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Laravel / PHP / AI

Posts tagged with code quality

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Name the Date

– medium.com

Kevlin Henney wrote a good post on the importance of naming things well.

Good naming is part of design. It sets expectations and communicates a model, showing how something should be understood and used. If you mean to tell the reader getMillisSince1970, don’t say getTime.

Read more [medium.com]

Reducing Complexity with Guard Clauses in PHP and JavaScript

– engineering.helpscout.com

In this old, but still relevant, blog post Craig Davis explains what guard clauses are and how they can be used to clean up your code.

We’ll first explore several versions of a sample method from a hypothetical billing system. For these purposes, we’ll assume this is code in an existing system and we’ll look at refactoring it to reduce complexity and make it easier for a programmer to understand. The first example will be trivial enough to easily understand, but we’ll build on it in the final examples.

Read more [engineering.helpscout.com]

10 rules to code like NASA (applied to interpreted languages)

– dev.to

Here a some great tips on how to write robust software.

NASA's JPL, which is responsible for some of the most awesomest science out there, is quite famous for its Power of 10 rules (see original paper). Indeed, if you are going to send a robot on Mars with a 40 minutes ping and no physical access to it then you pretty damn well should make sure that your code doesn't have bugs.

Read more [dev.to]

Q&A on the Book Refactoring - Second Edition

– www.infoq.com

Refactoring is an excellent book written by Martin Fowler. He recently released a second edition. I'm reading it now and can recommend it to anyone interested in writing better code. Here's an interview with the author on the second edition of the book.

InfoQ interviewed Fowler about the major changes in the 2nd edition of Refactoring, how to recognize code smells and refactor code, how code reviews and refactoring support each other, what tech leads can do to encourage refactoring, the benefits refactoring brings, using tools for refactoring, and mob programming.

Read more [www.infoq.com]

The Integration Operation Segregation Principle

– frederickvanbrabant.com

In a new post on his blog Senior CEO Frederick Vanbrabant explains the Integration Operation Segregation Principle, which is programmerspeak for splitting your code into nice little testable bits.

As you can see the Integration Operation Segregation Principle is just a long and complicated term to describe something very simple. This all might seem like a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Your code and especially your tests will thank you later

Read more [frederickvanbrabant.com]

The Everybody Poops Rule

– rosstuck.com

Ross Tuck makes the case that not all code is equal.

Most teams follow the Broken Window Theory, fearing even a single tradeoff starts the slide down a slippery slope. This can reduce discussion (read: dissension) in the short term but leads to arbitrary compliance or worse. ... Deciding on a level of quality isn’t like deciding on a coding standard, you can’t have an off-the-shelf-always-okay answer. Quality is the place to have nuanced discussions.

Read more [rosstuck.com]

Practicing symmetry

In a new video Jason McCreary, the creator of the wonderful Laravel Shift, demonstrates a few good tips to clean up code. In the video below Jason uses a code snippet taken from my side project Oh Dear!

If you're interested in more tips from Jason be sure to check out his upcoming BaseCode field guide.

Meanwhile I've cleaned up (and deployed) the code in the actual app. This is what I ended up with:

class Check
{
    public function needsToRun(): bool
    {
      if (!$this->belongsToTeamOnActiveSubscriptionOrOnGenericTrial()) {
          return false;
      }
			
      if ($this->disabled()) {
          return false;
      }
			
      if ($this->alreadyRunningOrScheduled()) {
          return false;
      }
			
      if ($this->didNotRunBefore()) {
          return true;
      }
			
      if ($this->checkType()->is(CheckType::UPTIME) && $this->latestRun()->failed()) {
          return true;
      }
			
      if ($this->previousRunCrashed()) {
          return true;
      }
      return $this->latestRun()->endedMoreThanMinutesAgo($this->checkType()->minutesBetweenRuns());
    }
		
    protected function checkType(): CheckType
    {
        return new CheckType($this->type);
    }  
}

use MyCLabs\Enum\Enum;

class CheckType extends Enum
{
    const UPTIME = 'uptime';
    const BROKEN_LINKS = 'broken_links';
    const MIXED_CONTENT = 'mixed_content';
    const CERTIFICATE_HEALTH = 'certificate_health';
    const CERTIFICATE_TRANSPARENCY = 'certificate_transparency';
    public function minutesBetweenRuns(): int
    {
        if ($this->getValue() === static::MIXED_CONTENT) {
            return 60 * 12;
        }
				
        if ($this->getValue() === static::BROKEN_LINKS) {
            return 60 * 12;
        }
				
        if ($this->getValue() === static::CERTIFICATE_HEALTH) {
            return 5;
        }
				
        if ($this->getValue() === static::UPTIME) {
            return 3;
        }
				
        throw new Exception("Minutes between runs not specified for type `{$this->getValue()}`");
    }
    public function is(string $type): bool
    {
        return $type === $this->getValue();
    }
}

Read more