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Maybe I’m behind. But I like to think of it as conservative. Parallel unit testing has been around for a while, and I haven’t really reached for it until recently.

This isn’t about not wanting to change, though. It’s about using the proper tools for the job, and only when necessary.

Or at least, that’s how I rationalize my delay. But maybe you’re in the same place. Let’s dig into why I waited, why you might want to wait still, and the reasons why this works now.

Sometimes I look back at my older open source work, or talks, and feel a little bit ashamed.

“That’s not right.” “That’s not how you’d do it” (or not how I’d do it now).

And the times I re-invented the wheel when packages were already there…

As embarrassing as that seems now, there was a good reason for that.

Doing things that others have done, but in our own way, is a synthesis that helps us learn.

Let’s not forget about that.

When you think of a CTO, what do you see?

Someone gray-haired, steering the ship like the last 20 years? A young, hot-shot that solves every single technical problem and then plays video games to relax?

It really doesn’t matter. I don’t actually picture or “see” anyone.

I can tell if a real CTO is in the room by just opening up my ears.

It’s already hard enough for me to start my exercise in the morning. Any friction in the way can make me stop it - or at least not track it.

Since I started using Strava to track my walks, I checked its iOS widgets. I figured I should be able to just click a widget to start an activity.

Sadly that’s not the case. They’re only progress widgets. So, after doing some research, I created my own iOS shortcut. Here’s how.

When I create a project, I will have at least one user seeded into the database. This usually is an admin user as well.

So, why would I create this user with a plain text password initially?! That’s crazy right?

Let me explain why - and then you can see if you agree.

There are many reasons why we validate data - whether it’s a Laravel project or any other framework or technology. Sometimes it’s for user or business sanity, other times to keep the application functioning properly. We even do so for security - for both security attacks we know about and hopefully to stop ones we don’t understand.

This is the reason why I reached for validation on pagination requests. This is user input. Just because I don’t understand how it could hurt me doesn’t mean I should ignore it, right?

Let’s validate pagination - easily - in Laravel.

Having too many parameters for a method signature is a sign of a method that is doing too much. But, what can be done to make this more readable if you’re forced to stick with it? Let’s see an example using named parameters.

Each API seems to be different. However, there are some best practices that we should all try to follow.

One of those that I really like is the 201 Created HTTP response. If the object is created immediately, you may even return the full object contents.

In some cases, we don’t have the data or don’t want to return the full payload. We can return null with a location header. Here’s how to do that with Laravel.

PhpStorm suddenly stopped recognizing my git repository. I cleared the cache, restarted the IDE, but nothing helped. I jumped to my terminal, ran git from the command line, and everything worked fine there. Confusing, right?

Let me explain why this happened and how I fixed it for good.

AI is everywhere - and it has been for the last months… the last year(s)… I even use it now a lot as a tool for my development. So why haven’t I published AI guidance or written about it at all?

It’s really a simple reason. And it’s not what you think probably. I’m not a hater. It’s extreme love of AI and technology that makes me wait. Let me explain.