GaryClarkeTech

  Today I bring good news! I’ve compiled the first 12 videos from my forthcoming PHP Framework Pro course into one 70 minute video. The lessons included in this preview are: The Front Controller Autoloading Request Class Response Class Http Kernel Routing FastRoute Router Adding Routes Retrieving Path Info Defining Routes Controller Classes Controller Method Arguments This is just a small sample of the full course which will be released in March and many of the components will grow and evolve as the course progresses. This week I’ve been working on Dependency Injection and produced over an hour’s worth of video material so far on the Dependency Injection Container alone. My mission is to uncover all of the mystery of frameworks so ask me anything you wanna know about the course. I’ve already included material based on suggestions received. You can check out the 70 min preview here: https://youtu.be/u3hN_r1DwSQ Some early views and likes would be very much appreciated 🙏

  I learn something new every day. I have done almost every day for as long as I can remember. It’s now just a habit and something which I prioritize over my daily work. You might be surprised by that but I’ve programmed myself to think about the long game.  In five years time, nobody is going to know or care about me completing a user story inside a sprint in 2023. But it will be noticeable if I’ve studied my craft and improved my skills every day for the last 5 years. I regularly ask junior developers and testers ‘what are you going to learn today?’ and they often tell me how busy they are and that they won’t have the time. They do have the time, they just don’t prioritize it. Again, in five years time, no one will remember or care that they finished a ticket on time. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not advocating that you neglect your work. I’m simply encouraging you to ask yourself how much do you prioritize study.  Some people go through phases where they study every day for a while

So last week I spoke about frameworks and the importance of being able to write clean, framework-agnostic code if you wanted to be a well-rounded developer. Let me now share with you something which I have been working on since December…this will be my next full-length course on garycarke.tech: PHP Framework PRO. Nearly every PHP job position you will apply for will require you to have experience of using at least one framework. So I decided to go one further and give you the edge over all of the competition by showing you exactly how they work and how they are constructed. Starting from zero lines of code, we will build up our own custom framework, closely examining all of the component parts as we add them…each piece will be explained in a way that is easy to understand both in isolation and as part of the wider framework. By the end of the course you will have a complete understanding of front-controllers, Request classes, Response classes, routing components, controller classes, de

I often see job postings where they are specifically asking for a Laravel developer. This doesn’t only apply to Laravel. You can replace the word Laravel with other PHP frameworks…I’ve just used that for this example.  These kind of posts make me wonder what they would take into consideration of they were interviewing the following two developers  Developer A 3 years PHP experience, all Laravel Basic object oriented PHP skills and knowledge Developer B 7 years PHP experience, other framework experience but no Laravel Strong object oriented PHP skills and knowledge For me that would be a no-brainer. An experienced PHP developer with strong OOP skills can learn a new framework and their work would be of better quality than another developer with less experience and only basic programming skills. Learning the PHP language and object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts can provide a deeper understanding of how web development works, and how to effectively build and maintain a web applicati

I sometimes get asked about certain tools that I use so I figured it might be interesting to share my setup with you. For hardware, I’ve used the same MacBook Pro for the last ~5 years with the Catalina OS installed. I don’t think it is new enough to install a later OS than this.  I only use one screen which I think is 21 inches. I’ve never used 2 screens because I prefer to just tab through applications rather than keep looking in different directions and I always have my screen just sat flat on my desk and not on a stand. For my editor, I’ve used only PHPStorm for quite a few years and doubt that I’ll ever use anything else. Other editors have been hailed as the latest-greatest editor but they always seem to need quite a lot of config to get them to work with PHP like PHPStorm does, so why change? Before PHPStorm, I used Netbeans and Sublime. I’ve used a few themes over the years including custom ones which I created myself but I’m now using Material Darker and people seem quite happ

  I’m often reading things online where someone in their 30’s or 40’s asks the question ‘Am I too old to become a programmer?’  Well a computer does not know or care how old you are so I guess what most people actually mean by this is ‘Will someone employ me as a programmer at the age of X’? Having done some research, it seems that the average age of a programmer is 38 years old. I know quite a few people who started later than this and I know LOTS of programmers who are older than this. In fact, in my last position, I was considered to be one of the youngest and I am in my 40’s! Another thing that I’ll point out is that I have never been asked my age by any of the companies that I have applied to. In fact, in the UK where I live, you can only ask for a person’s date of birth if a role requires that the person be a certain age e.g. to sell alcohol. Of course I can only speak for myself but, in the tech world, I’ve found that the only things that matter are ability and attitude. This i

  I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and I saw a tweet by Adam Wathan which made me stop and read the whole thread : “Learning is more important than your ego. I ask for help about dumb shit on Twitter all the time, no one thinks I’m stupid and I have grown 100x as a result. I literally started a podcast just to get people to explain things to me that I didn’t fully understand” - Adam Wathan The tweet is actually a couple of years old but the message contained within it could have been written two hundred years ago and it would still be just as valid and valuable.  You can only gain from admitting that you don’t understand something and seeking help to fill that knowledge gap. There is nothing to gain from pretending to understand something that you don’t. In fact, you’ve just lost a learning opportunity instead. I get asked a few questions in my courses but I’m sure that my students have questions that they wanted to ask but didn’t. I’ve never once thought I’m being asked a