In Beware of the Makefile Effect, the author defines the phrase as such: Tools of a certain complexity or routine unfamiliarity are not run de novo, but are instead copy-pasted and tweaked from previous known-good examples. If you read the article, you’ ll see that there are a number of…
Tom McFarlin
Strategies for Locally Developing Google Cloud Functions
For the last few months, I’ ve been doing a lot of work with Google Cloud Functions (along with a set of their other tools such as Cloud Storage, PubSub, and Cloud Jobs, etc.). The ability to build systems on top of Google’ s Cloud Platform (or GCP) is great….
Review and Highlights of 2024
I usually don’ t write a full “ year in review” type of post, but I do sometimes highlight various milestones, goals, and/or notable things that have happened in the last year. And this year, I’ ve both the desire and time to write about exactly that. When drafting the last…
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays 2024
Over the years, I’ ve usually written some type of end of the year post centered around Christmas that also talks about what’ s happening and what happened: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 And the closest I came to doing something like this last year was an article about The…
Catch Outgoing Emails From WordPress in Laravel Herd
Earlier this year, I swapped my local development environment over to Herd (along with a couple of other changes such as DBngin which is worth covering in another post). There’ s a lot to like about it one of which is how easy it is to begin capturing outgoing…
Use Static Variables in Plugin Bootstrap Files
As nice as event-driven programming can be within the context of WordPress’ hook system, one of the challenges is preventing code from executing every single time the hook is called. For example, say you’ re writing a function that fires during the init action but something happens in WordPress…
Maybe ChatGPT Didn’t Wreck Our Type of Content
To say that 2024 has been a year would be an understatement. Though I’ m talking about things that have happened offline, the same can be said for the WordPress economy at large, too. On a regrettable level, the degree at which I’ ve written has decreased more this year…
Fix: Reschedule Event Error for Action Scheduler
TL; DR: If you’re using WordPress 6.1+ and aren’t able to schedule any type of job with Action Scheduler, this article explains the problem and a potential fix. Specifically, this seeks to address the following message appearing in WordPress 6.1+: Cron reschedule event error for hook: action_scheduler_run_queue, Error…
How to Successfully Deregister Anonymous Functions in WordPress
When I first started writing about anonymous functions in WordPress back in January, I didn’t anticipate it spanning over three articles reaching into the fourth month of the year. But here we are. That said, this final article in the series aims to help provide a short introduction…
You Probably Don’t Need An Elaborate Task Management System
At this point in my career, I’ve been working remotely more than I have ever been in an office. I don’t ever want to have to return into an office unless it’s absolutely necessary. Part of working like this, though, is maintaining a sense of self-discipline for the…
Soft Skills in Software Are Just as Important as Technical Skills
The last point made in 10 hard-to-swallow truths they won’t tell you about software engineer job – in the article I’ve been discussing for the past few months – the author ends on a single point that has nothing to do with development or anything related to technology….
Disconnect From Your Job (It’s Not Impossible)
In the penultimate note from What Do You Expect From Being a Software Developer?, Mensur makes the following claim: It will be almost impossible to disconnect from your job If you’re someone new to the industry – be it someone who’s up and coming from high school…
Is Uncertainty the Toxic Friend in the Relationship of Software Development?
However you’ve come across this article, it’s the eighth in which I am evaluating the claims of another developer’s article – What Do You Expect From Being a Software Developer? From the first part in the series : At the very least, perhaps these things will…
How To Configure Laravel Herd, Xdebug, and Visual Studio Code
I’ve recently switched to Laravel Herd for local development. It uses Valet internally, which I obviously like, and comes with a lot of tools out of the box that make some of the overhead of development much easier. It’s a hard hard at work. And any utility that…
Working in Software Is Better Than Hardware (Bugs Are Part of the Job)
The dictionary defines archenemy as “the chief enemy” where enemy is defined as: noun, plural en·e·mies. a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent. an armed foe; an opposing military force: The army attacked the enemy…
Software Developers and Technical Articles in the Era of AI
Site analytics are funny things regardless of how you use them (that is, through marketing, engagement, content, and so on). I say this because analytics give us information about: how long people are reading our content (per article, even), how many people are reading what we write, how…
How To Identify Anonymous Functions in WordPress
Heads Up! Originally, I wanted to include both how to identify anonymous functions in WordPress and how to unhook them; however, the more I began writing about the topic, the longer the article became. So I’ve split the content into two articles: This one outlines how to identify…
It’s Hard to Estimate Writing Code (And Always Will Be)
There’s an old – relatively speaking of course – quote that says: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. Phil Karlton Though I think coming up with estimates for completing a task may be a close third (or at least somewhere…
Identifying and Registering Anonymous Functions in WordPress
Originally, this article started as an explanation for how to remove anonymous functions registered with WordPress. As I started writing, it became obvious it’s helpful to understand what PHP does behind-the-scenes when anonymous functions are registered. This dude clearly doesn’t understand anonymous functions. The eyes give it away….
Meetings Are Inevitable (Quality and Frequency Very)
TL; DR: If you’re looking at a career in software development, it’s imperative to know that meetings are inevitable. However, the frequency and quality of said meetings vary. Don’t let the opportunity to ask potential employers – or current employees – what meetings are like pass you by whenever…
