Thursday, August 14. 2008Is PHP an Agile Programming Language?In raising the question about whether a specific programming language is agile I want to avoid exploring what makes a language agile, or comparing PHP with other languages. The intention here is not to associate PHP to agile as a natural relationship, as much as to try and understand if we can find the ingredients in the PHP world, for creating an agile environment. Continue reading "Is PHP an Agile Programming Language?" Tuesday, August 12. 2008The definition of evil
Recently a colleague stated that in theory, caching could be considered 'evil'.
Now 'evil' is a very broad term which is used a lot in the IT community, but what does it really mean when we're talking about technical solutions? I asked around, but couldn't find a clear cut definition, so I went searching... Continue reading "The definition of evil"
Posted by Boy Baukema
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16:11
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Defined tags for this entry: best practices, browser, caching, development, evil, optimization, performance, scalability
Thursday, May 15. 2008Intimate PHP Seminar
So we decided that in order to get to see all the people who are interested in PHP leadership topics, we should run an intimate seminar and invite our contacts along. If there is demand, we could run these every month. Here is the invitation that went out:
Free Seminar: Enterprise PHP and Zend Title: Enterprise PHP and Zend Date: 10th June 2008 Time: 9:00 - 13:00 Location: King's College London (Hodgkin Building, Guy's Campus Speaker: Ivo Jansch, CTO of Ibuildings and leading PHP expert Continue reading "Intimate PHP Seminar" Friday, May 2. 2008The Power of Refactoring"Code refactoring is any change to a computer program's code that improves its readability or simplifies its structure without changing its results." - Wikipedia I've met quite a bunch of developers that felt refactoring was a waste of time. "Why would you write code only to change the code at a later point? Why not just write the code perfectly in the first place?" or "You're writing code for the same functionality over and over again, isn't that a waste of time?" I hope to prove to you that there is much power in refactoring, but with power comes responsibility. Continue reading "The Power of Refactoring" Saturday, March 15. 2008ATK's hidden gems, part 2
ATK contains lots of hidden gems. Most of them are hidden because they are undocumented or because they are only documented in the API docs (which nobody seems to read...). In the past few years we've tried to improve the documentation for ATK. We've created a Wiki with lots of how-to's, the "Pizza Guides", a demo application and improved the API documentation. However there are still some features of ATK nobody seems to know about.
In this second iteration of the "ATK's hidden gems" series we will look at a largely unknown feature of ATK's record actions. Continue reading "ATK's hidden gems, part 2" Thursday, February 14. 20087 Simple PHP Best Practices
I recently read a good quote by Larry Wall (creator of Perl) saying "Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.".
The truth is: writing flexible, robust, elegant and readable/debuggable code is really really really really hard, especially in a language as 'free' as PHP is. But as with all things, practice (and constant improvement) makes perfect and over the years I've picked up a lot of 'rules of thumb' that I believe make my code just a little bit 'better'. These last couple of months I've been documenting some of them and today I'd like to share some of the more interesting ones. Continue reading "7 Simple PHP Best Practices" Thursday, February 7. 2008Backward compatibility, bane of the developer
Recently 'A List Apart' posted an article about the new X-UA-Compatible switch that Microsoft will be implementing in Internet Explorer 8.
In short, you can target versions of the IE renderer with the switch; you can say: I want this page to be rendered like IE7 would render it and then IE8 (and IE9 and IE10 presumably) would render it similarly to IE7. Now this provoked a lot of reactions, and it got me thinking about one of the most painful subjects among developers (PHP and in general): backward compatibility. Continue reading "Backward compatibility, bane of the developer"
Posted by Boy Baukema
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13:41
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Defined tags for this entry: api, architecture, compatibility, development, php, release management, unittest
Thursday, January 31. 2008Development projects @ Ibuildings
For several years Ibuildings is known as a partner in PHP development projects for our clients. Last year the type of customers and the type of projects have changed. Several 'New media' customers found their way to Ibuildings and asked for specific custom made front-end and back-end solutions within a fixed budget and time scale.
Continue reading "Development projects @ Ibuildings" Wednesday, January 30. 2008Different methods of caching
Because we encounter PHP more and more in the enterprise market, the performance demands of websites we build are becoming ever more challenging. The usefulness of caching is often underestimated by developers (myself included). When using a lightweight framework like Code Igniter it is easy to assume caching is not needed or not necessary; still there are websites where performance optimization is needed and it is important to think about the performance and caching strategy beforehand. When writing the technical specifications for a high performance website the developer needs to be able to make the best choice for optimization.
For optimizing the performance of a website there are several techniques.The choice of the framework or CMS is important and the performance demands are a factor when determining which framework or CMS will be used, but it doesn't stop there. Continue reading "Different methods of caching" Four ways to become a better developer
I was just reading my daily portion of phpdeveloper.org and encountered this article with 4 ways to become a better developer.
The four options discussed might be obvious to most, but I know from experience that they're not obvious to everyone, so I think it's a good read. I especially like the fourth item, on how PHP developers should focus not only on PHP, but also look at Javascript, CSS and HTML. I think it's hard to build an application that consists of PHP only, and even if you have dedicated graphical guru's to do the difficult HTML/CSS stuff (like we do), developers still encounter a fair share of CSS/HTML and Javascript. And in general, it's good to widen your scope and also read about technologies that you might not use directly, but might encounter in the future.
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Thursday, August 14. 2008Is PHP an Agile Programming Language?Tuesday, August 12. 2008The definition of evilThursday, May 15. 2008Intimate PHP SeminarFriday, May 2. 2008The Power of RefactoringSaturday, March 15. 2008ATK's hidden gems, part 2Thursday, February 14. 20087 Simple PHP Best PracticesThursday, February 7. 2008Backward compatibility, bane of the developerThursday, January 31. 2008Development projects @ Ibuildings |
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