PHP 8.1: A look at the new features and changes
Last year the new major version of PHP was released and although it brought many great new features, it was not very well received by the PHP developer world. Version 8.0 did not manage to convince developers to switch to a new version. Maybe PHP 8.1 will make it so...
Fix your e-commerce app before it’s too late!
One software bug regarding risk calculations caused 217 million dollars in investor losses[1]. It was a mistake in basic decimal operations programmed by a software developer. This shows us how important and responsible is a developer’s job. Are you sure that you know how to avoid such mistakes in your...
Jan
18,
2021
How to Delegate Code Reviews to CI
Are you doing code reviews? No? Yes? In both cases, you won't have too. Just add a couple of YAML lines to your CI. I'm very grateful that Rector is getting traction lately. More and more PHP developers save dozens of hours by running simple CLI commands on their codebases....
Jan
13,
2021
First, prevent any harm
“First, do no harm” says the Hippocrates. As fault-tolerance experts we say “First, prevent any harm”. It is often said that all software faults are design faults. It easier to prevent the harm at design time. Fault tolerant system design and development techniques will allow developing sustainable 99 % reliable...
Nov
18,
2020
Why GraphQL?
For the past 4 years, GraphQL has offered developers a compelling new way to think about your API. What does it change for us, PHP developers? In this article, we will see very quickly what makes GraphQL a special protocol. Then, we will have a quick look at the GraphQL...
PHP FFI and what it can do for you
PHP 7.4 brings a lot of exciting new features. One of them is the Foreign Function Interface extension built directly into the core. But what problems exactly this extension is trying to solve? Does this mean that we no longer need to write a PHP extension if we want to...
Sep
28,
2020
Testing Strategy With the Help of Static Analysis
When developing an application, our aim as software developers is to make sure it does what it ought to do and to keep the number of defects as low as possible. We should also strive to make our lives easier, to counter external circumstances like tight deadlines and ever-changing requirements...
Structuring PHP Exceptions
When it comes to learning how best to use exceptions in PHP, it is very difficult to find anything more than very basic explanations and tutorials online. While the consensus is that you should use exceptions indeed, there is very little information on how to structure and manage them in...
Crafting maintainable Laravel applications
Being the author of BaseCode and creator of Shift gives me a unique insight into writing Laravel applications. I combined 20 years of writing code with supporting over 20,000 Laravel upgrades into 10 tips for crafting maintainable Laravel applications. These may seem fundamental and as such easily dismissed. But any...
May
7,
2020
React Best Practices
There are a lot of comparisons between the big three frontend JavaScript frameworks Angular, Vue and React. But there is no winner. Each framework has its advantages and disadvantages and in the end it’s a question of personal preference which framework or library you choose for your application. Every solution...