Author: Tom (Page 163 of 428)

The Facets of a WordPress Developer

May 17, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Do a few Internet searches for “WordPress developer” and you’re bound to find more than a few posts on the topic. Though my goal isn’t to add to the plethora of articles that already exist, there are a few thoughts I have as it relates to the topic.

And all of it comes from time spent working in the WordPress economy, working with others, talking with others, and so on.

This isn’t a post about how to hire, what salaries should be, or how to interview a person. It just has to do with the type of work we do.

Beginner Resources for JavaScript and jQuery

May 16, 2016 / Tom

This month, I published two articles on Envato about resources for JavaScript and jQuery.

For those who get involved in a form of development – be it back-end, front-end, or some other type of developer – we end up forgetting what it was like not to know how to do so something. It’s kind of like riding a bike or swimming, right?

We may remember when we learned, but how much do we remember about losing our balance or not knowing how to keep our head above water?

And that’s what I think it’s like to be on the outside of a programming language, how it interacts with third-party components (like the browser or the filesystem), and how the language is structured.

Because of that, I think it’s important to publish resources periodically on topics like this for those who are looking to get started.

Version Control With Git: A Guide From Tower

May 13, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to version control with Git, it’s no secret that I’m a fan of Tower. In the WordPress development community, it’s not at all uncommon to hear others talk about why they love or hate GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Subversion, or whatever source control system they are opting to use.

That said, I think it’s fair to say that learning Git has its advantages. Although WordPress uses Subversion for core, themes, and plugins, many developers (myself included) opt to use GitHub for some our projects. This doesn’t mean that learning Subversion should be optional, but I think learning how to use both is important.

For this post, though, I’m talking specifically about Git. Case in point: If you’re looking to contribute to some of the most popular plugins (such as Easy Digital Downloads) then you’ve nothing to lose with this.

So what’s a good resource for doing just that?

Side-Stepping the WordPress API

May 12, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When first getting into programming or when first getting involved with a particular language, one of the most common questions new developers ask is:

What’s something I can build?

And it’s a good question, isn’t it? I mean, anyone who is involved in programming has been in that position before: We’ve learned enough of a language to be dangerous, we’ve worked through all of the provided examples, but we’ve got no idea what else to build.

There are some things we can reference for other developers to try and create:

Take a look at one of your favorite programs and try to recreate it.
Attempt to create one of your favorite features of a given program.
Study some open source code from one language and try to recreate it in your language.
And so on.

All of these examples are fine, but what happens when you’re a little more experience with both a language, a framework or foundation, and you have to work to make something happen, and you’re not quite sure how to do it in code?

That is, you can explain it at a high-level and perhaps even diagram it out on a piece of paper using a data structure or something similar, but you aren’t familiar enough with the core foundation or framework for how to do something.

What do you do then?

The Tension of Refactoring Legacy Code, Part 3

May 11, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

The last two posts have talked specifically about what it’s like to work specifically on refactoring legacy code whether it be something that we’ve previously worked on or something that we’ve inherited from someone else.

In the first post, I talked about the idea of “leaving the campground cleaner than you found it” which is the Boy Scout rule applied to programming.
In the second post, I talked about getting a bit reflective about the choices we’ve made as it relates to some of the code we encounter in our work and how it can affect our self-confidence or our ability.

And though I think there’s more than can be said as it relates to this topic (I mean, it has the potential to be a very long discussion, doesn’t it?). I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about what it’s like to try to more modern code on top of what’s essentially a legacy application.

Specifically, I want to share a few thoughts on what it means to write code (that will likely need refactoring at some point) on top of WordPress.

Note: This post ended up being much longer than I anticipated, but I hope you read it in its entirety, enjoy it, and feel free to comment on it, as well.