Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Author: Tom (Page 183 of 428)

My Plans For 2016 (What Are Yours?)

This time of year, people usually do a sort of retrospective on their blog, their podcast, or whatever form of media they use most. And they are a lot of fun to read.

I’ve never really done that, though. Instead, I’ve often talked about what I hope to accomplish over the next year or so.

But last year, while working on some things, I decided that I  wanted to continue to focus my efforts on WordPress and really work at learning as much as possible. It would help me grow my business, there are plenty of tangential technologies around it to keep my sharp on certain things, and it’s what I’m happiest doing. There’s almost no downside.

Anyway, I’m not one of those who subscribes to New Year’s Resolutions because I figure now is as good as time as any to start a new habit.

But when you’ve read the books you set out to read, finished the planned workouts, and achieved other goals you listed a little while ago, why not start over with a few more?

The thing is, it’s super hard to account for a variable amount of stuff that will inevitably show up over the next year that may disrupt your goals. And if you get too legalistic about said goals, then the things that come up may end up being far more frustrating than the positive experiences they could be.

With that said, I thought I might share a little bit about my plans for 2016. Specifically, what I hope to do and then maybe do a check-in every quarter or so to see how they are going.

If nothing else, it’ll be neat to review what I’ve set out to read and what I’ve accomplished.

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Ship Fast and Iterate

One of the phrases many involved in software will likely hear (especially early in their career) is “Ship fast and iterate.”

And there’s definitely something to that when it’s been implemented correctly. But when I’ve watched others trying to adopt this idea when building something for WordPress, it seems like something gets lost in translation.

Ship Fast and Iterate

No, this is not a critique of other companies or developers. No, this is not saying that we’re all like this. No, this is not saying that I’m above this.

If anything, it’s a reflection on the idea and what it means for those of us who are building things on WordPress and how we may be more more mindful of the work that we’re doing.

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Don’t Report Issues on GitHub

In the admittedly short time I’ve worked in software development, I’ve rarely seen a site like GitHub have such a level of success especially for something as nerdy as version control.

Linktocat has always been one of my favorites.

Linktocat has always been one of my favorites.

Don’t get me wrong: Version Control is a must have for any serious software development shops – be it a single person or a team of people. But the fact the site works so well, has a variety of quality clients, and doesn’t  look like, y’know, developers built the site is such a huge plus.

And as much as I love open source and what GitHub has brought us, I often see development shops asking users to report issues on GitHub whenever they see them.

That’s never sat well with me.

The thing is, even though GitHub looks good, even though it works well, and even though it does its job well at doing what it’s meant to do, it’s still targeting an audience that’s very rarely going to be our core audience.

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Must Read WordPress Articles

During the holidays, most of us slow down a bit from what we’re used to doing every day so that we can actually hang out with friends and family or so that we can catch up on something we’ve waited a long time to do.

You know, like reading or a playing a game or something like that.

Pocket

One of the things that I have a habit of doing is throwing a ton of content into Pocket and then planning to read it when I actually have time.

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