As a manager, I spend a lot of time delegating. I delegate small tasks so that I can spend more time adding value to the process and project. The value I bring is my ability to see the larger picture, use my experience as a guide, things like that. If I’m doing too many little things, I can’t do what I’m good at. (more…)

In an earlier post titled Use $this->fail() with Mockery::on(), I explained the challenges of debugging a failing test with the closure passed to Mockery::on(). Instead of returning false, I opted to use $this->fail() - which seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, I was doing my test, then failing with a useful bit of information. (Previous to this, it would just say that you don’t have a matching handler for this assertion,... (more…)

I experiment a lot with thoughts and process. I used to be scared of implementing something new because I felt like I was now married to that. Or, if it becomes habit, maybe I won’t want to stop it, even if it’s annoying (how irrational does that sound? But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that happen a lot. If you ever hear “that’s just how we do it” then you’re experiencing it.) (more…)

You may know that you can host a static site on GitHub pages - but what if you want to have a www redirect and also SSL? This isn’t that hard until you get to the www redirect. That would require a subdomain and a second SSL cert, which they don’t provide. (more…)

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…)