laravel-training-shop
Laravel Training
Introduction
In February 2019 I received a training course on Laravel, given by the unsurpassable Bobby Bouwmann.
The training consisted of 5 days, spread over 3 weeks. After an introduction that gave an overview of what Laravel is and what topics would be covered, there were two block of two days each, in which the material was explored in more depth.
This repository is my write-up of what I learned, did and experienced during the training.
Where I’m coming from
I have worked with Laravel before (both version 4 and 5) but, as with a plethora of other frameworks, my knowledge is mostly superficial.
You know the drill: dive in, get things done, move on.
Being presented with the opportunity to gain more in-depth knowledge of a framework my employer will be working with, I was excited to get started.
As with programming languages, I hate all frameworks equally, but for different reasons.
With Laravel, the things I dislike most are its Facades and helper functions.
One of the things I was really interested in was learning how to use the framework without these.
Another thing I was hoping to achieve during this training, is to set up some rules and guidelines for working with Laravel that is more sustainable for long-term projects.
Day one
The first day was spend going over all of the features Laravel has to offer.
This was done, not with a workshop day, but with a presentation.
The format was fairly open, allowing everyone to ask questions when needed.
The presentation was an excellent introduction into the framework. We were provided with all the information we needed to start understanding how Laravel works and how it is built. A lot of this information was sure to come up again in the various workshop sessions.
Although it was easy to follow and Bobby answered all questions with verve, I can understand if some of the attendees might feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of information.
For that matter, I think it was a wise decision to only have the presentation during the first week, to let it all sink in and give people time to process everything.
Day two
The second day was a week later. It was split between Eloquent and Models in the morning and Collections in the afternoon. Besides more a presentation oriented parts, this day also contained question-and-answer, walking through the code, live coding demonstrations and hands-on workshop elements.
We started with some knowledge and then more was added, followed by a practical example and a hands-on session where we had to program things ourselves. This was then repeated with the next topic.
This way, the information was built up layer for layer, with practical parts to cement the theoretical knowledge. I found this to rather enjoyable and by the end of the day I was looking forward to the next day.