Understanding PHP VariablesTech by Sunny Srinidhi - April 5, 2017April 5, 20170 If you know PHP, you know that it's written in C. If you know C, you also know that it's statically typed. What does this mean? This means that you need to declare the type of a variable when you are declaring the variable. This is how you declare a variable in C: int a = 0; And this is how you do the same in PHP: $a = 0; So how does PHP know that $a is an integer and not a string? Or any other type? How does PHP convert this dynamic typing into static typing for the underlying C code? To understand this, you need to understand how PHP handles variables in it's code. And that's what we are going to
Create an animated GIF of your screencast on LinuxTech by Sunny Srinidhi - March 13, 20170 Animated GIFs of screencasts are everywhere today. How do you go from taking a screenshot of your desktop with the "Print Screen" button and recording a video of your desktop to creating an animated GIFs of your screencast to share on the internet? It's actually easier than you think. I'm going to tell you how to do it on a Linux machine, specifically Ubuntu, because I use an Ubuntu machine. The commands here are for Ubuntu, but they can very easily be ported to other *nix machines as well. First, you'll need to install a few tools: ImageMagick, MPlayer, and RecordMyDesktop. We'll be using RecordMyDesktop to record the activities on your screen or a portion of your screen as a video
Use Config Caching to Speed Up Your Laravel AppTech by Sunny Srinidhi - March 13, 2017March 13, 20170 As web developers, we're always looking for ways to speed up our app. It's all about milliseconds today. There are several ways by which a web app or a web service could be optimised for speed. Being one of the most used and popular PHP frameworks, Laravel has a few tricks up its sleeves to make this happen. One of them is config caching. Obviously, this is not going to make tremendous improvement, but significant enough to be written about. So what is config caching? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like, you cache all your configuration so that you don't have to go looking for it every time you want to read a configuration. Laravel, as usual, has an artisan command
Secure your web app with free and valid SSL (Nginx, Ubuntu, Let’s Encrypt)Tech by Sunny Srinidhi - February 13, 20170 HTTPS is now the standard. If you are an online service provider, getting an SSL certificate for your web app is a no-brainer. If you want your users to trust you, you need to get yourself one of those. Even otherwise, to secure the data you hold, it is important to provide the basic security that the HTTPS protocol provides. If you are not sure what it is, you can check out this Wikipedia page. This is a technical topic, and if you are coming here to learn how to secure your web app with an SSL certificate, it is better if you know your way around a computer and your cloud machine (you'll be doing everything in a terminal
A few basic (but powerful) ImageMagick commandsTech by Sunny Srinidhi - February 1, 2017February 6, 20211 If you’re not sure what ImageMagick is, it’s one of the greatest tools you could have on your computer, to manipulate images and a few other types of files. In this post, I’m going to list out a few of the commands which come in very handy in a variety of situations. Recently I got the opportunity to work on a project where a lot of images had to be manipulated — changing the resolution and keeping the file size in check. I wrote the script in PHP and ImageMagick was the weapon of choice. Before you read any further, if you are not aware of ImageMagick and the features it offers, go through their website first. Also, I’d like to point out that
Make Node.js debugging easier with colorful log messagesTech by Sunny Srinidhi - January 8, 2017February 9, 20170 I’m working on my second project in Node.js. I kind of love it. I haven’t yet decided to find out how better it performs compared to apps written in other languages, such as PHP, or Java. But writing Node.js apps is fun, mostly because you can get npm packages for almost everything you need during development. This helps you concentrate on the business logic and not worry about writing basic boilerplate code. What’s the advantage? Well, you can write a POC/MVP app really quickly. Anyway, one thing I noticed while working on the previous Node.js app was that debugging is a bit difficult if you, like me, have an obsession with having proper log messages everywhere. So one of the first
Not being an entrepreneur is not lameRants by Sunny Srinidhi - January 5, 2017February 9, 20170 I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m in the software development industry. I write code, a lot of code. And I read a lot of code too. I was a professional writer, blogging about anything tech. I was in the online ad industry for a few years, doing affiliate marketing, writing guest posts, and what not! The money was good, it was awesome. If you put your time and energy into it, almost everything has a chance to work out in your favour. Anyway, I got a chance to spend some time with a few college kids over the weekend, and I was kind of amused when I understood how that generation plans its future. They all want to start their own businesses,
One good practice I picked up: Reading dailyGeneral by Sunny Srinidhi - January 5, 2017February 9, 20170 Most of us don’t realise how liberating the practice of reading could be. I wasn’t a reader growing up. I obviously used to indulge in the occasional reading of magazines and comic books, a few fiction novels here and there. But I never did it daily. Even as an adult, I never really felt like reading. I was always on YouTube. Streaming videos online was my thing. Even after I bought an Amazon Kindle I didn’t do a lot of reading. But from the last year or so, I really picked up the habit of flipping pages after pages without end. I read in the train during the weekends, I read at work, I read at home after work, I read
/public/api/v1.2.3.4.5/login — Don’t do this!RantsTech by Sunny Srinidhi - September 7, 2016February 9, 20170 If you are anything like me, or tens of thousands of others working in the web development domain, you know what the title means. We are going to talk about the widely debated “v” in API endpoints. Do I like it? Well, obviously not. I’ll tell you why. 1. It’s ugly! It makes reading documentations very difficult, because you’ll need to version your document as well. And you’ll have to make sure you are using the latest document, or the document that’s relevant to the version of API you are consuming. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you had one version of API and one version of documentation? I know what people over at the other camp are shouting — your APIs will change and
When I finally get to use my master’s degreeGeneralRants by Sunny Srinidhi - September 1, 2016February 9, 20170 According to my knowledge, getting a master’s degree is seen as an achievement, a sign of dedication, passion, and greater intellect. I’m of course talking about the West. I could be wrong here, but that’s what I’ve heard, read, and seen. But when you come to the East, Asia specifically, every other Tom, Dick, and Harry has a master’s degree. In fact, if he has only one, or this one over that one, he could be good for nothing! You have a master’s degree in Arts? Seriously? What the hell are you going to do with that? Go back to college and get a master’s degree in engineering, software engineering. Okay, that was a bit too much. But yes, some degrees are