Once inside the loop, never outside the loop
One thing I had to implement against my will was a Websocket server… in PHP. You heard that right.
I’m always been very vocal about PHP being used for thing that is not suited for, like holding socket connections, when the nature of the language and the runtime itself is single-threaded, or “blocking” if you say.
But, even If I didn’t wanted to and looked into Go and Rust for the implementation, I figured out that WebSocket on PHP wasn’t THAT bad to work with, but there were a few caveats.
Websockets and the async nature of PHP
Never use what you don’t need
For some people working on the front-end spec of the Internet, Tailwind has become something like an alternative to look when dealing with the never-ending fight of CSS frameworks. We’re not short of choices, from dead simple like Skeleton CSS, to complete visual language systems like Material UI.
In any case, no one has become so successful like Bootstrap. Almost a decade ago it started as a branch of Twitter internal design tools, but it was so good dealing with mobile viewports and offering an understandable grid system that it become widely adopted across multiple sites.
Some folks decided to…
It’s all about the App Store, again
When Apple announced their new iPad Pro with the M1 chip, the one that also powers the newer Macbooks, Mac Mini, and the recently announced new iMacs, everyone though that the iPad Pro was gonna get some sort of MacOS treatment, but it wasn’t.
Some outlets already have shared some articles about why no MacOS feels like a disappointment, and how awesome would be the idea considering the core internals are the same.
The problem it’s not that MacOS is not prepared for a touch-screen-first device, since everything at hardware else seems ready to receive it, but rather the economics…
It’s not a big addition, but it’s a welcome one
Wow, the PHP train doesn’t stop, does it? There was one RFC (Request for Comments) for a new capability of the PHP language itself that closed voting just recently, and it’s called never.
PHP 8.1 is planned for the end of the year, and in addition to Fibers, the new never keyword will allow you to mark a function as “never” returning. The function will stop the normal script execution by either throwing an exception, looping forever, or simply telling PHP to stop with die().
Using the New “never”
The best way to show why the never return type should make sense is with…
Maximum performance doesn’t come without code changes
Laravel Octane was announced some weeks ago with the promise of pushing the framework to the moon in terms of requests served per second. It wasn’t public until today (in beta form) for everyone to test, with first-party Laravel package compatibility (e.g. Nova or Telescope) out of the box.
The way Laravel Octane works to push the boundaries is essentially simple: Instead of “starting” the application each request, it does it fully once and saves it into a shared part of the memory. Once done, Octane will spawn multiple PHP workers that will receive this shared application instance. …
Understand how it works and what it means for concurrency’s future in PHP
PHP is trying to shove the lack of features from its code base, and Fibers is one of the meaningful additions to the language. PHP Fibers, incoming in PHP 8.1 at the end of the year, will introduce a sort of async programming (coroutines) into the wild.
The fiber concept basically refers to a lightweight thread of execution (also called coroutine). These seem to run in parallel but are ultimately handled by the runtime itself rather than by pushing it directly to the CPU. …
There is no thing as “bad products”, but wrong prices
I’ll save you the introduction by just pointing that Artifact was a disappointment from the very announcement, and was kept a disappointment until its death.
Nobody asked for card game being announced with so much fanfare, and to be forced as the next “big” thing for Valve. To add insult to injury, the pricing scheme also proved that nobody wanted Artifact either.
Whoever thought that Artifact was gonna be a success was tone deaf with the gaming industry, specially the players. …
What holds tomorrow’s technology for an old language is not up to date?
Almost exactly one year ago I published an article that titled itself “PHP could fade away in the next decade”. The summary of the article I published is like a A Christmas Carol, but instead of Ebenezer Scrooge, it’s PHP:
- In the past, PHP didn’t fix its problems, so other languages gained traction.
- In the present, PHP lacks features needed for the Internet of today.
- In the future, PHP still won’t have meaningful features.
Note that I never wrote “dying”, “don’t use it”, or even “ditch your PHP project now!”. …
There is no worse deaf man than the one who doesn’t want to hear. And there is no worse madman than the one who doesn’t want to understand.
The only “bastion of hope” among all publishers. The “chosen one” that would destroy corporate greed. The only company that showed that being good with its customers would allow for reciprocity and truly become successful. CD Projekt.
The polish company was considered one of the best around for their talent, commitment, pro-consumer policies. Anyone remembers the “free DLC” mantra for The Witcher 3, and the no-DRM approach on GOG. No lying, no nickel-and-dime gamers, just good and honest products.
They were considered the good guys for almost a decade and half, but now reality hits: they’re just another greedy company…
And why you should just buy a console and an iPad
One of the key parts of any PC “Gamer” is the graphics card. A decade ago there was a good price point between USD $200 and $400, at most. Now, you’re just picking what console to buy instead.
You can call me a mad, crazy, or literally ignorant, but there are many facts that suggest the “PC Gaming” as we knew it is dead, being relegated to an afterthought or a clearly highly enthusiast market. No more sweet-pricing deals, no more games pushing the boundaries, PCs components for games have moved to luxuries.
Graphic cards for games became a niche
The “cryptocurrencies armageddon” made graphic cards higher…
