Measurement is important. Metrics, while not sexy, are concrete to a good business strategy. When you bring a problem to your superiors, they’re going to want to know what is your measurement, what metrics did you use to determine this is a problem. With tasks I’ve given developers, I’ve always said “show me the metrics that your fix is better” versus just looking at the code. (more…)

Too often we find a team leader or a manager and just expect they’ll be able to hire new employees effectively. After all, they’re successful, they should be able to clone themselves, right? (more…)

tldr; Remember to use rel="noopener" on target="_blank" links where you do not control the destination. (more…)

Sometimes an employee becomes an ex-employee because they did a poor job. Their quality or output was just not up to par. Otherwise, they backstab, do fiendish things, basically try to screw you. Either way, you can get pretty strong feelings about this ex-employee. Pretty bad feelings. (more…)

If you’re not aware of what imposter syndrome is, let me share a quick synopsis. Then I’ll follow up with why I think the term is being abused. (more…)

When someone breaches the security of a web app, sometimes it’s not discovered to weeks or months later. There are a number of tools that specialize in intrusion detection, but they may be costly or difficult to set up. Another idea is to use a canary in the coal mine or a honey pot. Here we’ll talk about the concept and then demonstrate some easy and quick methods. (more…)

“If you have the question, chances are someone else in the group has it, too. Be brave: get the answer to your question with a by-product of serving others.” (more…)

During a code review, a coworker showed me a piece of code for a stateless React component that was similar to this: (more…)

Laravel has a lot of the most common functionality built into the framework. However, decisions need to be made to balance the needs of the majority of use cases with the stability and agility that programmers need. No one really wants a bloated library. Because of this, you might find that you need functionality that is not directly built into Laravel. When I started working with Laravel-based CSV responses, this was the case. (This article... (more…)

I’ve written about mentoring a bunch before , so you know I’m a fan of it. But, there’s another aspect that has been bothering me lately. The questions are simple: (more…)