Hi, my name is ___ One of our most frequent tasks as programmers is assigning names. It’s hard to go an hour without coming up with a name for a class, a method, or a variable. But naming things is hard for at least two reasons: The exact purpose of an item might be not be clear until you’ve written its body or used it in context. I often use a clearly inappropriate placeholder that will force me to replace it once I have a good name. Picking appropriate words is tough. It can be hard to spend time selecting the right word when you’re focused on writing logic, but often the work of naming will help clarify that logic’s organization. Here are some suggestions for naming rules, born from recent experiences. (more…)

Deploying Websites with Git Deploying your webapp is an important part of the web development equation – your client’s site isn’t going to attract a lot of attention sitting in your local dev directory. Deployment concerns tend to fall to the bottom of the priority list, though, and the end result tends to be kludgy, hastily thrown-together deployment scripts; and because they are so kludgy and, often, time consuming, when time crunches threaten, a developer may resort to making changes directly on the remote server that need to be (but sometimes never are) backported to the code living in your version control. Wouldn’t it be better if you could deploy your newest code with a single command, using the same tool you use for version control? One git push , and your site is serving your newest commits. No more kludgy, multi-part scripts, no more threat of overwriting critical fixes with the next deploy. Let’s make that happen. (more…)

Gate External Links in Kids’ Apps Release after release, Apple raises the bar on its requirements for inclusion in its app store. Sometimes these are welcome technical changes, like explicit user permission to access contacts. Other times they feel more like hurdles for app developers and users to jump – or in this case, the appropriate metaphor is stepping through a flimsy backyard gate. iOS 7 introduced a new requirement for kids apps: 24.3 Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must get parental permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out of the app or engage in commerce This requirement was probably inspired by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which establishes rules related to collecting personal data from children. Apple applies the requirement to interface elements like iTunes app store links and social sharing buttons. However, the requirement is remarkably non-specific as to what constitutes a sufficiently sturdy parental gate. (more…)

error_log() On Strike A.K.A. Debugging PHP Applications in Mavericks Ever seen this in your production php_error.log? [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] Hello there [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] ...starting loop [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 0 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 1 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 2 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 3 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 4 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] stepping through 5 [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] ...done [16-Dec-2013 10:50:44 America/Denver] How in the world did we get here? There’s one thing you can tell about the developer who wrote it – they don’t have a debugger up and running. Or maybe they do, it’s just too big of a hassle to fire it up and get it attached. And I am plenty guilty of this myself, having written my share of debugatory error_log statements over the years. Sometimes it’s just easier to add a trace, refresh, and tail the error_log. Debuggers, at least those available for macs, are finicky beasts. They’re often difficult to setup, they’re a bit too assertive when you’re not actively debugging, and they don’t always work reliably. Compared with a debugger, error_log() is always there for you, seldom complains, and rarely sticks it’s nose in where it doesn’t belong. Why can’t a debugger be this way? I need to admit that nothing about what I’m going to say is ground breaking. There isn’t a new debugger out there that works better than anything before. There isn’t anything new in Mavericks that makes debugging easier. It’s just the fact that after 5 years of typing error_log(“Here I am”) over and over as my debugging solution, I’ve finally found a debugging setup that works without a lot of fuss. And that seems to be the key for me…in order to use it, it needs to come without a lot of fuss. First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room… (more…)