Deep-dive engineering education for PHP, Laravel, APIs, Go, and TypeScript.
Learn to build high-performance APIs, design strict monolithic boundaries, write custom static analysis rule engines, and compile type-safe frontend consumers. No tracking pixels, no marketing fluff.
As seen speaking at
Building Bulletproof Laravel APIs using Schema-First Contract Validation
Stop letting undocumented fields into your Laravel API. Write the JSON Schema first, then enforce it in middleware, DTOs, and your Pest test suite.
Messing around with Hermes and Tabstack
Steve and Tessa are messing around and building a Hermes agent with Tabstack and probably some other developer tools, too.
1:23:26
PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 32 Tessa Kriesel & Steve McDougall
A lively episode talking all things tabstack with Tessa Kriesel and Steve McDougall, oh also Steve wrote a book.
PHP Alive And Kicking
Stop Building CRUD APIs (do this instead)
Laravel Serbia · online
Structured Learning
Building Software in the AI Era
Master the tools, habits, and operating models needed to ship high-quality software in a day-to-day workflow shaped by LLMs, moving past outdated sprints and velocity metrics.
Engineering Management
Scale your engineering organization and build a high-performing team culture. Learn modern leadership frameworks for managing remote engineers, technical debt, and team coaching.
Bulk updates via async jobs
Move heavy bulk operations out of the request/response cycle with job resources. Enqueue work, return quickly, let clients poll for status.
Cursor-based pagination for stable lists
Use opaque cursors instead of numeric offsets for more stable pagination over changing data like feeds, logs, or events.
Trusted by Engineering Leaders
"Steve is one of the most thorough and thoughtful educators I've seen. He puts in a ton of effort and it clearly shows."
"To me, there's one word that comes to mind: 'passion'. There are only a handful of people with the same passion for programming as Steve."
"Steve brings knowledge and passion to the community, with easy to follow content that adds real value to any company that uses him."
Explore specific implementations?
All code samples from my books, API starter kits (with strict ULID schemas and RFC 9457 errors), and Go AST parser scripts are open source.