How To Code Well

Let's talk about 10 good practice tips when using Git.

Podcast Notes:

PHP News: Swoole is a PHP extension that has been forked due to on going security concerns. The current version of Swoole downloads a compressed file from the business Swoole site which is NOT GOOD! This file is a gzip file which is downloaded to your application.

Apparently many attempts were made to raise this concern with the current maintainer of Swoole but nothing happened. After these concerns were un-heard the PHP community decided to fork Swoole and remove the ability to run remote code from the Swoole business site.

The forked alternative is called Open Swoole.

Read more about it here: https://news-web.php.net/php.pecl.dev/17446

Theres a new Apple event on the 18th of October.

• M1X Mac book pro. 14 + 16 inch
• Mac mini
• AirPods Will the Mac Book Pro have 64 GB of ram, will I buy a new Mac?

10 Git Branch good practices

1. Run code audits before merging into a work flow branch to prevent pipeline blockages
2. Put config into a separate branch to the feature
3. Use a GUI to inspect right, left, middle merges
4. Communicate and talk through conflicts with other developers
5. Don’t squash commits. History is good
6. Regularly merge the main branch into the feature branch
7. Always get a team mate to review your code. Even if its the smallest code change
8. Keep to a good branch naming convention
9. Separate code maintenance, features and fixes into their own branches - Be aware of what other features use your code
10. Use messaging platforms like Slack or Discord to inform your team that something has been merged. Also use this to tell your team if the code audits have failed
11. Fix any failed code audits before doing anything else.

Kick start your tech career with Amarachi Amaechi's new book Getting Started in Tech: A guide to building a tech career

My web development courses

➡️ Learn How to build a JavaScript Tip Calculator

➡️ Learn JavaScript arrays

➡️ Learn PHP arrays

➡️ Learn Python

✉️ Get my weekly newsletter

⏰ My current live coding schedule (Times are BST)

Thursdays 20:00 = Live Podcast YouTube

Sundays 14:30 - Live coding on Twitch

Changlog

• I’ve been plugging in Symfony events into the HTCW site when a user registers.
• Due to being super busy I didn’t get to stream on Tuesday but I have done all the documentation for 6 of the 10 lessons in the course
• I should be live on Twitch on Sunday

If I was to sum up the coder mindset in a single sentence:

If you were to boil down the essence of a programmer it would be to have a practical mind, attention to detail, the ability to think logically, to zone in and out of different scopes and the will to compete complex tasks without giving up.

Let’s break that down

Thinking practically

Practical thinking is important because it helps you solve real world problems.

Set clear goals and priotizing work. You can also use life experiences to help solve problems.

Attention to detail

This means you take pride in your work, you care about the small stuff as much as the big stuff. In programming bad things can happen from the smallest mistake.

The ability to think logically

Logical thinking is a skill that involves using reasoning in a way that allows an individual to come to a viable solution

This helps you re trace steps, think through puzzles and compartmentalise elements of a programs flow.

Logical thinking requires several reasoning skills and the ability to look at a situation objectively and work towards a solution based on the facts at hand.

Age shouldn’t be a factor when learning to code.

In fact the older you are the more life experiences you will be able to bring to the web development table.

There are lots of skills that are transferable which are very much required in professional web development. You may of gained some of this experiences in other jobs. Some of these skills may give you a distinct advantage over other web developers.

Programming is one of these things that no matter how old you are, if you get good at it, nothing can stop you.

Change log

• The latest YT short teaches the nullsafe operator in PHP 8
• The PHP login course has been fully coded. This Tuesday on the YouTube Live stream we added the final touches including CSS. I need to write up the lesson plan and record the videos. I’m planning to release the course next year.
• I will be planning the next course live on YouTube in the coming weeks
• There is an idea that I’m toying with to drop the development of the subscriptions for the new hotowocodewell.net site in favour of having one off course purchases. The subscriptions would be added afterwards.
• I am going to be recoding December’s YouTube shorts in the coming days. So if you have any suggestions then do let me know at howtocodewell.fm/contact

News

1. PHP 7.4 looses active support in 3 days. (On the 28th of November 2021). It will have security support for a whole year
2. PHP 8.1 has been released today. It has active support until the 25th of November 2023 and then security support until the 25th of November 2024

8.1 has many new features including enums, Green threads or Fibers which will be used in ReactPHP, readonly properties, Op cache performance improvements and many more

PHP foundation

https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2021/11/the-php-foundation/

Today we are going to talk about libraries vs frameworks in software development.

A software library is something you use that enhances your application. It's a bundle of code that you can plug into an existing project. A software library normally solves a specific task such as connecting to a database, making forms or providing routines that manipulate images. A library can co-exist amongst other libraries and this is also true for libraries that do the same task. For example you might have a software library that crops an image to a certain size. You may want to try another library that does the same thing.

A software framework provides a set of APIs such as user authentication, session management, templating, request and response handling and so on. A framework is a single package that could contain smaller packages that do different things. A framework is very opinionated. It provides specific places for you to add your and it controls almost everything about how your code interacts with it.

Generally you cannot add a framework to an existing project because it must be the top layer of abstraction.

Both libraries and frameworks are code that is written by someone else that you use to enhance your project.

When you use a library you are in charge of the application flow. You choose how and when the library is called in your application. On the other hand, a framework is a set of API’s that can be called at certain points in its defined flow. Usually a framework tells you what to do, when to do it and where to do it. Frameworks are normally developed by large teams or the open source community. Due to this, a framework normally adheres to best practices, a strict set of coding standards and the framework is regularly maintained.

There is a big learning curve with frameworks but popular frameworks are well known and sort after in the software industry.

In summary a framework tells you what to do whereas you tell a library what to do. You have full control over a library but you have to define the rules of your application. You have limited control over the framework and you need to adhere to rules set out by the framework.

Kick start your tech career with Amarachi Amaechi's new book Getting Started in Tech: A guide to building a tech career

My web development courses

➡️ Learn How to build a JavaScript Tip Calculator

➡️ Learn JavaScript arrays

➡️ Learn PHP arrays

➡️ Learn Python

✉️ Get my weekly newsletter

⏰ My current live coding schedule (Times are BST)

Thursdays 20:00 = Live Podcast YouTube

Sundays 14:30 - Live coding on Twitch

Let's talk about TypeScript and when not to use it. In some cases plain JavaScript is all you need.

http://www.howtocodewell.net