Interesting reads — volume #9
I know you’ve been impatiently waiting for this month’s installment of Interesting Reads. Again, a collection of mostly PHP, Laravel, WordPress and JavaScript links but there should be something for everybody to enjoy.
COVID-19 has forced me to spend way too much time indoors so I’ve been keeping myself busy with reading, I just finished reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott and I want to recommend this to everyone who is a boss or has a boss. And that is everybody 😀 Radical Candor is a great framework for becoming a better boss and an employee (and I guess a person as well).
Last week I’ve launched Photile, my first side project, and I’ve been using iMovie to create marketing videos. To export a video for Instagram with a ratio of 1:1 internet advised me to open Keynote, set presentation ratio to 1:1, import the video and then export the presentation as a video 😜 Not sure how I didn’t come up with this strategy without googling it 🤔 Should’ve just used Kapwing I guess, their free tier would suffice and they have everything I needed — cutting and trimming, adding text and shapes plus cropping it for Instagram.
Btw. if you think I’m publishing a lot of content from the same authors and publications you are 100% right. Feel free to suggest additional ones, I’d be more than willing to broaden my reading horizons.
Sponsorware
Sponsorware is an interesting release strategy for open-source software that enables developers to be compensated for their open-source work with fewer downsides than traditional open-source funding models. If you’re interested in how this came to be, check Caleb’s Sushi article.
REPL for WordPress
I’ve been using Laravel’s tinker REPL (read-eval-print-loop) in every one of my Laravel projects but only today I’ve learned that WP CLI tools have a similar tool called wp shell. Really helpful for a quick tinkering. Not only that, but Tinkerwell can run for both Laravel and Wordpress. Pure magic ✨
WPScan — WordPress Vulnerability Scanner
The tool that every respectable WordPress developer should have in their tool belt. Easy to install (they even offer a Docker container) and easy to use to test your website for vulnerabilities.
Do not touch your face
Using your webcam, this app trains an ML algorithm (specifically Tensorflow.js) to recognize you touching your face and not touching your face. Once it’s trained, it watches and alerts you when you touch your face. Useful during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bitcoin using more electricity per transaction than a British household in two months
Wow. The numbers posted in the article are humongous. It really makes you think if any of the cryptocurrencies makes any sense. Beside day trading and speculating, of course 🤣
Fullscreen with scrolling
Did you recently watch any YouTube video in fullscreen and scrolled down? There are comments there now! Wow!
This is powered by Element.requestFullScreen which requests a browser to show the element fullscreen. Not supported on IE or Safari, but what is nowadays.
A half-hour to learn Rust
Every once in awhile it is beneficial to learn something new so your brain won’t get rusty. Pun intended 😜 Great overview of Rust syntax and concepts by Amos.
Even though I’m not planning to use Rust in the foreseeable future I see a value in knowing its concepts if for nothing else than to be happy with PHP’s simplicity.
And if you’re new to Rust but interested to get going, check out this “How I Start: Rust” article from Christine Dodrill.
How to write exceptionally good exceptions in PHP
As a part of the Mailcoach video course, Freek Van der Herten gives us a short teaser about how they are dealing with exceptions. And I think it is exceptional! Again, the pun is intended 😀 By now you’re obviously thinking that I’m choosing the recommended articles just for the puns, right?
I’ve been using it since this article was released and so far I’m loving it. Feels to me like a way to easily “group” similar exceptions while still keeping it simple.
Building complex forms with Laravel Livewire in Oh Dear
In this longish (but definitely worth the read or otherwise I wouldn’t share this with you, would I?) article, Freek, again, shows us how he refactored Vue.JS components into LiveWire components and handling all UI from PHP.
Adding Notifications to Laravel.io with Livewire, Alpine.js and Tailwind UI
It seems to me that Livewire is getting some serious attention. And if you sparkle it with a bit of AlpineJS you really do get a powerful tool that can be used to create SPA easily.
In this article, Joe Dixon is guiding us through implementing tabs and paginated notification component using Livewire and AlpineJS.
Design Patterns in PHP
Collection of design patterns with sample code implemented in PHP. Each one comes with a small example and a test suite which is always nice to see.
Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking
First of all Farnam Street blog is awesome. Secondly, as a developer, I use a second-order thinking a lot, even if I don’t call it that.
Recently, I got tasked to fix a legacy code that was hard to read and its performance was poor. There was a lot of easy to find smelly code and issues that seemed like easy wins. I wanted to be thorough so I spent some time figuring out why that code was there in the first place and why was it written in a given way. Only after that, I went and fix it and remove the smells. Luckily, doing that saved me potential future troubles if I just went ahead and kick things around without even taking names
There are a common belief among developer entering the enchanted forest of legacy code that previous developers were monsters and/or fools :D Code issues can exist due to developers with bad practices or even worse without any practice, or they can exist due to scope changes and a lot of other inconsistencies and illogical requirements not seen at the first glance.
Mise en Place writing
An inspiring article on how to write. It seems that all I’ve been doing lately is pre-writing or just doing ideation without following up on the idea.
Productivity tip from Tim Urban @waitbutwhy
Awesome productivity tip from Tim Urban, especially now when most of us are working from home and are exposed to a lot of distractions. And if you’re not familiar with the writing of Tim Urban, do check his latest (short) article “You Won’t Believe My Morning”.
Subpar parks
Instagram one-star reviews for US parks. Mine favorite is for Yellowstone National Park (an oldest national park in the world) — “Save yourself some money, boil some water at home” 🤣
That’s all folks! Some articles to cheer you up and some to make you think. Don’t be a stranger. Or maybe in the current state of social distancing — be a stranger, at least in the streets 😕
