We use a lot of it Nginx, Laravel, Ubuntu, Vue, Yarn, Redis, Beanstalkd, MySQL, Composer, Glide, Homestead, Flysystem, Fractal, Carbon, PHPUnit, NPM, React, jQuery, Java, SSH, Sequel Pro, BackupPC …
We create a lot of it ± 200 packages on Packagist ± 20 000 000 downloads total, ±1 800 000 downloads a month Most popular ones: laravel-backup, laravel-medialibrary, laravel-permission Newest ones: laravel-view-models, laravel-blade-x Postcardware
The setting Zend Framework 1 PHP world was pretty stale around 2012 Laravel 4: developer happiness, clear syntax Laracasts: miniseries on package development + Travis
Beyond the first package Blender: conversion from Zend Framework to Laravel A lot of functionalities that could be helpful to other developers New packages: laravel-newsletter, laravel-medialib, laravel- analytics Opensourcing Blender itself Very positive feedback from the community
Creating a habit Every package gets born inside a client project Almost every client project results in a package: laravel-sitemap, opening-hours, … Teamwork Creating Blade X was a fun experience
Making time Time consuming Coding, writing tests, writing docs, getting the word out Maintenance, responding to issues, reviewing PRs 6000 issues, 5000 PRs
Benefits of creating packages A lot of learning by coding up the package and writing tests Feedback from the community Free code! Dogfooding Getting our name out there
Getting exposure Speaking at conferences Company name becomes a seal of quality More interesting projects International clients Hiring very talented people