DiscoverNo CompromisesWhen building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders
When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

Update: 2025-08-30
Share

Description

What do you do when you need to create some data but you haven't built out the UI for that data yet? A seeder is a great approach, but is it always the right one?

In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we dive into a real project where starting with the most complex feature made test data management painful. Instead of exploding the complexity of our seeders, we built a minimal UI to manage test data.

We also talk about some other unexpected benefits, and talk through the trade-offs and why detours like this should feel uncomfortable (and be tightly scoped).

  • (00:00 ) - Starting deep exposes messy user permutations

  • (02:45 ) - Seeder explosion vs. a minimal UI

  • (03:45 ) - Reframing the “detour” after using it

  • (05:30 ) - Why the mini-UI helped: faster iteration, fewer seed resets

  • (07:45 ) - Dogfooding + tester debugging benefits

  • (08:00 ) - Guardrails: detours should feel uneasy and stay tight

  • (09:00 ) - Silly bit


Need help on your Laravel project? Hire two experts and accelerate your progress.
Comments 
00:00
00:00
x

0.5x

0.8x

1.0x

1.25x

1.5x

2.0x

3.0x

Sleep Timer

Off

End of Episode

5 Minutes

10 Minutes

15 Minutes

30 Minutes

45 Minutes

60 Minutes

120 Minutes

When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

Joel Clermont and Aaron Saray