All entries of my technical and business blog

Why Use Private in Open Source Software

Sep 4, 2017 php programming

As a PHP programmer, I struggle to understand the reason for private methods and properties. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the official explanation for them: “Use this to hide properties and methods from child classes” - but why? There have been a number of times when I’ve done stuff that is way more of a cluster-fnck because of private methods that I couldn’t slightly modify.

PHPUnit Stop On Failure

Aug 31, 2017 php phpunit

From time to time, I get thrown onto a project that has many, many errors in the unit tests. It can be hard to try to figure out what to fix first with so many errors on the screen. Sadly, I’ve had my scroll-back buffer filled many times.

Composer Dry Run

Aug 22, 2017 composer php

Just another case of RTFM I’m sure, but I was wondering how to preview the changes that will happen if I do a composer update on my current project. I wanted to get an idea of how many libraries would change so I could see if it would be a short or long project (potentially) to do a 3rd Party Library update. (I already hear you - and I agree - the number of files changing isn’t always indicative of how long the task to update your project’s dependencies will take. Shhh - quiet you.)

Track the Things You've Done Today with Alfred

Jul 24, 2017 business

For our agile workflow, it’s important to provide a check-in each day. What did you do yesterday, what do you plan on doing today, do you have any blockers? My biggest challenge is actually remembering what I did “yesterday” - especially after the weekend.

Mac App to Keep Slack Active

Jul 22, 2017 misc-web

I tend to use either the web interface for Slack or I use Franz to manage my open connections. When this is not focused, however, it tends to mark you automatically inactive/away after 30 minutes. If you’re hard-core programming, you might not have slack focused for hours - and this is really confusing for your teammates as you might look non-active or even out for the day.

Add a Case-Sensitive Disk in MacOS

Jul 15, 2017 misc-web

In an earlier entry here, I described the need for a case-sensitive disk in my development set up. I’ve enjoyed using my SD-based drive, but I wanted to change to using my own drive for two reasons: a) I have 1TB drive, so I have plenty of space and b) the SD is slower than the SSD - at least last time I tested it was.

PHPUnit Test Helpers for Mockery and Non-Public Properties

Jul 12, 2017 php phpunit

I’ve written a few helpful methods and systems that help out my unit testing. There are many arguments for and against these tools (don’t test protected methods, don’t introduce global namespace methods, etc) - and those are discussions for another day - but perhaps these might help you out in the mean time.