Programming
Posts that have code, programming concepts, or are a bit more "techy" than the usual stuff I produce
April 26, 2023
Living with Autism as a Developer
Awareness of ASD and Autism is growing, but there is still a long way to go. I have autism, and I use various techniques such as masking to deal with day to day life. How does this impact my work as a developer and interactions with people in a working environment?
ReadNovember 25, 2020
How to setup a Laravel Application on Mac and macOS
Fast and easy guide to working with Laravel on a MacOS system. Perfect for Macbook Pro or Air. Beginner friendly!
ReadJuly 3, 2020
Windows or Mac / Linux - Which is better for Laravel?
For decades developers have argued over tabs and spaces. But if you're building a Laravel application, should you use Windows? MacOS? Linux?
ReadApril 12, 2020
Route Model Binding in Laravel
Route Model Binding in Laravel is incredibly powerful, and a key skill in any PHP Developer's set. You can quickly build dynamic routes and pull data from the database with some simple type hints.
ReadFebruary 14, 2020
Fall in love with PHP again. Let Laravel be your Valentine
PHP in 2020 has a bad reputation. Should I learn PHP? Is PHP relevant? Why learn PHP? What is Laravel? PHP powers a large proportion of the web, and will never disappear.
ReadJanuary 14, 2020
A 'Who's Who' breakdown of the 'big names' in Laravel
Laravel is a worldwide and industry defining framework. There's a few key names in the community that you've seen / heard of - or maybe want to look into.
ReadJanuary 10, 2020
Writing Clean Skinny Controllers in Laravel using the '__invoke()' method
Laravel is all about writing clean, minimal code, that does a lot and is easy to maintain. Often this means that controllers get bloated with methods of endpoints all
ReadDecember 31, 2019
Why do developers hate everyone else's work?
Do you developers hate working with one client? Dislike a particular project? Slow to get results on a specific integration? Here's why
ReadOctober 28, 2019
Top 5 Common Issues When Using Laravel
Setting your application key, running your migrations, turning off maintenance mode. Some of the most common issues faced in Laravel. TRIGGER WARNING 😡
ReadSeptember 1, 2019
Scraping / Scripting a Web Page using Laravel Dusk
Using Laravel's Dusk package, we can scrape data from a website. Similar to that of Selenium, or a Web Spider. Using a recent experience for a Hackathon, I'll guide you through my approach to this process and how it works
ReadAugust 27, 2019
JSON APIs with Laravel: Part 5 - Authentication and Permissions
Adding an extra layer of complexity to our basic API to allow for permission based restrictions and responses
ReadAugust 19, 2019
JSON APIs with Laravel: Part 4 - Controller Methods and Data Validation
Let's add some data to our endpoints and finalise our basic API setup
ReadJuly 30, 2019
JSON APIs with Laravel: Part 3 - Controllers, Routing and Data Exposure
Following parts 1 and 2, we now need to hook up our data to the front end and get some exposure. Follow along as we build our controllers and bind some routing to get our API online
ReadJuly 25, 2019
Update on the JSON APIs with Laravel Series
Hi all! Just a quick update on the above series. If you have no idea what I'm on about, you can read Part 1 here I've written most of part 3 and 4, however haven't found time to quite polish them...
ReadJuly 15, 2019
JSON APIs with Laravel: Part 2 - Models, Factories, and Seeders
Recap: If you haven't read part 1, you can find it here; We looked at what APIs do, and what kind of functionality we're looking to achieve with this little series. We also established that we're...
ReadJuly 8, 2019
JSON APIs with Laravel: Part 1 - Learning the Ropes
Most of a server-side / back-end developer's role will involve integrating with, or serving up APIs. In this short series, we're going to make our own very basic JSON API using Laravel. I'm not sure...
ReadJuly 2, 2019
IDEs are better than Text Editors. Here's why!
My examples will be using PHPStorm, and IDE built by the great people of JetBrains. This is not a sponsored piece, however if you're reading this JetBrains - hit me up 😉 IDE vs Text Editor....
ReadJune 18, 2019
Translating Developer Talk
API, REST, Integration, debugging, the list goes on. What are your developers on about? How come a simple button takes so long to make? There's something being lost in translation, and we're going to...
