh, I think I was trying to get a herd pro license for free, but I

never got one.

Um, and I talked to him about, uh, you know, native PHP mobile.

And he's just like, it's just not possible.

It's just not possible for all the same reasons.

He's like, I have it working on my phone, but this is the reasons why it

can't ever be a real product.

And, uh, so I was like, all right.

And then I talked to Simon and Simon's like, hmm, I think Marcel's wrong.

I'm like, no, Marcel's a genius.

You're the one that's wrong.

There's no way.

Well, Simon had said to us in between shows one day that he, his, one of his talks

was accepted for Lyricon EU February of this year of 25.

And I was like, wait a minute, what's the talk on Simon?

Simon, what is the talk?

What are you, what are you going to talk about?

Cause I'm like, is it, is it mobile?

Is that he's like, I, I got mobile working.

I was like, what?

No way.

Like I just like shot through the roof with excitement and I was like, no

frigging way.

Like I just very, very, very excited about it.

And so I'm like, whatever you need, I want to be there to help you.

If you need help going over your talk, your slides, your content,

like I want to test this thing out.

Like I want to see how this works.

This is freaking awesome.

You know, I was just very, very, very excited.

I'm still very excited about the whole concept of it.

Um, and, uh, I think like a week or so before his talk, I asked a question that

has completely changed my life and I had no idea it was going to, uh, I said,

Simon, like we had discussed, uh, like if it should be free, if it should be paid,

if it, whatever, and I was like, you're going to make something that other people

are going to make a lot of money from.

You should sell it.

That's, we both, he, I convinced him like you should sell this, whatever price.

I don't really know, but whatever makes sense for some people or whatever.

Right.

And I asked him, I'm like, but if people are going to pay for this thing, you're

only doing iOS, when are you going to work on Android?

When's the Android side?

Cause that's by far a bigger audience.

No business is going to pay you if they can only build iOS apps.

They need to be able to do both at the very least, like both have to be done.

Right.

And he's like, I don't know, six months a year.

I mean, I've got all this other work I'm working on iOS.

I just started working on it and I just don't, I just don't, you know, maybe,

maybe a year or two.

And for like two days, I had flashbacks because I inherently, I like over the

last couple of months of talking with him about how it kind of works under the

hood.

I understood the concepts of how he did things.

And basically it's compiling PHP and into a C library.

So PHP is written in C.

Everyone thinks PHP is a language.

It's not actually language.

It's kind of actually just a framework for C.

That's why we can have access to, you know, Wi-Fi or connection, internet connection.

And some of these like low level hardware questions that we can ask the OS, like what

OS are you, like because it is C under the hood, you can, you can, you know,

very low level figure things out.

So compiling PHP back into a C library, technically, not difficult.

Technically it is actually, but you have to compile it for the environment.

And that's something I didn't know.

I learned, you know, later.

Usually it's, it's, um, it is compiled for Ubuntu, a Linux environment, or, um,

sometimes for Windows or something like that, so that it can operate in the same,

you can ask the same kinds of questions at this low level.

The nice thing is that iOS and Android both support C as a underlying low level

language.

So you can actually, um, it's kind of relatively new.

It's only in the last few years that, that Android's opened up their NDK that you

can compile natively for the hardware itself.

So PHP just works really well with that.

JavaScript, you can't do that.

Technically you can't really do that.

Everything that you do with JavaScript is through the web view, which we use a

web view right now too, just because PHP likes to give back HTML, but there's

other things that we can do around that, um, that you can't do with JavaScript.

And that's something we hope to get to in the future.

But, um, that's going a little bit more into the tech side of things, which I'm

sure people like to talk about.

I like to talk about and share some of that stuff too.

But, um, through here, like a, like a behind the scene.

Man, I sat there for months.

Uh, I think it took me two months to get a Hello World inside of an Android device.

It was just a, uh, very much, I had no idea what I was doing.

I asked AI a billion questions.

I didn't understand what linkers were.

I didn't understand like all of these different flags, what they mean, and how

to do stuff.

And I'm still actually experimenting with different things on that.

Um, just this last week, Simon for iOS, it has to be statically compiled where

I can do a shared embed.

