Field notes on building software.
Short, practical write-ups on the languages and tools I build with — PHP, JavaScript, CSS, Git, Flutter and Rust. Mostly notes to my future self, shared in case they help you too.
Git Flow vs GitHub Flow: Choosing a Branching Strategy for Your Team
Git Flow and GitHub Flow take very different approaches to team branching and releases. Let's compare them, see where trunk-based development fits, and sort out how to handle versioned releases, hotfixes, and everything in between.
GitHub Flow: Keep Your Main Branch Deployable
GitHub Flow is the lightweight branching workflow built on a single rule: anything in main is deployable. Here is the whole loop, branch, pull request, review, merge and deploy, with the git and gh commands and an honest look at where it fits.
Starting with Rust: From Installation to Your First Program
Learn how to install Rust and write your first "Hello, world!" program.
Flutter Version Management
Managing multiple Flutter versions does not need not be a headache. Let's jump into FVM and see how it can simplify your Flutter journey.
Setting Up CocoaPods for FVM-managed Flutter Projects
A guide to installing CocoaPods for a Flutter project while using FVM to manage Flutter versions, ensuring a smooth setup for iOS development.
Troubleshooting Xcode 15 Build Issues in Flutter Projects
Uncovering solutions to common issues faced when updating to Xcode 15 in a Flutter project using an older version of CocoaPods.
Git: Tracking a Remote Branch for Changes
When you fork a project, you need a way to pull in changes from the original repository, usually called upstream. Here is how to wire up an upstream remote, actually sync your fork, and set up branch tracking so plain git pull and git push just work.
JavaScript's map, filter, and reduce methods
JavaScript provides some amazing functions that can be called against your arrays to help filter them, manipulate them, or even reduce them down to a single value or grouped values.
FizzBuzz in PHP: A Fresh Approach
FizzBuzz is a very popular programming question that tests your logic to see if you can build a simple program.
PHP's array_reduce is not only for outputting single values
PHP's array_reduce is a simple way to partition a set of data or return a single value. It is super powerful and worth spending time learning.
Improve Your Git Workflow with Git Flow
Git Flow is a structured branching model built around versioned, scheduled releases. Here is how its branches fit together, a hands-on walkthrough of features, releases and hotfixes, and an honest take on when it is still the right call.
Using CSS Transitions
CSS transitions are the standard way to apply transitions to your elements, and have been for years, replacing the old approach of using JavaScript. In this article, I'll go through each of the transition properties available, and provide examples of how to use them.
Structuring Your Website With HTML 5 Semantics
Prior to HTML 5, there was no real markup to help explain the intent behind your HTML code. The goal of HTML 5 was to offer a more readable way of writing your code, so that any author that comes after you can have an easier time going through what you've created.
Interpolation in Stylus
You can also use interpolation to improve your functions for reuse, as well as your other code within your stylesheet. The way it works is that you can wrap your expression within {}, which will then be outputted as the identifier.
Creating Configuration Files In Stylus
It's super simple to create a configuration file for instance that would manage your media query break points. You could also use a configuration file for managing colors, font sizes, and other variables such as gutter spacing and more.
Using Functions and Mixins with Stylus
Stylus allows you to create functions and mixins of reusable code for your stylesheets. You can also handle mathematical operations, unary operations, and more allowing you complete control over your stylesheets with ease.
Setting Variables in Stylus
Unlike CSS, in Stylus you can assign expressions to variables that can be reusable throughout your stylesheets.
Using Selectors in Stylus
Selectors are a way to pick the elements that you want styled. In Stylus, similar to CSS, you can apply a set of styles to any element by separating them by a comma delimited list. Stylus though, also allows you to select multiple elements by separating each on their own line.
Learning Stylus: A CSS Pre-Processor
This mini-series will be a little different to how you may see other articles on my site. Really this article is more geared as notes for me as I go through the documentation for Stylus, and learn the ins and outs of this beautiful language.
BEM Methodology Overview and Naming Conventions
BEM or Block Element Modifier is a naming convention used to help organize your code base. In this article, I discuss its uses within your CSS projects.
Introduction to ECMAScript 6
The latest in ECMAScript 6 introduces new features to JavaScript which makes it so much more fun to use, while solving problems that have been around for years. The intent of this article is to provide you with resources you can use to start learning ES6 today.
Babel Installation and Configuration
Babel offers a convenient way to transform your ES6 code to JavaScript that all browsers can understand. In this article we'll go over a basic configuration that will enable you to start using it with any project right away.
