Hi 👋, I’m Grant. A developer from Yorkshire, England.

I started out [lots of years ago] with Visual Basic writing chat bots for IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which was all the rage back then. Since then I've dabbled in lots of languages, built (and abandoned) lots of personal projects but never thought I would end up coding for anything other than a hobby.

I'm a full-stack PHP developer with a strong preference for backend. I continuously try to improve my skillset - In my opinion, if you don't like learning you shouldn't be a developer!

Here's some of the stuff I'm usually working with:

• Laravel - I love PHP, it is continually evolving in the right direction and Laravel makes life easier.
• Tailwind - I've never really enjoyed CSS, it stems from the days of having to write 5 million different styles for each browser, and now we just have to write them for different viewports instead. Alas, Tailwind makes CSS more enjoyable.
• JavaScript - My JS isn't as strong as my backend but I find Vue rather fun.
• Claude Code / Codex - I tend to run the CLI within PhpStorm using the JetBrains MCP to make things a bit more cohesive.

I'd like to get a bit more involved in open source projects, and stop abandoning personal projects!

• Contributed to Laravel framework & documentation
• My Laravel contribution featured in Laravel news
• Time Off Planner - I always struggle to plan time off so built a tool for myself, and decided to release it
• PHP IRC server, because why not? https://github.com/nebarg/phpirc
• Read-only IMAP app for safer agent mail access https://github.com/nebarg/imap-cli
• Wakatime dev stats alternative for personal use https://github.com/nebarg/dev-stats

I'm quite interested in learning Go or Rust or maybe even something like Elixir.

You can find me (lurking) on Twitter @grantbennett or BlueSky (I have Mastodon & Threads too but there's only so much lurking one can do.)