In this installment, we continue looking at Conway’s Game of Life and our exploration of cellular automata. Now that we can calculate how one cell in our grid changes from one generation to the next, we can extend that to see how an arbitrarily sized grid changes from one cell to the next.

As our codebases become ever more complex, the cost of change rises as well. Any change or enhancement carries a risk of breaking something else. The problem is even more acute for people new to the project who’ve not yet learned the pitfalls waiting in that particular codebase. This month we’ll be examining the problem […]

I have been programming for nearly twenty years at this point, and I have worked in various languages. At many of my previous jobs, as well as my current one, I have had the pleasure of working with PHP as the core language of my job. Since the first time I started working with PHP, […]

How do the building blocks come together to form a whole? Most resources on Design Patterns look at each pattern in isolation, allowing you to focus on the pattern and its uses without being distracted by side issues. What’s missing, I have found, are examples of fitting those patterns into a working system. This month we’ll look at a feature involving […]

One of the most requested features in PHP for a very long time was a concept known as Annotations. Annotations allow developers to add additional context and, most importantly, functionality to code without using a procedural approach. Many articles like to say it “adds metadata” to code, but I do not think that tells the whole story.

By Ken Marks Hiring a new developer is a risky endeavor. What if they don’t work out? What if they get bored? What if our organization’s needs change? In this article, we’ll discuss what it takes to foster a learning environment for your tech team, why you should encourage learning, what it takes to be […]

Like many programmers, I am not a “people” person, but this article is about people. First, how might you discern what “people” aspects of your project are essential? Here’s my approach. Second, how might people inspire you and help make what you do more fun? We’ll see my approach as we make the transition from abstract discussions back to concrete details.

Encrypting and decrypting messages were an early computing application. Last month’s challenge was to implement and harden a cipher from antiquity. Let’s look at possible solutions before moving on to this month’s challenge.

Programming languages are vastly different when it comes to syntax. Some may look so similar that they create an entire family of languages, just like real-world languages. PHP belongs to what is known as the C-style family, which constitutes languages that use curly brackets for flow control and ignore whitespace. Python does not belong to […]

Hiring a new developer is a risky endeavor. What if they don’t work out? What if they get bored? What if our organization’s needs change? In this article, we’ll discuss what it takes to foster a learning environment for your tech team, why you should encourage learning, what it takes to be a good mentor, and what you’re looking for in a mentee. In […]