Seems to be the next big thing in software processes land. So, hire competent peeople and try to get out of the way. These things are all the basics you pick up by reading Learn How Not to be a Complete Failure at Software Development in 24 Hours. None of it will make your developers any […]
Jow Maller outlines a straightforward system for using git to manage code from development copies and branches through production. The fact that deployment to live is automated, but I’d be worried about broken or unreviewed code getting deployed unintentionally. I think the best way to prevent that is to have live be its own branch,
Iisolani provides a thorough dissectin of how these new-fangled #! urls you are seeing all over the newest sites on the web are prone to breaking both the web experience and a site itself. I think I see a hint of “we-know-better” from the developers rushing out these new sites and re-designs. HT: Jason Lefkowitz
isolani – Javascript: Breaking the Web with hash-bangs Read More »
Lessons: Use Cases matter, and programmers (the users in this case) will choose tools that are both simple, in that they are not complicated/over-engineered, and easy to use, requiring little setup and code to accomplish a task. For parsing data with PHP, constrast using something like SimpleXML or DOMDocument (which is light-years better than where
While trying to submit a patch to a drupal project, I ran into a problem creating a unified diff that could be suspected. It turns out that the way I was using the built in Subversion diff tool in NetBeans wasn't the way to go. Now, on the command line, I'm used to doing a
There's a new release of the the one full-blown IDE that I've managed to stick with. If Eclipse doesn't fit your style, give Netbeans a spin – I like its inline code completion, the source-code beautifier, and the integration with SVN and Mercurial. I particularly find the source control usability much better than Eclipse. After
The more that a team can interact and iterate, the better you're final product can be. In my ideal world, I'd skip a detailed wireframing exercise and get to building a prototype as soon as possible. Its so much easier to explain what is difficult to build if there's something to click on. Or you
Guilty as charged – my very early code was littered with functions with horrendously long signatures. All the worse in PHP, which doesn’t have a meaningful way to overload functions. Too many parameters means your function is likely trying to do too many things, instead of doing any one thing well. A simple way to
If you’re not familiar with them, anonymous functions seem to be a term of art that very advanced programmers throw around to make others feel dumb. Until now, my closest experience has been in using them with jQuery and javascript, but tonight I found a use for them in PHP. If you don’t read
An example of using anonymous functions with PHP Read More »
For Drupal module developers, the hook_nodeapi function affords a lot of flexibility for interacting with nodes at various operation. If you just start pasting or writing code, you’ll quickly end up with a giant, messy switch statement. But there is a simpel way to keep your code nicely organized. First, lets take a look at
Writing an intelligent hook_nodeapi function in Drupal Read More »