Category: Software
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Today's Software is Terrible
Are you a software developer? I am, and everyday I’m embarrassed by my profession. Every single day, I run across some website, app, video-game, program or plugin that is egregiously broken; embarrassingly broken; 5000-developers-with-six-figure-salaries-and-free-catered-lunches-and-still-can’t-get-it-right, broken. Apps on my phone, tablet, computer, tv, and car, crash constantly, sometimes resulting in actual data loss. We shoved television behind…
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Apple carOS
Imagine you’re a company, maybe even one as big, as innovative, and as reaching as Apple. Other technology companies have prototyped & released something ahead of you. What can you do? If you are anything like Apple, you use their head-start to your advantage, watching & learning from their expensive educations with an end-around in your playbook. You solve remaining problems…
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Upgrading MariaDB Ubuntu Server from 14.04 to 16.04
First, I needed to remove the old apt repository and signing key. (This prevents do-release-upgrade -d from stopping halfway through.) Remove repos: cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d sudo rm maria* Remove old key: # List the keys sudo apt-key list # Remove the correct key, which is the second half of PUB STRING1/STRING2 sudo apt-key del STRING2 Second, I…
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XDebug, Laravel Valet, NetBeans
To get XDebug working with Laravel Valet & NetBeans, I needed to do the following: Install XDebug via Homebrew: brew install homebrew/php/php70-xdebug Enter NetBeans’s Preferences > PHP > Debugging: Change the port from 9000 to 9001. (This is because Valet runs on 9000 by default.) Uncheck “Stop at first line”. (This is because Valet is listening…
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Slow Vagrant?
Maybe you’re a file hoarder, like me. I switched to using VVV a few years ago, when it became cool to use Vagrant and when unit testing became a must-have part of my daily WordPress development process. Truth be told, I’ve missed the simplicity of MAMP PRO ever since, even if I do prefer Nginx over…
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Mother Nature's Toolbox Must Be Heavy
Running npm install for WordPress is a terrifying experience. It installs so many libraries and dependencies, it would take a lifetime to learn them all. If you’ve never had the pleasure, here’s what it looks like today: WordPress@4.5.0 /Users/johnjamesjacoby/Work/VVV/www/wordpress-develop ├─┬ autoprefixer@6.1.2 │ ├── browserslist@1.0.1 │ ├── caniuse-db@1.0.30000384 │ ├── num2fraction@1.2.2 │ ├─┬ postcss@5.0.14 │ │…
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Super Metroid and NUX
If you enjoyed Matt’s post about the original Super Mario Bros. check out this video about Super Metroid’s hidden tutorials. I had posted this years ago internally while working at Automattic in a thread about new-user experience, specifically in regards to how WordPress (both .org and .com) can learn a lot from video-game design. I think this still holds true, both for new…
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Meet Stuttter
Stuttter, like WordPress on the surface, is both product and organization. Spiritually it is a conduit for rethinking WordPress from the outside in. It’s a way to independently test the waters for what we can do with it, without deviating from it’s history, beauty, charm, and chutzpah. For me, it’s an empty canvas for code, and a…
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WP Chosen
The WP Chosen plugin tames the power of WordPress’s filters, settings, and options with the simplicity and versatility of the Chosen jQuery library. I took some time to think about the recent passing of an old friend, and concluded the way to celebrate his life (and contributions to mine) was to build and open-source something…
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Reputation
Yesterday, I tweeted about the recent Volkswagen debacle: https://twitter.com/JJJ/status/646492412098031616 It got me thinking about the WordPress community, who the major players are, and where I might fit into it all on any given day. I’ll start with Automattic and work my way across from there. Full disclosure, if you didn’t know, I worked at Automattic for…