Over Engineered

Hosted by Chris Morrell

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Oct 2025

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About the show

A podcast where we explore unimportant programming questions (mostly PHP/Laravel/JavaScript) in extreme detail.

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34 recent

October 15, 2025Episode 331 hr 9 min

Storing Files in the Database w/ Bogdan Kharchenko and Skyler Katz

Sometimes you have files or other large chunks of data that you need to associate with a record in your database. It might be convenient to just store that as base64-encoded data or HTML in a "longtext" column, but that can eventually cause issues—especially as the table grows. What other options are there?In this episode of Over Engineered, we go back to the show's roots and try to find the absolute best solution to a problem we already have an acceptable solution for.

August 23, 2025Episode 321 hr 11 min

Kilopixel Retro w/ Ben Holmen + Joe Tannenbaum

At the beginning of August, after six years of working on it on-and-off, Ben Holmen took his Kilopixel project live. It's a 1000 pixel display, where each pixel has to be manually toggled by a custom CNC rig, and it's whimsical and impractical and took the internet by storm. In today's episode, Chris chats with Ben and Joe about the whole project and what's next for the display.Links:KilopixelI spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel displayThe Kilopixel recapShow HNKilopixel on Side ProjectsBen Holmen on Over Engineered

August 8, 2025Episode 311 hr 54 min

(Actually good) browser testing w/ Nuno Maduro

Up until now, browser testing in Laravel has felt… bad. Dusk was a huge step over nothing, but it's been slow and flaky and just waiting to be replaced with something better. And with Pest 4, Nuno's cracked it!In today's episode of Over Engineered with dig into the technical details of what makes browser testing in Pest 4 both very fast and much more stable than Dusk and all the other browser testing approaches that came before it.Links:PestNuno Maduro (all his socials)PlaywrightNuno's livestream of this episode

June 26, 2025Episode 301 hr 41 min

Fostering Community w/ Alex Hillman

Alex Hillman has been thinking about and actively supporting communities for decades. In this episode, Chris and Alex talk about lessons he's learned along the way that can help meetup organizers tend their local tech communities, and brainstorm about ways that we can organize together to support meetups in general.Links:tiny.mbastackingthebricks.comindyhall.org10k.cityphpx.world

April 22, 2025Episode 292 hr 18 min

Native PHP w/ Simon Hamp

Simon Hamp and Marcel Pociot have been working on NativePHP for a number of years, and Simon just surprised with world at Laracon EU with a NativePHP for Mobile announcement. In this episode, Simon and Chris get deep into the the NativePHP innards, explore sustainable open source, and generally just have a good time for <<checks watch>> over two hours 😅Links:NativePHPZephpyrdagger

April 11, 2025Episode 281 hr 20 min

The next era of Larabelles w/ Zuzana Kunckova

Zuzana Kunckova started Larabelles five years ago, and over that time it has grown into an important part of the Laravel community. In today's episode, Zuzana and Chris talk about the future of Larabelles now that she has more time to dedicate to it.Links:LarabellesSponsor Larabelles on GitHubSponsor Larabelles on PatreonOther ways to support Larabelles

April 7, 20251 hr 11 min

PHP × NYC Chaos-Cast™

What happens when you get a bunch of Laravel podcasters + a bunch of mics in a room? Chaos, apparently.Recorded live after PHP × NYC with Ben Holmen, John Drexler, Daniel Coulbourne, Chris Morrell, Ian Landsman, Dave Hicking, and Joe Tannenbaum.

March 28, 2025Episode 271 hr 34 min

Running Small Teams w/ Dan Matthews & John Rudolph Drexler

There's lots of advice out there for running software teams, but much of it comes from large organizations with dozens or hundreds of developers. Smaller teams have different needs. On today's episode, we pick up from a question Dan asked on Bluesky and talk about how best to approach running a small development team.Links:Dan's Bluesky PostThunk

November 26, 2024Episode 261 hr 52 min

Event Sourcery w/ Shawn McCool

Shawn McCool has been talking about event sourcing for years, and recently started a new series of streams on the topic. In this episode, Chris and Shawn talk about event sourcing, Verbs, and community (among other things).Links:Shawn on TwitchEvent SourceryVerbs

October 18, 2024Episode 251 hr 15 min

Design Patterns w/ Mary Perry

Design patterns can be very useful, but can also be weaponized as a way to "prove" that someone is doing something the "wrong" way. Mary has been thinking a lot about the good side of knowing design patterns, so we sat down to chat about them.