Tag: Software Development (Page 14 of 20)

Sharing Our Programming Problems (Is It Lipstick on a Pig?)

January 26, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

I was recently reading another programmer’s blog post on Coding skills you won’t learn in school in which he was specifically talking about Object Ownership. The topic of the blog post is good in and of itself, and if you’re into lower-level programming, such as C, and data structures, like trees, then it’s worth a read.

Programming Problems: Object Ownership

But just as I was closing the tab, I came across the following paragraph at the bottom of his post:

Broken software, bad job offers: I”m sharing my mistakes so you can avoid them.

In short, it’s an invitation to join his mailing list (which is fine), but what really caught my eye was his call to action:

I’m sharing my mistakes.

For anyone who writes on the web – myself included – I think a lot of us do share our mistakes, but I couldn’t help but think about the way we go about doing it.

And it now has me re-thinking the approach to some of the posts that I’ve written and that I’ve yet to write.

Visual Studio Code Debugger: A Primer and Screencast

January 16, 2017 / Tom

In previous posts, I’ve talked a bit about why using a proper debugger versus some of PHP’s built-in statements are important. In the last post, even, I walk through how to set up Xdebug with Visual Studio Code (and MAMP Pro, if you’re using).

But if you’ve never used a tool like this before, you’ve never seen how it works, or you’ve never seen why it’s so powerful, I want to cover that a bit in this post.

So I’m going to be walking through a bit of doing this within the context of a few definitions and screenshots as well as a short screencast at the end so I can show the Visual Studio Code debugger working in action.

Xdebug, Visual Studio Code, and MAMP

January 13, 2017 / Tom

Using Xdebug and Visual Studio Code is something that’s pretty easy to setup, but given that I’m still using Visual Studio Code should tell you something about how much I’m a fan of the IDE.

But here’s the thing:

If you’re a WordPress developer, debugging is something that you really need to learn. That is, don’t use print_r and var_dump if you can help it. Use a legitimate debugger. It will help you think as the interpreter thinks and it will help you learn a bit more about Core.

Now that I’m off my soapbox, getting the necessary tools installed is easy. The article assumes you’re using MAMP Pro (since that’s what I use), but if you have access to php.ini then you’re going to be able to follow along.

Writing Better Code For WordPress-Based Projects

January 5, 2017 / Tom

I don’t remember exactly when I first stumbled across Joel Spolsky’s blog Joel on Software, but it was at some point late in high school.

I didn’t know enough about the whole software development process to get a lot of what he was talking about really, but I enjoyed his writing style, and I enjoyed what he had to say.

Writing Better Code

In fact, I was such a fan that when I graduated, I went on to buy his books (which were collections of the articles on his site) and read them cover-to-cover. I kept copies of them on my desk at work, and I used one of his books – Smart and Gets Things Done – when I was a team lead.

The articles that stuck out the most to me, though, were those that were about writing better code. Here’s the thing, though: Those articles included nothing about actually writing code.

Apps For 2017: Everything I’ve Installed

December 29, 2016 / Tom

During the holiday weekend, I spent some time going through some tools and software that I have installed and determining what I wanted to continue using in the coming year (and what I no longer needed).

Ultimately, it was about coming up with the apps for 2017.

I guess it’s part of the “fresh start in a new year” kind of thing. But the short of is that given the goals I’ve set for myself (and some upcoming things I’ll discuss), I did an audit and paired down my system to exactly what I needed.

Sure, we’re all going to be using different software. And I know many of us – myself included – have talked about the things we use at the WordPress level, but what about the tools we use each day?