TL;DR: In this quick tip, I provide a simple query for determine the size of a database (that includes all tables). This is useful when determine what the largest tables are, especially if there are custom tables in your WordPress installation, and how large they actually are.
Continue readingCategory: Notes (Page 3 of 47)
Notes on programming-related problems that I’ve encountered while working on various projects.
TL;DR: If the standard terminal commands don’t work for uninstalling and reinstalling the Xcode CLI tools, use this page and search for the latest version of the tools to download. You don’t need a developer account to access it.

If you work both in a terminal and on a Mac, then you’re likely familiar with the Xcode Command Line Tools (and the necessary utilities they provide for things like Git, building front-end assets, etc.).
If you’re not familiar, here’s the gist:
[Command Line Tools] enables UNIX-style development via Terminal by installing command line developer tools, as well ass macOS SDK frameworks and headers. Many useful tools are included such as the Apple eLLVM compiler, linker, and Make.
Apple Developer Downloads
Obviously, I’m not an iOS or a macOS developer, but there’s plenty of work that I do in the terminal and I need some of these tools for.
Continue readingIf you’ve installed Node via Homebrew and, at any point, are trying to execute a shell script to start up a containerized environment (or maybe something else – I’m speaking solely from my experience) and you’re presented with this message or something like it:
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/icu4c/lib/libicui18n.64.dylib
Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/node
Reason: image not found
Continue reading
If, at some point, you’re working on some front-end code using NPM and when you attempt to install a package, you get a message that resembles something like this (you’re mileage obviously may vary):
TypeError: Cannot read property 'properties' of undefined
...
at Object.<anonymous> ([...]/node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js:156:2)
That is, the primary problem being: TypeError: Cannot read property ‘properties’ of undefined
The best solution I’ve found to the problem is to remove webpack
and the webpack-cli
and reinstall it using the --save-dev
directive.
If you’re using macOS Catalina (or later depending on when you’re reading this post) and you’re also running a combination of:
- Oh My Zsh
- An IDE (such as Code)
- Composer
- and PHP CodeSniffer
And you’re using the latter installed at a global level but your IDE nor your terminal sessions are able to pick it up, make sure that you’ve updated your path.

Remember:
Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration.
Oh My ZSH
This means if you’re going to make any changes to your path, you need to update ~/.zshrc
.