Author: Tom (Page 166 of 430)

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.

The Tension of Refactoring Legacy Code, Part 2

May 10, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the previous post on refactoring legacy code, I talked a bit about the challenges that we face not only as WordPress developers but as programmers in general as it relates to working with legacy code.

The short of it is that I believe we want to make sure the codebase is as optimized, clean, and well-organized as possible. But the reality of a project prevents us from doing this.

Deadlines can prevent us from refactoring legacy code.

Perhaps it comes in the form of the team we’re on; perhaps it comes from deadlines that are looming, or perhaps it comes from something else.

Whatever the case, we’ve established that a tension exists. And though I’ve talked about some general ideas as to how to deal with it, I haven’t really talked about my own experience in doing so.

The Tension of Refactoring Legacy Code, Part 1

May 9, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In a post last week, I talked about various problem spaces that exist in WordPress, but I also briefly touched on the idea of practical applications as it relates to writing WordPress-specific solutions.

Specifically, I made the comment (more or less in passing):

When I was in school, I had to take a class in Computational Theory. For the most part, I’m more of a fan of practical application, but I know that much of said practical applications are the concrete implementations of proven theories.

And then I went on to talk about more theoretical topics as it relates to solving problems in a given computing space (for us, that’d be WordPress).

$Computational Theory$

Since I spoke about the previous topic at this particular level, I thought it might be fun talk about a more accurate or more practical approach to writing WordPress-specific software.

Recently, I’ve been working on a codebase that’s a few years old. The desire to want to refactor the whole codebase is strong (and I know I’m not alone in feeling this way when it comes to working with previous projects).

But this is not pragmatic, and it’s not so for some different reasons. So over the next three posts, I thought I’d share a little bit about the state of the project, managing the tension that exists, and how to do what we can when we’re faced with this type of situation.

The Modern WordPress Server Stack

May 6, 2016 / Tom

During WordCamp San Diego, I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Carl Alexander speak on the topic of the modern WordPress Server Stack.

Modern WordPress Server Stack

A few notes:

If you’re not following Carl on Twitter, I recommend it. He’s an incredibly smart person who is doing some really neat things with WordPress.
If you’re not subscribed to his blog but are interested in advanced programming topics as it relates to WordPress, I recommend subscribing.
If you weren’t present for his talk, you can catch it on WordPress.tv.

With that said, Carl also included an article that accompanied his presentation on his blog and it’s something that I think makes for good reading.

I find this especially true if you’re someone who is at an intermediate level of WordPress development or if you’re someone who’s looking to learn more about server administration.

Using Console.app for Viewing PHP Logs

May 5, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When working with PHP, there are some great libraries and tools that make it easy for logging notices, warnings, errors, and so on within our code.

For what it’s worth, I think PHP does a pretty good job of doing this on its own, but if you need to write your custom logging code, there are plenty of off-the-shelf libraries that are helpful.

But that’s not the gist of this post. Instead, just as I think it’s important to make sure we’re providing reliable logging information, I think it’s important that we’re able to view said logs, as well.