And what that means basically is like all of the, for a statically compiled, uh,

library, everything is kind of like, it's statically there.

Um, every, like everything that all the functions that you would call are all

inside of the library.

So the libraries are much larger for iOS, whereas with Android, mine are dynamic.

So I can have these libraries that are relatively small and load things dynamically

when, when they're required.

So the libraries are, are smaller in that, in that case.

Uh, so my, um, baseline, um, just my libraries for Android are like 16, 16.7

megabytes, whereas iOS side, his are like 55 megabytes.

Big difference when you're talking about, you wanted to get smaller app size.

So he, he figured out a way just this last week or two weeks ago.

He's like, there was all these different things that he thought his scripts were

taking out that they weren't taking out.

Like a lot of debug information and a lot of like, like comments and, you know,

stuff like that, that actually bloat, but aren't actually required in this build.

Cause no one ever actually looks at the PHP.

You can't actually even see it when it's inside the device anyway.

Yeah.

Um, so he stripped, stripped his down from 55 to 22 megabytes.

And I was like, holy cow.

And I was like, I, I asked him, I was like, I wonder if I could do that with mine too.

And he's like, no, man, you're already at 16 megabytes.

There's no way I got mine down to seven megabytes.

So now mine's way even smaller.

I'm like, top that, you know, uh, so we're still, yeah.

Um, there is, there is inherently, there's another one too.

Like, so I've got, uh, support for, uh, the INTL extension in PHP.

Uh, he still has to work on, on that, but INTL is what, so, uh, filament is a very

popular, I guess it's a framework or, uh, like plugin or whatever for, for Laravel.

Um, that requires INTL because they do a lot of number format or stuff, which

uses INTL, which underneath that is, uh, uh, another extension called ICU.

It's the internationalization codex, Unicode, something like that.

Yeah.

ICU doesn't have any kind of package config or any way to like make file it, uh,

easily.

So I had to be compiled twice and it took me, you know, about a week to figure

out how to, how to get it.

The problem is it adds about like 30 megabytes or something to the build.

So now if you, uh, install native PHP for Android, it's going to ask you, do

you want to install with or without ICU support?

That's basically, are you going to do like, um, uh, filament or not?

Um, anytime you use like the number facade with the format function, that's

another thing that you're going to need INTL ICU for.

So, uh, we wanted to make that optional.

We didn't want to force people to have this bigger builds because if you're

not using it, then you don't need it and it could be a lighter weight thing.

And we'll do the same thing when he's got it done for iOS.

He's just got to find the time to do that.

But so there it was asking back, back to the question, uh, I, you know, asking

about like what, uh, you know, what about Android?

And he's like, now man, it's going to be a couple of years.

And for me, my, I've, I've done SAS startups projects before that ended up

failing.

And I think my drive for those was entrepreneurial solely.

I wanted to make money and they never worked out for one reason or another.

This is the first and the only time so far that I actually started a project

with just the motivation of wanting to help my friend.

I didn't think it would turn into anything more than, well, it's not that I

didn't think it would or wouldn't actually, I did, I did have a lot of high

hopes for it.

Actually, I saw a lot of opportunity in being able to do this, but my drive was

like, he's so busy, he can't get to this.

I need to do this.

He's like, nobody else is doing anything about it.

And I, I just like, I just dove in and I didn't even tell him about it.

Uh, over the next couple of weeks, I would ask him different questions of like,

Hey, did you have this extension and what does your file size look like?

And, you know, that kind of stuff.

And at one point he was like, Hey, are you like building the Android thing?

And I was like, uh-huh.

And he's like, are you trying to, right?

He's like, are you going to compete with me?

Or I was like, no, I want to contribute.

I want to help.

I want to, you know, he's like, and he's like, we should start a company.

And we did, we started, uh, Bifrost technology and, um, yeah, we've ever

since then everything's, my whole life's been totally different, you know,

since starting working on this thing.

So, um, there's a lot involved, you know, after this, yeah, it's, it's a very much

my ADHD brain loves it because I'm, if I want to add like one new, um, you know,

location function to the library, I have to have like seven projects open

simultaneously for testing, for compiling the function PHP to, and then

documenting everything.

