– A Senior Developer’s Pragmatic Guide The SOLID principles are essential guidelines for writing clean, maintainable, and scalable software. While many developers can recite them, real-world applications often struggle with their correct implementation. Understanding SOLID is not just about memorizing definitions; it’s about knowing when and how to apply them effectively. Sometimes, following the rules strictly… Continue reading SOLID Principles: From Paw Patrol to the Neighborhood
Why Agile Won’t Fix Your Project
We’ve all heard the promises of Agile: faster delivery, more flexibility, and a better team dynamic. But let’s face it—Agile won’t save your project if the foundation isn’t right. Frameworks are tools, not magic wands, and success depends on one key factor: your people. Without commitment, purpose, and vision, even the best methodology falls flat.… Continue reading Why Agile Won’t Fix Your Project
LLM Prompt Optimizations: Practical Techniques for Developers
Optimizing inputs for LLMs ensures better, more consistent outputs while leveraging the full potential of the model’s underlying capabilities. By understanding core concepts like tokenization, embeddings, self-attention, and context limits, you can tailor inputs to achieve desired outcomes reliably. Below, you’ll find fundamental techniques and best practices organized into practical strategies. PS: You can use… Continue reading LLM Prompt Optimizations: Practical Techniques for Developers
The Wild West of Coding: Why We’re Still Burning Digital Cities
The year 2050 is closer than the year 1990, yet we’re still writing code like it’s the 1800s. It’s 2025, and while we’ve made incredible strides in software development—automated memory management, static analysis tools, refactoring IDEs, and AI copilots like ChatGPT—it still feels like the Wild West. Sure, the tools are better, but the way… Continue reading The Wild West of Coding: Why We’re Still Burning Digital Cities
Legacy Codebase: A Love Story
After some years, working with a > 10 years old legacy PHP codebase, I can truly say: you can escape the legacy codebase and introduce whatever is helpful, in a well-maintained system. Here are 5 important steps that I have done: Here are 5 additional steps that I already introduce: Here is what helped me… Continue reading Legacy Codebase: A Love Story
What have I learned so far in my job?
I will start a new job next month (02-2023), so time to recap, I’m going to describe what I’ve learned so far. me: Lars Moelleken |> Assistant for business IT> IT specialist for system integration> IT specialist for application development What did I learn as IT specialist for system integration? – You only learn as much as… Continue reading What have I learned so far in my job?
PHP: Code Quality with Custom Tooling Extensions
After many years of using PHPStan, PHP-CS-Fixer, PHP_CodeSniffer, … I will give you one advice: add your own custom code to extend your Code-Quality-Tooling. Nearly every project has custom code that procures the real value for the product / project, but this custom code itself is often not really improved by PHP-CS-Fixer, PHPStan, Psalm, and… Continue reading PHP: Code Quality with Custom Tooling Extensions
Timeout Problems: Web Server + PHP
What? First there is an HTTP request and that will hit your Web server, then it will pass the request via TCP- or UNIT-Socket via FastCGI to your PHP-FPM Daemon, here we will start a new PHP process and in this process we will connect e.g. to the database and run some queries. The Problem!… Continue reading Timeout Problems: Web Server + PHP
Prepare your PHP Code for Static Analysis
Prepare your PHP Code for Static Code Analysis, so that e.g. PHPStan or Psalm will understand your code.
Generics in PHP via PHPDocs
Examples for Generics in PHP via PHPDocs / Template annotations.
