Check out the "Skills" navigation dropdown at laracasts.com.

I hope this doesn't sound self-serving, but I wanted PHP to have an educational resource that I could be proud of. One that mimics the modern code that developers are using in 2016...not 2005 (as you see in so many terrible PHP YouTube videos). Not quite sure what you mean. Why does the podcast help me upgrade my skills?

That query string lesson you linked to is just some code I whipped up. There's no pattern in place there, other than "construct simple code." The former lesson you linked to is about form objects, which a number of developers have written about. Pick up a general design patterns book, and do your best to work through it. They're a lot to take in, but you'll pick up some tips. Just be careful of taking them too far. Design patterns are meant to help you...they're not intended to lock you into uncomfortable architectures.

:)

No - but only because I've already built that functionality. If I were building Laracasts from scratch today, I would use Spark. Yes. Taylor is recording a series himself. It'll be available to watch the day Spark is released. Of course! I'm also looking forward to studying the source code. Always fun to see how others structure things.

Of course. I love hiking, playing chess with friends, whooping Taylor Otwell's butt at Rocket League, traveling, etc.

Maybe... My pal Chris Fidao has a site called Servers for Hackers, where he digs into this sort of material. https://serversforhackers.com/

I assume we'll see more and more apps, where the server-side is mostly an API. Everything helps takes place on the front-end. Luckily, tools like Vue are making this easier than ever before.

Don't get too overwhelmed. Only a very small fraction of people are able to understand these concepts. The rest quit. Stick with it long enough, and I promise you'll be part of the former group. The "dog at the keyboard" meme is so funny, because even developers with over a decade's worth of experience relate to it.

Don't use big words to sound smarter. Don't assume the viewer knows something they don't. Don't waste the viewer's time. Get to the point. Don't paste in massive blocks of code. Write it out, and explain what each line does. Show some level of passion for what you're teaching.