Blog
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How Can You Deal With Developer Burnout?
Stress in the workplace is sometimes unavoidable. Sometimes, a little stress can be a good thing, and some people thrive with a little pressure. The key here though, is sometimes and little. If the stress peaks too high, or is sustained for a long period, the effect can impact us in a myriad of negative ways. Over time, small amounts of stress can build up, and if we cannot deal with it in time, it…
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The Problems with Microsoft Dropping Edge
If you're a web developer, then it shouldn't be a shock now to find out that Microsoft is planning on ditching their Edge browser in favour of a new one based on the open-source Chromium project (not to be confused with the related but closed-source Chrome browser.) This will see Microsoft dropping their EdgeHTML engine in lieu of the Blink engine. The Initial Reaction On the face of it, this…
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Why CodeIgniter Is Not Recommended Over Other PHP Frameworks
I recently saw an article recommending the use of the CodeIgniter framework. While the article is mostly accurate (with some glaring exceptions) the problem is that the advice is so out of date, it's essentially useless. PHP has a bad reputation in the web development world as being a terrible language. I admit, its greatest strenght is also its biggest weakness: it allows anyone to easily create something…
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System Overload
Every developer will have spent some of their time maintaining systems, whether that be a few small websites they've lovingly crafted, a deployment tool that pushes code to servers, or monitoring applications that can analyse and report on issues. Looking after and using a few of these is easily manageable, but the more you inherit, the more difficult this task becomes as you have to split your time…
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Form Validation And Why You Are Probably Doing It Wrong - Part 2
In the previous part of the article I outlined how a lot of developers are validating their forms badly, letting assumptions blinker their otherwise decent logical skills. There I used names as an example; an easy shot with obvious issues. But what about something more specific in its structure, something that has a well-defined pattern, like a domain name? The Domain Domain names are integral…
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Form Validation And Why You Are Probably Doing It Wrong - Part 1
Forms are an integral part of websites, whether it be a simple contact form on your personal blog, an address form for a shopping delivery, or a complex tax return form. If you're the one in charge of that form, you will be validating the user input (if you're not, you're an idiot), but have you ever stopped to think about exactly what it is you're validating? Validate Twice, Process Once There's…
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Programming by Coincidence
(or why copy-and-paste development is a bad idea) This past year, working with CodeSniffer and more recently SonarQube, I'm acutely more aware of the quality and consistency of the code that I write. SonarQube has really been great for this, because of the way the deployment procedures operate at TMW; it integrates extremely well with TeamCity and helps the whole team with all the languages we develop…
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The Types Of People You Encounter As A Developer
If you've ever worked in the tech industry for any length of time, you'll have encountered most of these (or if you're really lucky, a blend of a few of them). Some of these may be your fellow developers, while others may be your project manager, or one of the many designers you have to deal with on a daily basis. (Note, I'm not a psychologist, and this is about as scientific as a childs mud pie…
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Steps to Better Code
I was recently reading an old article by Joel Spolsky where he outlines what he's coined as the Spolsky Test; a twelve-step test that helps gauge the kind of quality you can expect from your development team. Even though it's 15 years old now, the majority of it still holds true and makes a lot of sense but, as with anything digital, there are a few things that could be updated a little, and some…
