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Laravel / PHP / AI

HTTP Toolbox

– lornajane.net

Lorna Jane gives a good overview of the tools available when working on an API.

As Web Developers, we need to know how to work with HTTP from every angle. I gave a 2-hour tutorial at PHP UK that included some of my most trusted tools - but it was sold out and a bunch of people asked me if there was video (there wasn't, tutorials make little sense when videoed). Instead, I thought I'd try to set out a self-study version of the workshop (I rarely teach these days so I'm unlikely to deliver it anywhere else).

Read more [lornajane.net]

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The internet was built on the free labor of open source developers. Is that sustainable?

– motherboard.vice.com

The issue of whether there is a generalized sustainability crisis in open source is a contentious one, but that doesn’t obviate the need to find a solution for open source projects that do struggle to find funding and volunteers to support development. Whether these are marginal examples or a rising epidemic, the fact that they continue to work on open source projects in spite of this shortcoming is a testament to their dedication to the goals of the project and open source development more generally. Yet most developers are in agreement that if there are ways to sustainably fund the open source community, this will ultimately lead to even better software.

Read more [motherboard.vice.com]

20 lines of code that will beat A/B testing every time

– stevehanov.ca

In an older but still post, Steve Hanov explains a nice algorithm to test out new features on your audience. I don't now if this approach will yield better results, but it sure is an interesting idea.

In recent years, hundreds of the brightest minds of modern civilization have been hard at work not curing cancer. Instead, they have been refining techniques for getting you and me to click on banner ads. It has been working. Both Google and Microsoft are focusing on using more information about visitors to predict what to show them. Strangely, anything better than A/B testing is absent from mainstream tools, including Google Analytics, and Google Website optimizer. I hope to change that by raising awareness about better techniques.

Read more [stevehanov.ca]

Server-side apps with client-side rendering

– reinink.ca

Jonathan Reinink proposes a new take on what Vue's role could be in a server rendered app.

What I have here is a classic server-side app, that uses server-side routing and controllers. There is no API. The controllers lookup the data from the database, and then pass it to the templates. Except, I'm not using any server-side (ie. Blade) templates. Instead I'm doing full client-side rendering using Vue.js. Confused yet? Let me explain.

Read more [reinink.ca]

Notes on PHP RFCs, and topics that occur repeatedly on PHP internals

– github.com

Dan Ackroyd maintains this interesting repo on GitHub with thoughts on why some PHP RFC's are not implemented yet. High on on my wishlist: Briefer closure syntax and Generics

There are some notes on PHP RFCs, why some were declined, and what others might need for them to be implemented. The purpose of these documents is to avoid information from being lost and to try to avoid conversations needing to be repeated multiple times on PHP internals.

Read more [github.com]

Going deep on UUIDs and ULIDs

– blog.honeybadger.io

Over at the Honeybadger blog, Starr Horne wrote an interesting article on the different types of UUIDs and ULIDs.

UUIDs are and will continue to be the standard. They've been around forever, and libraries are available in every language imaginable. However, new approaches are worth considering, especially as we enter a world that's increasingly run by distributed systems. New unique-id approaches may help us solve problems that weren't prevalent at the publication of RFC4122.

Read more [blog.honeybadger.io]

A package to use Artisan Tinker in your browser original

by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read

Laravel comes with a very handy tinker command out of the box. Unfortunately running multiple lines of code on the command line, or editing the code you just executed, can be a bit bothersome. That's why we created a new package called laravel-web-tinker that allows you to run arbitrary code in your…

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I hate MVPs. So do your customers. Make it SLC instead.

– blog.asmartbear.com

This article by Jason Cohen contains some great tips on how to get started with your (hobby) project.

With SLC, the outcomes are better and your options for next steps are better. If it fails, that’s OK, it’s a failed experiment. Both SLCs and MVPs will have that result because the whole point is to experiment. But if a SLC succeeds, you’ve already delivered business value and you have multiple futures available to you, none of which are urgent.

Read more [blog.asmartbear.com]

Understanding how Laravel configures database connections

– divinglaravel.com

Mohammed Said shows a great way on how to handle db connections in a multi tenancy Laravel app.

The majority of applications just communicate with a single database. However, a considerable portion of laravel applications communicates with multiple databases. There are some neat packages that help with managing multiple connections, but it'd be useful if we understand how database connections work in Laravel, so let's dive in.

Read more [divinglaravel.com]

An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms

– www.jezzamon.com

Jez Swanson, an engineer at Google, wrote a very pretty explanation on how Fourier transormations work and what their role is in storing sounds and images.

The Fourier transform is an extremely powerful tool, because splitting things up into frequencies is so fundamental. They're used in a lot of fields, including circuit design, mobile phone signals, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and quantum physics!

Read more [www.jezzamon.com]