365 Days of Code - Day 002

The second day of coding went fairly productive. I worked on the Laravel From Scratch 2026 (opens in a new tab) series, a new vimrc file (opens in a new tab), a prototype website for a client, and vibe coded a PHP time tracker (opens in a new tab).

The Laracasts (opens in a new tab) tutorial on Laravel lead me through setting up basic views and routes. I’ve done the tutorial before, but it was on a previous version of Laravel and over a year ago. The other issue with doing tutorials is not translating that knowledge directly into a more complex project. This directly lead me into two additional projects, vimrc and a client website.

The vimrc file is a configuration file for vim. I’ve preferred using vim for a long time, but I’ve never tried to really use it for development. Watching people who are quick with vim and emacs is quite extraordinary, and I wanted that quickness. After some evaluation, I decided to skip emacs, and stick with vim. Most IDEs support vim motions, and vi or vim is available on most machines. Setting up the vimrc file allowed me to configure a number of default options, such as line numbers and relative line numbers.

The client project is something I’ve sent a contract out to them for development. The contract wasn’t approved, but I’m not giving up. I wanted the business, but don’t believe my salesmanship was truly up to the standards necessary. I do believe that I can develop a truly impressive website that can help their business. Therefore, I’m using the Laracasts tutorial to help guide me through the development of the core site. My intention is to get a frontend prototype developed, so I can show them what they have been missing.

Finally, I ended the programming day by essentially vibe coding a working time tracker using PHP. I technically didn’t vibe code the site, as I didn’t use voice, and copied and reviewed all the code manually. I still didn’t write any of the code by hand. I’ve used Toggl for a long time to track time across different projects when needed. But, Toggl costs money, and it is just a time tracker. I decided I can get the core functionality I needed from a custom coded application. It can be found at Time Tracker (opens in a new tab), and you can try it for yourself.