Like it's, it's a, it's a lot involved with, with everything.

So, um, and there's some really cool things we're working on too for the

future that, uh, just stay tuned to some of the stuff that we're working on

right now, it's really exciting.

That's great.

I think this is like a great thing because sometimes I was like, I have to

have like a, the two side of the story.

For example, for me, I have, uh, uh, the, the host of, uh, the SunTax FM.

I have the two hosts and also one of the agents, I have like the two co-founder.

It's always like, uh, you will see, you will see different perspective of

things for the same product, the same people that are working on it will

have like a different background experience, how they are seeing things.

Which is, I think, what is make the projects unique?

Because if, if we have the same mindset, if you have everything, I think it

will not like a move the needle so, so long.

So I think having that diversity and as you mentioned right now, Simon is

working on the iOS and you are working on the iPhone.

So it will move, think a lot smoother on the, and maybe it will help.

I'm not, maybe it will help like the push the, the, the product in the right

direction in, in the faster way, because currently maybe there is another one

working on the same product, but they're working on the same thing, but for

iOS and Android.

So currently you have an advantage to have like a someone helping you to achieve

the thing that you are working on faster and you can rely on and they can

help you with that, which is really great.

So I think that's like a, the thing that is good about finding a good partner

for our products, because this is like, which will be the, the, the, the, the

goal of that's a partnership.

It's like to move the needle fast and to make the products feel smoother and

the experience for the other people as well.

So that's great.

I think we covered some good ground for the product and I would love to get

two questions.

So the first one, it will be some listen or the thing that you learn along

the way with building these products.

And the second one, it will be ask after the answer.

Okay.

So what's something I've learned tech, tech wise, I'm learning stuff every

single day I'm learning so many things.

That's that tech wise, that would be a very, there's a lot of answers for that.

I think like learning how to compile PHP, how to, I think this is maybe

something everybody's learning now too, is like how to incorporate AI.

Effectively.

I think one of the better questions I've asked AI was like, how do I

optimize you for me?

Right.

Like, and it would tell you, like, these are the right ways to go about

things, right, or some better ways to do it.

And then you take that answer and you ask it again, right?

So you, you, you're, it's kind of like this iterative or re iterative or

recursive way to like, you're, I'm constantly getting AI better suited for me.

And I've gone from like a couple of months ago to like, we, you know, we

need to hire somebody to help with this, this and this to for a couple

hundred bucks a month, we can have AI do most of this for us.

And, and it's, I think, I think that's like a, like a bad word to say to

developers these days, especially when you're talking about not hiring somebody.

But we have to be efficient for our customers more than anything.

Like we have to put our customers first.

And the responsibility we have to the people that have paid us money, we owe

that back to them to be very efficient.

I feel with the funds that we've garnished from them, right?

So if AI is the right way to do that, we should explore that at the very least

because it is advancing every day or every hour, I feel, I know, like, uh,

some people I've talked to, they were like, I tried AI a couple of months ago

and it just, it wasn't doing what I'm like, yeah, but have you tried it

since Tuesday because all of this stuff has happened.

Like it's constantly very much, uh, changing and getting better.

And it's, uh, I neglected it almost completely for so long that, um, I didn't

have a baseline and so I'm trying to catch up to like a baseline for integrating

with it, uh, integrating it into my life and into the projects and into things.

And, and having it know and understand, um, you know, the ultimate, like the big

picture of things and then microscopically as well, like some of the smaller things.

So I think, I think that's been like, that's an ongoing thing of, you know,

something I'm learning, uh, is the right, you know, when to use it, when not to use

it, um, and to what effect and to what amount we should be using it.

Um, but I think like to have it do the majority of the work and then you're

reviewing it or even have it review itself with a different agent and then

give you its summary and then you, now you've, you know, instead of like just

doing all the work that could take you a week to do, you're having it give you,

you know, 10 different options or ways to build something that you're, you're

reviewing those different options and you can really just think about the

problem instead of how to implement it.

