It's Not Easy, But I'm Making Progress

I'm writing this late on New Year's Eve, as my last blog post of the year. This winter holiday has been hectic to say the least. I'm making a demo site in Laravel that I can use in lieu of a portfolio, and it's quite the struggle!

I'm the DJ, Gemini's the rapper

I've been telling Gemini exactly what I want, and the AI whips up the code. The problem is, Gemini is very focused on solving my problems rather than teaching me the best way to approach certain architectural considerations. For example, I wanted some custom CSS, so two whole days were spent on a tailored stylesheet to override Filament's built-in use of Tailwind CSS.

Eventually when I questioned why I have to override so much, Gemini admitted that we should have used Tailwind from the beginning.

The admin homepage trap

Similarly, we worked together to make a presentable showcase for the admin homepage, along with three overviews for each of three demos. Of course, I finally realised I should have put those static pages in Laravel, not the Filament admin. Another waste of time.

So today, on New Year's Eve, I spent almost 10 hours completely rebuilding the demo site the right way. I didn't quite finish, but I'm much happier with the organisation.

Looking ahead

I must remind myself that it takes time to get familiar with a new framework. I've done well this last week, even if I have leaned on Gemini too much. If I keep this up for six months I should be a dab hand at spinning up Filament admin sites, so my promise for 2026 is that I'll stick with it. This journey has just begun! Happy New Year folks!