The economics of clean code
Posted 7 February, 2020
About 4 mins to read
Clean code makes projects more comfortable to work with and improves shelf life. Its the antagonist of vile legacy codebases that are unmaintainable. Then why does business always treat it as a secondary objective? Do they just dont get it?
What is a binary tree and why would I ever want to reverse it
Posted 9 May, 2019
About 5 mins to read
You have probably already heard the horror stories of code interviews where they ask you to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard. Well, a few days ago I was in that exact situation. And I had no idea what the interviewer was talking about. So what are these binary trees and why is it so critical that you know how to inverse them? Lets find out.
The simple class
Posted 3 April, 2019
About 5 mins to read
One of my favourite types of classes is a value object. For those not in the known, a value object is a small class that holds a value with a tiny bit of extra logic surrounding it. Sounds simple enough right? I think a nice way of looking at these classes is implementing them as an extension of the type system of your programming language. Let take a look at an uncomplicated example.
A love letter to legacy projects
Posted 12 December, 2018
About 6 mins to read
Monday morning. Your previous project just wrapped up, and they are going to assign you a brand new one. They even promised you the lead on this project. Who said Mondays couldn’t be great? A few hours later and you are staring at the most dreadful code you have ever seen — controllers of more than a thousand lines, PHP that injects jQuery in the views, raw SQL statements that could challenge a Dostoyevsky novel in size. The list goes on and on. This Monday is going to need a ton of coffee.
The Integration Operation Segregation Principle
Posted 8 October, 2018
About 6 mins to read
A few weeks ago I attended a DDDBelgium meetup where I was lucky to participate in a refactor workshop lead by Pim and Joop. After the incredible workshop Pim, Dries and me were discussing some code that we refactored earlier . Not so long in the conversation the words “Integration Operation Segregation Principle” casually got dropped by Pim.
What performance tricks actually work
Posted 24 July, 2018
About 14 mins to read
We've all been there before, you submit a pull request and moments later you get a comment like: 'Hey you should use a native function here, they are so much faster' or 'You can declare this final, that way we save some processing power'
The Y2k38 Bug: The biggest news craze of the year 2038
Posted 2 July, 2017
About 5 mins to read
In 2038 a bug that will apear that might trigger a strong feeling of déjà vu to the Y2k craze. The Y2k38 bug seems to come at a very random moment, but it all makes sense if we apply a bit of computer science to it.
The broken windows theory or “Why some projects are just destined to suck”
Posted 12 June, 2017
About 7 mins to read
Why is it that most legacy software projects are not really fun to work on? How can we stop that greenfield project to turn into one of those dull big projects? I would argue that it’s all in the foundation.
What the hell are Generics and would I want them in PHP?
Posted 31 May, 2017
About 6 mins to read
So everyone is talking about this hip “new” kid on the block for PHP: Generics. The RFC is on the table and a lot of people are getting all excited about it, but you don’t fully see the excitement? Let’s explore what it’s all about!