If I have five, uh, five arrays that I want to merge on a specific key and then

order it by a certain thing, that could take me a couple of hours to go through

docs and try to figure it all out, or I can just tell AI to do it, review it,

have it write a test for itself, make sure that the test is passing what I

wanted to pass and it's done in five minutes, right?

Why would I not want to do that?

You know, um, maybe that's just me trying to, uh, not feel guilty for using

AI as much as I do.

But again, I think it does go back to like, we have to be, we have to be

responsible, um, with the project.

And I think AI has a big, a big role to play in that.

What I've learned myself tech wise, again, the whole compiling PHP, Android,

Kotlin, I'm not an Android developer.

I don't know a lot about like, there's a lot of different SDKs and

Gradle versions and there's things that I'm learning as I go along.

Um, and again, asking AI, like why is this this way and why is it this way?

Well, how should I, um, how should I construct, uh, or organize the project

to best handle all the different use cases and stuff like that.

There's also some Android developers that I've known for a while that I send

them code snippets to that they can look at and they can give me some

direct feedback too.

So that's, that's also helpful to make sure that we're doing things again,

responsibly and in the right direction.

Um, that's what I've learned tech wise.

I think the biggest thing that I've learned with having a successful

side project, we'll put it that way, is it's one thing to build something.

It's a completely different thing to support the thing that you've built.

I took a couple of months to build out this whole implementation for Android.

Supporting it is, uh, a lot more work.

Uh, having docs, um, well constructed, having, um, support channels for

people that are having issues, um, supported, uh, knowing how to even just

like offload some of that work to a certain person, especially now we're

taking money and we're under an LLC.

They have to sign documents that and not just NDAs, but like, what if they

take some of the work and do something else?

But what are they allowed to, how much has to be on our servers?

How much does a lawyer cost to talk to about all that?

Like there's so many other things to support.

There's one thing to just like build something, create something, but as a business

owner, and I knew some of this to a certain extent, but, um, you know, when

it was really just kind of me and Simon, we have a few contributors as well.

Um, big shout out to Esser and, uh, oh my God, put me on the spot.

I did it myself.

Esser and Pete and Willem and Steven, uh, and, uh, Hassan, they've all contributed

greatly and they're doing a lot of the front work for us to, especially with

the support stuff there in the discord channels, answering a lot of questions

that I just would never have time to do any of the work if I was doing all that

stuff.

So having the infrastructure in place.

I think that's since, um, we stopped the early access pricing.

That was, that was very intentional, uh, timing for us to do that.

So I don't know if you follow it along with any of it at all, but it used to be

like max $250 a year to get an unlimited number of licenses, uh, to, to

distribute the app.

Now it's $2,500 a year because there's reasons for that.

I still justified in that pricing because if you have a organization, you

have 50 developers under you or, you know, some like a large team and they're

all building apps, then $2,500 a year is not really much for unlimited on that.

You can build as many apps, distribute as many apps as you want to for all

of your clients that you want to, I can take one license and go find a client

to build an F form and, uh, just one is a hundred bucks a year.

So if you're not making a hundred bucks a year on a single license, then, you

know, whatever, but the price went up and sales went down, which

means, you know, we're not getting so many people coming into support, which

has given us a huge opportunity to, um, go back and fill in the infrastructure

for the company that we really need for the next phase of the whole project.

And we are by far not done, um, with where we're going, what we're doing.

There's a, uh, there's a new band that I really like sleep token.

And there's a phrase in one of their songs that says the gods that you

thought we're dying, we're just sharpening their blades.

And so we've been kind of quiet the last month or so, but we're not, we are

not taking it easy by any, any, um, aspect.

And the next, the next big thing that, uh, everyone will know about within

a month or two, um, it's, it's a very, very large under undertaking.

It's very much going to help a lot of people, um, see where this, the projects

really ultimately going to end up going and that's not even all of it.

It's that's really like we're already working on a phase three for everything

as well too.

So, you know, stay tuned, um, stick around.

We know that that PHP is better than JavaScript.

We're very opinionated about that.

