All entries of my technical and business blog

Who Do I Tell "I don't know" To?

Jan 18, 2021 business

When interviewing a junior programmer a couple weeks ago, I was asked a very insightful question: “Who can I tell ‘I don’t know’ to?” At first, I wasn’t sure what they were exactly aiming at with the question. But, as I formulated an answer, I realized this was a great question. Let me share a longer version of the answer with you.

Finding Slow Tests in PHPUnit 9

Jan 4, 2021 php phpunit testing

When your unit test suite gets larger, it can take quite a long time. One of the many ways to speed this up is to hunt down and fix slow tests. Let’s use PHPUnit’s test listeners to do just that.

PHPUnit Code Coverage Can Help While Writing Tests

Dec 28, 2020 php phpunit testing

It’s great to run code coverage at the very end before you push your changes. This gives you some idea what’s tested and what’s not. But you don’t have to wait till the end; code coverage can help you all throughout writing your test suite, too.

Coming Up With Your First Portfolio Project (with coding walkthrough)

Dec 23, 2020 business css html javascript

When talking to junior developers, I hear the same question over and over: “how can I demonstrate what I know, or show experience, if I haven’t had any gigs yet?” Old-timers tell you to build a portfolio, but how do you do that? Where do you get ideas? How do you choose a project that’s not overwhelming? Let me explain my rationale as well as demonstrate how I might make my first portfolio project.

Seeing Calculated Values of CSS Variables in Browsers

Dec 18, 2020 css misc-web

CSS contains custom properties or variables which make style reuse a breeze. But, when you use the inspector on your favorite browser, you only see a definition of the variable, not the value itself. If you want to see the value of the variable, it just takes an extra step or two in your favorite browser. Let me show you how.

Rewrite or Redirect URL with Apache

Nov 23, 2020 apache misc-web

This is an article that originally appeared on RedirectURL, a site I built a while ago. Find out the history of that site here

Apache’s mod_rewrite module can create redirects with the proper configuration. Let’s dig in.

Sometimes Just Ask Why

Nov 16, 2020 business management

This is part of a series of articles from the retired The Dev Manager website.

What happened to “why?” What happened to make people so afraid of asking this question? Perhaps it’s when all of the 3-year-olds start asking “why” about everything. Why does mommy have to go to work? Why do we need money? Why is the sky blue?