PinnedSteam Deck has killed PC GamingSearch your feelings, you know it to be true — It was almost four years ago when I said that PC Gaming was going to die. The state of the PC Gaming scene, both as an industry but also as users with PC Gaming machines, was in shambles. Once a place where technology drove and pushed forward, a decade…Hardware9 min read
May 23Laravel: Timezones in the database?Damn Daylight Savings! — Managing time in the world of computers is a mess. Moreover, dealing with timezones can make-or-break an application that is not prepared from the ground up to manipulate it. Most of the time (no pun intended) any event is set in stone, that moment is the same for everyone, but…PHP6 min read
Mar 28PHPUnit: Making your own assertionCallbacks, callbacks, constraint, callbacks — PHPUnit is a very complete testing suite, and with Mockery is even better. Most of the assertions are covered: data in arrays, strings inside strings, classes instances, and so on. Even so, PHPUnit is not perfect, and for your project, you may need a “custom” assertion. For example, I just…PHP3 min read
Mar 21PHP: Use your private repository in Composer, without SSH keysI don’t want everyone in Packagist to laugh at me — Having Github behind Packagist is a convenient way to make your packages public and available for you and everyone. There is a problem, though: you cannot do the same easily with private repositories. The most direct alternative for using Composer with private packages is Private Packagist, a paid service. There…PHP5 min read
Mar 16Laravel: Subscriptions, on premisesIf you liked this, then remember to plan, charge and subscribe! — Using subscriptions on applications has been always problematic. Unless you push that along your billing to a third party like Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Chargify, Fastsprint, to name a few, you will find that is not something everyone is happy to do, let alone develop. Sometimes you don’t have that luxury…Laravel4 min read
Feb 28Two years from PHP “dying”: There are other toolsYour job is to pick the right tool for the right job — Some time ago I wrote not once, but twice, my thoughts about PHP “dying”. …PHP7 min read
Feb 28PHP: 10 tips to use for MockeryBecause testing doesn’t have to be a 1,000 line per-test odyssey — For those who don’t know what mocking is, its the technique to create a “fake” object from another, and assert functionality, like the methods called. …PHP7 min read
Feb 18Laravel: I cached my queries with only one methodI shouldn’t have to, but I did it anyway — Long time ago, around 2013, Laravel included the remember() method in the Query Builder. The functionality was simple: remember the query results for a given amount of time. That method was killed in 2015, when Laravel 5.0 was introduced. I was one of the developers who understood the decision behind…Laravel4 min read
Feb 11Laravel: Goodbye LTSYou can blame PHP all of you want In the age of agile software development, where features are not planned for the next release but for few months away, a “Long Term Support” has become something like a safe bet for any project manager. No need to keep updating to…PHP3 min read
Feb 10Laravel: Authorization done rightIt’s not about who, but what — The authorization mechanism (not to be mistaken with authentication) included in Laravel is very easy to follow: you check if an authenticated user can or cannot do something in your application, based on its properties and the arguments passed, if any. To do that, the documentation is very straightforward: you…PHP4 min read