I, you, you might not be, but, um, but I promise I think that I think that if

you don't know that, I think that there's some underlying, uh, core that's maybe

misplaced, um, there's some underlying, like maybe you just think of PHP in a

certain way that that's one way to think about PHP, but it's not the only way to

think about PHP.

So I don't know the face you made.

It makes me want to ask you.

Sure, go ahead.

What, what, what, uh, so, um, do you, do you disagree?

That's my first question.

Do you think PHP is lesser than JavaScript?

Uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't pay me that way.

So I will just give you a background of my, like a technology that I've been

working with.

I have been using PHP for the last, uh, like, uh, for the startup I was working

with for like a two years on something like this.

I have been mostly like, uh, doing full stack JavaScript development.

So not just on the backend of reacts and views on the front.

And for me, I don't see that PHP is better than JavaScript or JavaScript is

better than PHP, but there is a tool for the right job.

I don't see it like that, but I see like a everything or every is like a problem.

Have the right tool to solve it.

So it's either like a JavaScript or PHP.

So I don't like to have a preference in terms of, I do hate this one and do

like this one.

It's just a matter of finding the right thing for the right product.

So this is like, I'll rephrase.

I feel PHP is better than JavaScript for server side technologies, which is what

an Android and iOS devices, you can get away with some things with node.

There's clearly things that I can't do in a browser with PHP, right?

Unless you're doing some of that weird funky stuff that people like to do.

What is that called?

Whether running like the, I forget what it's called, the code inside the browser.

It's kind of weird.

Um, the servers components, server components.

No, I can't remember what it is.

Uh, maybe, maybe it is, but there's like, you can run like C in the browser.

Or the WebAssembly, the WebAssembly, the WebAssembly.

Yeah.

So like that's a little strange to me.

Maybe it's great.

I don't know, but you know, I can't do, I can use LiveWire, but that's using

JavaScript under the hood anyway.

Right.

So yeah, there are clearly things that I cannot do on the front end with PHP.

But, uh, I do believe PHP for the server side technology is far superior just

because number one, it's been around a lot longer.

Uh, number two, uh, it can actually talk directly to, like in our case, we're

talking directly to C.

We're talking to the hardware directly from PHP.

I don't think you can do that from JavaScript.

It always has to be bridged through some other mechanism.

Uh, so I'll give you that.

I, I agree.

I agree.

There's the right, the right tool for the right job.

I'm not going to do a, uh, uh, PHP alert package or, you know, like, um, you

know, some really cool, you can't do Ajax or asynchronous natively with PHP.

You have to always kind of use some other threading mechanism for that.

So I agree.

I'll agree with you on that for sure.

It makes sense.

For the right, for the right, for the right job, you have to have the right tool.

I just feel like the right tool for building for both iOS and Android.

Uh, PHP is, is more strongly suited because it can talk directly to the hardware.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Got the point.

Yeah.

Then no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not like that anyway.

So the wrong.

I like the questions.

The second question, I think it will be also the, the last part of our

the, the, the big, the, like a part of the episode, if we like, uh, make a

video of day to day in a life of chain, what will be, this would be the question.

Um, so that greatly differs depending on my day.

Today I'm swamped with meetings and podcasts and doctor's appointments for summer

camp and all that stuff, you know, um, tomorrow I've got a pretty light day.

If I, if I have nothing else really kind of going on, um, I lately with the new

project, uh, that we're working on, that I'm, I'm working on, I'm really just

focused on this thing.

I'm up until two or three o'clock in the morning and I'm up again around seven

or eight in the morning.

I, uh, should get an IV of coffee in my arm just because I'm completely, I, I

know I, I look really old, but I'm only 19.

No, I'm just kidding.

Um, it's just because I don't sleep.

Um, this is a thing that I found though, that like I thrive in that sort of environment.

Um, I, the reason I had the back surgery back in 2016 and then again in 2023 was,

uh, is, is because I work so hard.

I, I had this, um, I just like zone out and just focus on getting the thing done.

And I'll end up working a hundred hour weeks, um, doing that to my own detriment.

And I've, I've had to figure out like a way to balance that.

So I do try to, um, we have a membership to the gym and I've been going to the gym.

I have reminders now on my phone to make sure that I walk and I drink enough water

and you know, all that kind of stuff.

