I had an interesting discussion recently whereby I asserted that changing the constructor signature of a class should necessarily break some of your tests, if your tests are adequate in their coverage. This tweet generated considerable discussion, and one of the takeaways was a discussion about whether or not writing tests for personal pet projects should be a thing.
I think it absolutely should be.
Thursday, April 14th, 2022 @ 8:12 am | Comments (0) | Categories: PHP, Testing
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a five-part series on refactoring and modernizing PHP applications.
If you were to identify the most expensive part of any development project, what would that part be? The planning phase? Acquiring copyright or intellectual property? Marketing and advertising? All of these would be wrong. The most expensive part of any software project is the creation of the software itself. It’s the part that requires the most time, energy, and money to do correctly.
Tuesday, May 19th, 2020 @ 9:28 am | Comment (1) | Categories: Modernizing PHP, PHP
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a five-part blog series on refactoring and modernizing PHP applications.
We’ve all heard the expression from the children’s story: “slow and steady wins the race.” But what does this have to do with refactoring? And how can this help us to modernize our applications?
Saturday, May 16th, 2020 @ 7:05 am | Comments (0) | Categories: Best Practices, PHP, Modernizing PHP
Recently while working on an application I found myself asking a number of architectural questions. These were questions about things that I might consider “fundamental” – elements of the application, how many methods each class might receive, and how to put it all together into something cohesive.
You might have asked yourself some of the same questions.
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019 @ 3:42 pm | Comments (0) | Categories: PHP, Engineering
In the past I’ve written up installing various versions of PHP on new releases of Ubuntu, or for new releases of PHP. In those posts I’ve often recommended compiling PHP from scratch. However, compiling PHP from scratch is a serious chore, and keeping it up to date is even more of a serious responsibility. There are better ways.
Monday, June 24th, 2019 @ 11:23 am | Comments (0) | Categories: PHP, PHP 7
When I was younger, I had strong opinions about many subjects. I felt I was right about a great many things, and anyone who disagreed with me was wrong. In my mind there was a right or a wrong, a black and a white, with little room for grey. Others were certainly entitled to their own opinion, but that didn’t make them any less wrong if their opinion differed from my own.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to realize in programming, and in life, so often things rely on a two word phrase that makes all the difference: it depends.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2019 @ 8:00 am | Comment (2) | Categories: Opinion, PHP
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