Configuring Stylus CSS Pre-Processor with Gulp and Sourcemaps
In this article we'll go over how to configure your project to process Stylus files using Gulp. We'll also create source map file which your browser will use to help point you in the right direction of your files when developing
Configuring Gulp With Less CSS Pre-Processor
Less is a CSS pre-processor allowing you to create variables, mixins, and functions in an effort to make your CSS more maintainable.
Using Browser Sync with Gulp for Live Reloading
Browser Sync is a nice tool to use while developing. It allows your browser to reload live when changes are made to your files. For instance, assuming we're watching our CSS file for changes we can have the browser auto refresh/sync when it sees those changes made.
Gulp Watch: Automate Your Gulp Tasks
Gulp watch is perfect for when you're editing project files since it allows you to not have to run the gulp command manually each time.
Configuring Gulp On A New Project
Gulp may seem like a scary thing to wrap your head around at first, but it's actually quite easy to start using once you understand the basics.
Yarn: Publishing a Package
Publishing a package to the npm repository has never been simpler. With a few steps, you can create a package that is redistributable to all of your projects.
Yarn: Fast and Secure Dependency Management
Yarn is a super simple dependency management tool which is way faster to use instead of traditional npm. It acts as a drop-in replacement, so you can get started using yarn right away. The best way to install yarn is by using npm.
Support for keys in list(), or its new shorthand syntax [] in PHP
Now as of PHP 7.1, you can define the keys of your array that will be parsed when destructuring your arrays. Prior to PHP 7.1, you could only use arrays with numeric indexes. Now with this new addition, our lives just got easier.
Type Hinting With The Iterable pseudo-type In PHP
As of PHP 7.1, you can now type hint your method/function arguments with the keyword iterable for handling arrays or even objects that implement the Traversable interface.
Type Hinting Callable Functions in PHP
As of PHP 5.4, you can type hint your method arguments with the callable keyword allowing you to enforce the type of data that is passed via your arguments.
Setting Visibility for Your Class Constants in PHP
Now in PHP 7.1+, you can set different visibility modifiers for each of your class constants. The available visibility modifiers consist of public, protected, and private.
Using Anonymous Classes in PHP
As of PHP 7, you can now create quick throwaway objects for use within your projects. This can be especially useful for your automated tests, for instance, with allowing you to create quick implementations of your interfaces.
Symmetric Array Destructuring in PHP
As of PHP 7.1, you can now use the shorthand array syntax to destructure your arrays for assignment. Previously you would have had to use a function like list, but now you can use the simple new array shorthand syntax.
Using PHP's array_map to format your arrays without loops
So let's face it, loops are a bit boring. So how can we mix it up? Let's assume we have a case where we have a CSV file that we want to quickly parse.
SOLID Principles in PHP
The 5 basic principles for Object-Oriented Design, SOLID, were first created in an effort to improve maintainability in our code bases. SOLID is a mnemonic acronym that stands for each of the following principles: Single Responsibility, Open-Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion.
Filtering Arrays Without Using Loops in PHP
PHP has a built-in function called array_filter that allows you to filter through your arrays without the need for a loop. Personally, this approach feels much cleaner to me and simpler to comprehend.
Void Return Types in PHP
As of PHP 7.1, we can now use void return types within our methods. This is useful for cases where you have methods that are just setting or processing data without the need of returning any values.
Type Hinting with Nullable Types in PHP
As of PHP 7.1, you can now set your type declarations as nullable by simply prefixing them with a question mark ?. In doing so a null value can be passed in as a parameter or returned as a value for your methods.
PHP Group Multiple use Declarations
As of PHP 7, you can now group your imported classes, functions, and constants from under the same namespace.
PHP Null Coalescing Operator
One of my new favorite additions to PHP 7, is the Null Coalescing Operator. It cleans up your code by removing a tedious step of checking if some value is isset() and not NULL and returning it or if not setting a default.
PHP Spaceship Operator
One of the new features to hit PHP 7 is the Spaceship Operator. This new trick helps improve the way you'd compare 2 expressions. In short, the comparison returns 1 of 3 values (-1, 0, or 1) depending on the result of the comparison.
Return Type Declarations in PHP
PHP 7 now makes it possible to declare return types for your methods. This allows you better control over the data that will be returned from each method in your application.
Scalar Type Hints in PHP
Starting with PHP 7.0, it's now possible to declare scalar type hints for your method arguments. Previously, we were able to use array and callable, but now with PHP 7+, we have much more control.