You are a developer. You read books, blog posts, and Tweets about the practice of how to construct clean code. Do you truly understand why? I never advocate blindly following. Rather, I encourage you to ask: Why should I care about writing clean,
Coding
Profession of Complexity – Simplicity is Better
We make things harder than they need to be. We take a basic concept and then diverge into a sea of complexity. This human behavior burrows deep into our thinking, implementations, and explanations. This drive towards complexity makes us ineffective
Why “Best Practices” are a Complete Myth
There is no such thing as "best practices." None. That's a lie. It's confusing too, as we seek to find some solution or methodology that is superior to any other. But that doesn't exist. Let's talk about why "best practices" are a complete
Down the Rabbit Hole to Build Perfectly Designed Software
I am a software craftsman. I teach and advocate building high-quality solutions using the techniques of readability, reusability, and maintainability. But there is a point of no return. There is a ledge that we walk on where the act of building
A Full Lego Box is the First Secret to Programming
Listen up as I'm going to unlock the first secret of programming for you. Everything in code is built from the same building blocks. Everything. It doesn't matter if you're building the space shuttle, banking system, a vision-guided robotic cell, or
Your Code Sucks. Time to Clean it Up
Your code sucks. I remember the first time a mentor told me that. I was crushed. I was so focused on getting it working and done that I hadn't taken the time to build quality into it. Shoot, I didn't even know what that was or where to start. Thirty
How to Better Serve the WordPress Community and You
Over the past couple of years, I focused on teaching and helping individual professional developers who want to master and continually level up. But it occurs to me that not everyone is or can be a professional developer. That revelation opened my
My WordPress and PHP Coding Philosophies
So you've watched some of the tutorials in the Know the Code, watched my presentations, read some blog posts, and read my tweets. You may notice a trend of how I approach WordPress and PHP coding. Let's talk about it for a moment. First of all,