Lobster rolls, boom parties, and crashed workers

In this episode, Michael and Jake recap Laracon US Boston, from Malaysian food and an undefeated dodgeball run to Laraprom, the great nachos-with-rice debate, conference logistics, Aaron Francis stepping into Laravel’s VP of Marketing and Community role, and a reminder to make room for silly software. Jake shares his work rebuilding Boom Party, the fast-paced Bomberman clone his team used to play after stand-up, along with hosting decisions and a creative workflow involving Claude, Gemini, and Suno. Michael closes things out with what was supposed to be an easy Pest 5 upgrade but turned into a much bigger test-suite adventure: converting old PHPUnit-style tests, untangling inheritance, tracking down mysterious parallel test failures, discovering the pain of stray exit statements, and ultimately getting repeat runs across an approximately 18,000-test suite down to just eight seconds. **Show links** - Pomplamoose - Spindrift - IZZE - Laracon US - Aaron Francis - Sidecar - Whimsy-driven development by Christina Martinez - Boom Party - Fly.io