ReadJune 12, 2019
Laravel UK 2019 - Day 2
If you haven't already, check out my notes on Day 1 of Laravel Live UK here. I will be referencing some points made in those talks here. Day 2 has arrived! After a rather sleepless night in my hotel...
ReadJune 11, 2019
Laravel UK 2019 - Day 1
This week I attended the Laravel UK Conference in London. I've tried to summarise each speakers' talk into a bitsize snippet. Here's Day 1! After some coffee, excessive amount of morning pastries,...
ReadJune 6, 2019
Testing a PHP/Laravel Application
Love it or hate it, testing is a necessary evil. It proves that your application works as intended and hopefully covers off any "unwanted features" slipping in. With the recent rise in TDD, I'm going...
ReadMay 30, 2019
What level Developer are you?
Junior? Mid? Senior? Lead? How do you become a Senior? There's no path you can take to get there. But here's some tips on what each level requires. I'm going to give a break down of my...
ReadMay 28, 2019
What is Technical Debt?
Every person in IT / Tech has experienced it. We've all contributed to it as well. But what is Technical Debt? How exactly does it come about, and how can it be addressed? According to the...
ReadApril 23, 2019
6 Tips: How to make/keep a Developer happy 😇
Developers are a very "touchy" species. Often binary in their attitude and understanding of the world. How do you approach them with a problem? A solution? Or general conversation? Can developer's...
ReadApril 20, 2019
5 Ways to Trigger a Developer 😡
Ever wanted to annoy a developer? Wanna know what really grinds their gears? Here's 5 top way to trigger a technical person, straight from the horse's mouth. Often programmers are very linear,...
ReadApril 16, 2019
How do I become a Web Developer?
Easily the most asked question that I get either in online groups, or direct contact. Often, the person interested is hearing about all these languages, the abbreviations, industry jargon - but know...
ReadApril 2, 2019
5 Tips and Tricks for Laravel: Models
Love it or hate it, Laravel's Model layer is one of it's biggest positives and reasons to use it. It comes shipped with the Eloquent ORM which is an Active Record implementation. A lot of the...
ReadMarch 25, 2019
Comments & Pseudo Code
Note: The code snippets below are just examples, and have not been tested. I recently attended the Laracon 2019, which was a first for me. It's a digital conference, in that nobody attends a venue...
ReadMarch 1, 2019
Common Developer Abbreviations / Terminology
Whether you're a non-tech or a seasoned veteran of the trade, you'll often hear developers talk of "YAGNI", "WYSIWYG", "DRY", and other such random terms. I hope to clear the mystery of these terms,...
ReadFebruary 27, 2019
Developer Hacks - Aliases in Bash
If you've seen my YouTube series on building a Twitter Clone, which I also stream on Twitch.tv, then you know that I use commands that are not "native" to the bash command line. To do this, I setup...
ReadFebruary 26, 2019
Top 5 Laravel Tools - PHP Development
Every developer has their way of building a site, and as such, they'll have products, services, and integrations that they like to use to make this process more efficient. Here's my Top 5 Tools list,...
ReadFebruary 15, 2019
Frameworks. What's the fuss all about?
Laravel, Symfony, Django, Angular, Vue.js, ASP.NET MVC. Frameworks you've no doubt seen, and potentially used before. But why do we use them? What positives do they offer? Is there a "bad...
ReadFebruary 11, 2019
Spaghetti Code - How and Why?
This week, I was handed a project. It was something that was outsourced way before my time at the company. The company that wrote, and maintained it, have now closed / been sold on. As such, I was...
ReadJanuary 10, 2019
PHP - Traits vs Interfaces
Once you get into writing more OOP PHP, you'll find the term "trait" and "interface" thrown around a lot. What are they, and when should you be using each of them? Previously, most developers would...
ReadJanuary 7, 2019
Moving From Bitbucket To GitHub
I recently moved all my source code, from Atlassian's BitBucket, over to GitHub. BitBucket, is a free service, and GitHub is paid. Why did I do this? More importantly, how? Source Control, and Git,...
ReadJanuary 6, 2019
Managing Filters in Laravel
Filtering your Models in Laravel is a common question, and often comes with a lot of "enthusiasm" from each side. Do you filter in your; Controller? Model? A Trait? Some service? All have their...
Read