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Minimizing Distractions For Programming

October 3, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For anyone who’s been programming long enough, I’d venture to say that some of the most productive times of the day come when you’re in the zone.

You know what I mean, too: When you’re minimizing distractions, when you’re listening to whatever music helps you get into the groove, and whatever you’re working on feels almost effortless (not that it doesn’t come with it’s share frustration, but you’re just there and totally focused on the task at hand).

We know this feel.

At the same time, I think that it’s incredible that we get as much work done as we do. Granted, we all have different ways in which we work, but at any given time I could have the following applications open:

Email
Twitter
Slack (for chat)
Google Hangouts
Feedly
Downcast
Notifications from my phone (or tablet)
…and so on

And that’s in addition to my IDE. I’m sure the same can be said about you and your environment, too. But here’s the thing: Each of the above contributes to making sure we’re aware as many demands that we have being placed on us, but can you argue that they all make us more productive?
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Display an Error if a File Is Too Large for WordPress

October 2, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you’re working on a project for WordPress that’s going to allow users to upload files – be it a video, an image, a CSV, or any other type of data – then you’re likely going to be faced with a situation where you’re going to need to determine if a file is too large for WordPress.

Yeah, it’s a little too large.

What’s considered “too large” can be related to any number of factors:

The size of the file is larger than you want to accept (or the file system accepts)
A PHP timeout occurs when uploading a file because of its size
The file system doesn’t have enough space
…and so on.

Whatever the case may be, there are two things that you’re going to need to be able to do:

Determine if the file fits within constraint of the system (whatever the constraint is)
Display an error message to the user before the upload occurs

It doesn’t exactly provide for a stellar experience when trying to upload something only to have it rejected by the server without a proper error message, does it?

Writing Good Software Takes Time

October 1, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that the Internet has brought with it is this on demand culture. We can talk to people on demand, we can request information on demand, we can complain on demand, we can praise on demand, we can listen to music on demand, we can publish a blog post on demand, we can stream movies on demand.

Almost anything that you think of that can be done online can be done on demand.

Though we’re now in an age of virtual machines, byte code, interpreted languages, and far away from punch cards, writing good software is not something that can be done well on demand. This isn’t to say that we don’t have tools that help us move more quickly through the process of assembling various components – because we obviously do – but building software for yourself just as well as for others is something that takes time.

Hunter S. Thompson once said:

Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.

Granted, the idea of what is “right” in writing software is something that can be debated, but one thing that it cannot be argued is that it should be done quickly.

But when you’re surrounded by so many things in your life that can be done on demand, it’s hard to forget the opposite still exists and is a viable, arguably better option.

WordPress’ Related Posts and Featured Images (Yes, Again)

September 30, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

About two months ago, I wrote about the usability of WordPress featured images.

Though nothing has changed in the last few months, there has been one use case that I find leans in the direction of supporting featured images despite their potential improvement for usability. Specifically, it deals with using the Related Posts feature of Jetpack.

The WordPress Way (We’re Doing It Wrong)

September 29, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For years, the whole “doing_it_wrong” meme has permeated the WordPress development community. Generally speaking, I think that it’s been toned down quite a bit in the last year or two and I consider that a good thing, but recently I’ve begun to see people say they are being chastised for not doing things “the WordPress way.”

You're Doing It Wrong

Granted, this may be something that’s been going on for far longer than I’m aware, but the fact that it’s beginning to reach a point at which we’re seeing a number of different people share this feeling in blog comments is, at the very least, interesting (if not a bit disconcerting).

Honestly, I’m of two minds about it: Telling someone they are “doing_it_wrong” is negative – it’s condescending. And perhaps telling people they aren’t doing it “the WordPress way” is just a flip side of the same coin, but I also think that it just has a more positive, approachable spin to it (depending on how it’s shared, I guess).

Whenever anyone starts off a discussion with a negative then proceeds to tell you why you’re wrong, you can’t help but feel a bit defensive and possibly even offended.

Using a more positive approach yields better conversation, doesn’t it?

And I think there’s something about “the WordPress way” that is more accessible and approachable. Though it still indicates that something isn’t being done correctly, it does come with the implication of “this isn’t the WordPress way, here’s how you should be doing it, and here’s why you should be doing it this way.”

And in that respect, it does matter whether or not we’re doing something correctly within the context of our software.

Tom McFarlin