At this point in my career, I’ve been working remotely more than I have ever been in an office. I don’t ever want to have to return into an office unless it’s absolutely necessary. Part of working like this, though, is maintaining a sense of self-discipline for the backlog of tasks required for work and doing so in such a way that makes it easy for me to focus on what I’m working on, what’s next, and what’s in the backlog. (If you’re a developer and you’re reading this, then you’re probably thinking kanban and you’re not wrong – but what I’m getting at is slightly different). Before getting to ..read more

The last point made in 10 hard-to-swallow truths they won’t tell you about software engineer job – in the article I’ve been discussing for the past few months – the author ends on a single point that has nothing to do with development or anything related to technology. You will profit more from good soft skills than from good technical skills. He summarizes the statement like this: Technical skills are the ones you can learn easily. … It’s just a matter of practice. On the other hand, soft skills are much harder to improve. … You must do things you are not comfortable with. This is somethi ..read more

In the penultimate note from What Do You Expect From Being a Software Developer?, Mensur makes the following claim: It will be almost impossible to disconnect from your job If you’re someone new to the industry – be it someone who’s up and coming from high school or university or if you’re someone who’s switched careers – comments like this can make it seem daunting. Note, however, he also states: So I publicly admit, that I have a hard time disconnecting from work. This is good because it doesn’t have to be difficult to disconnect from your job. In fact, it shouldn’t be difficult to disco ..read more

However you’ve come across this article, it’s the eighth in which I am evaluating the claims of another developer’s article –  What Do You Expect From Being a Software Developer?  From the first part in the series: At the very least, perhaps these things will be something to keep in mind if you’re looking to enter the industry or even for who have been working in the industry. At most, that article is something that provides a solid perspective from one person’s experience (which likely echo many others, too). And I’ve been slowly working through each point since. In this post, I’m ..read more

The dictionary defines archenemy as “the chief enemy” where enemy is defined as: noun,plural en·e·mies. a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent. an armed foe; an opposing military force: The army attacked the enemy at dawn. And I mention this because the original states that “bugs will be your arch-enemy for life.” The arch-enemy of many a software developer. Obviously, this is hyperbole but if your primary job as a programmer is to ship functioning code and bugs prevent said code from ..read more

Site analytics are funny things regardless of how you use them (that is, through marketing, engagement, content, and so on). I say this because analytics give us information about: how long people are reading our content (per article, even), how many people are reading what we write, how much people are reading what we write, how often people are returning to read what we write, And all of this coalesces into informing the things about which we write and how we write about it. At least, this is my experience. The day to day experience of understanding analytics through the use of two mice. D ..read more

TL;DR: If you work with Laravel Valet and spin up new domains and then delete project directories whenever you’re done, Valet still maintains Nginx configurations on your system. This create orphaned configuration files yielding false positives for active domains and this article demonstrates how to remove them. Remove Orphaned Domains Given the situation when you’ve updated Valet or refreshed your SSL certificates and restart the software, you may see a list of domains that you no longer have active on your system. He’s so concerned about finding the orphaned domains. Also, he has two backpac ..read more

Heads Up! Originally, I wanted to include both how to identify anonymous functions in WordPress and how to unhook them; however, the more I began writing about the topic, the longer the article became. So I’ve split the content into two articles: This one outlines how to identify anonymous functions registered with hooks. A future article will detail how to de-register said functions. Previously, I explain how to identify and register anonymous functions in WordPress. As I wrote in the introduction: As I started writing, it became obvious it’s helpful to understand what PHP does behind-the-sc ..read more

There’s an old – relatively speaking of course – quote that says: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. Phil Karlton Though I think coming up with estimates for completing a task may be a close third (or at least somewhere pretty high on the list). A computer programmer, stressed, as she tries to come up with a clever name for a variable. Having worked as a contractor, in an agency, and in product work, I can say though there may be small variations on how estimates are handled, the basics are the same such that it goes something like this ..read more

Originally, this article started as an explanation for how to remove anonymous functions registered with WordPress. As I started writing, it became obvious it’s helpful to understand what PHP does behind-the-scenes when anonymous functions are registered. This dude clearly doesn’t understand anonymous functions. They eyes give it away. Furthermore, this helps give a deeper understanding as to why registered anonymous functions can be problematic and how we can deal with them on a technical level. Finally, it’s worth noting that I don’t take a hard stance on if anonymous functions should never ..read more