Um, cause it's very difficult for me to pull myself away from the things that I'm

working on when I'm working on it.

When I feel like I have something accomplished or something to show or ready

for distribution or whatever that is, I will take time away from, um, like when

we came out with version one of, of native PHP, I took some time, not really

away from the product, but really more until like building the infrastructure.

So I did take time away from the product and, and adding more libraries and stuff

like that to the product because we had to get other things ready for not just

the next phase, but to really support this in a long-term fashion.

So, um, my day to day, I am constantly, this is like a brand new, it's not even a

year old MacBook in the battery life is already like, you know, four hours or

something just because it's always plugged in and I'm always on it.

I have to get that at some point updated.

Um, hopefully they can do it quickly or I just get another one, I guess.

And I don't know, I had to figure that out, but, um, I'm constantly problem

solving, I'm, I'm, I'm finding problems, I'm solving them.

I'm organizing the problems so that I can knock as many of them out in one

swing that I can, like I said, I'll have like seven projects open up when I do

anything to, um, to work on some of the native functionalities.

So while I'm in there, I may as well do not just fix this one bug, but have a

bunch lined up that I can go in and either fix bugs or add more functionality to it.

So constantly I have like eight of these shirts.

This is all I wear.

This is all I wear.

Like I'm just native PHP all the time.

Um, I feel like if, if like no one should be a bigger cheerleader or no one

should be a bigger, um, advocate than the owners of the company, right?

Yeah, that's so I, I think like, and there's people that really, really, they're

already building apps and putting it out to stores and they're making money and

doing stuff and it's like, that's awesome.

I can't let them be more excited than me.

I have to be the most excited about this project, right?

Cause if they, if they surpass us, then what does that say really about us, right?

As far as the excitement goes.

Um, and so I've, I've always got to be like thinking like the next best things.

And we have a lot of plans.

A lot of them were already working on a lot of things that are down the, down

the line a little bit more, but I'm really excited about the project.

And I feel like there, there's several years of work ahead of me, which is why

I'm, I'm up at seven and up until three every day.

Cause there's just so much work to do.

So, um, yeah, that's my, that's my day in the life of Shane.

Yep.

That's great.

So I think that's will be it for today's episode.

So thank you so much Shane for staying with us to be able to make this podcast.

And for the last section, I would love to like, uh, have you, like, uh,

where people can find you online.

So all the social media, all the link that you would love to share with us, I

will be posting all the link that we mentioned over this episode on the

show, not if you are, if you are listening or watching us from Spotify,

Apple podcasts or Amazon music.

If you are watching us from YouTube, you will see that in the video description.

So this would be your take, Sean.

Yeah.

So, uh, I, I'm, I have blue sky.

I just, you know, some habits die hard, I guess.

And I just, I'm always on X.

So Shane D Rosenthal, uh, you could put a link in the show notes or whatever.

And then, um, that's, that's pretty much, if you want to get my attention,

that's probably the best place.

We also have a discord server, um, for native PHP.

And I'm, I go in there at least once a day, just to poke around and see what

other people are building and doing.

I get inspired by that.

I like to answer some people's questions about native PHP there.

Um, the link for that is native, it's at native PHP.com on our website.

If you just scroll to the bottom, there's all of our social links are there.

Um, and yeah, I think native PHP.com, mobile slash mobile, get a license.

Um, even if it's just a personal license, a hundred bucks a year.

Uh, if you're doing more than like one project at a time, there's a 10 pack

for seven 50, you save a couple hundred bucks, or if you're, uh, enterprise

level or two, you know, larger team.

Um, and we want to talk to people that are in that, in that position.

We want to support longer term, like what can we do for you?

We've actually recently done a couple of builds for some bigger

organizations that have required us to add some functionality to the app.

And we were, we fast track that for them.

So if there's something that this doesn't do and you're waiting for that,

get ahold of us because we'll, we want to support you.

That's really what we're here for more than anything.

That's great.

So thank you so much for mentioning all of that.

And thank you so much for the, the time to spend with us for today.

Nice man.

Thank you so much.

It's been great.