Getting Started With Backstage.io

A quick introduction into Backstage.IO

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2023-07-28
10m read
devops, programming, microservices

Blog Update 2022/2023

A quick update of what has happened with the blog on the last 2 years

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2022-08-24
1m read
life, writing

Using Abbreviations instead of Aliases

Why you should start using abbreviations instead of aliases

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2020-11-08
2m read
linux, tips, shell, fish

Circuit Breaker Pattern in Elixir

Design for failure with the circuit breaker pattern

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2020-11-02
11m read
elixir, functional programming, design patterns

5 Reasons to love Elixir

Five reasons that will make you love the Elixir language and stack if you don't already

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2020-11-01
8m read
functional programming, programming, elixir

Exploring Headless Commerce

Exploring the current state of headless commerce and how to best take advantage

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2020-11-01
5m read
e-commerce, headless, technology

The Thing Most Developers Get Wrong On Interviews

Most developers focus a lot on technical skills but often fail to prepare for the most basic of soft skills interviews

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2020-04-13
4m read
career, soft skills, interviewing

WTF is Flow-Based Programming

A quick introduction and overview on the ideas behind Flow-Based Programming

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2019-10-20
2m read
programming, functional programming, flow-based programming, software architecture

Ethereum Zero to Hero: Developing Our First Contract

Developing a basic contact using Ethereum

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2017-12-24
5m read
blockchain, programming, ethereum

Ethereum Zero to Hero: Introduction

An introduction to Ethereum Development

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2017-12-24
2m read
blockchain, programming, ethereum

Ethereum Zero to Hero: Setting a Development Environment

Setting up a basic private test network for Ethereum development

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2017-12-24
6m read
blockchain, programming, ethereum

5 Trends To Watch Out On 2018

Five technology trends to keep to watch out for in 2018.

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2017-12-18
4m read
programming, technology

You Should Learn Functional Programming in 2017

Functional programming is making a big comeback and here is why developers should make their mission for 2017 to learn a functional language

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2017-04-23
5m read
programming, functional programming, software architecture, elixir

Neural Networks Without a PhD: Topologies

A series focused on presenting Neural Networks and the related concepts in layman's terms, that is to say without specialized knowledge in math or machine learning.

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2017-04-16
4m read
machine learning, programming, neural networks

Vim Is The Perfect IDE

I have have tried Atom, SublimeText, TextMate, Eclipse, Visual Studio, and most of the Jetbrains products, I'm constantly tweaking and looking for a better setup, however Vim always feels like home to me; and I'm to the point now where I rarely use IDEs – exception being messy and complex projects where IDEs can do a lot of heavily lifting

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2017-04-16
5m read
programming, vim, tooling, productivity

Neural Networks Without a PhD: Introduction

A series focused on presenting Neural Networks and the related concepts in layman's terms, that is to say without specialized knowledge in math or machine learning.

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2017-03-26
3m read
machine learning, programming, neural networks

Neural Networks Without a PhD: Components of a Neural Network

A series focused on presenting Neural Networks and the related concepts in layman's terms, that is to say without specialized knowledge in math or machine learning.

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2017-03-26
5m read
machine learning, programming, neural networks

Machine Learning: A Simple Neural Network

A simple neural network implementation in python with numpy

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2016-06-06
7m read
machine learning, programming, neural networks, python

Functional Programming: The Paradigm for the Next Generation

Functional programming is often treated as the fad of hipster mustachioed programmers, and more often is dismissed without much consideration

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2016-05-02
5m read
programming, functional programming, software engineering, elixir

On Codes on Conduct

My opinions and ruminations on the whole debate about PHP's code of conduct

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2016-01-24
10m read
codes of conduct, community, social justice, equality

Exploring Elixir Recursion and Lists

Exploration of recursion in elixir with lists

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2016-01-17
3m read
elixir, functional programming

2016 the Year of Quantified Self

Quantified self and self-improvement have been on my radar for a few years now, and with a new year starting I finally decided to give it a serious try and see what outcomes I get from it.

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2016-01-03
2m read
health, quantified self, productivity, self improvement

TDD is not Dead

TDD is not dead, not really. And it won't really ever be dead, it will change or be replaced with something better; in fact it already has, and in my MagentoTDD book we focus on Behavior Driven Development, an approach that emerged from the original TDD methodology.

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2015-09-03
4m read
testing, programming, TDD, BDD

Manfred Macx and the Problem of Information Overload

I have always been fascinated with the technology concepts presented on Charles Stross book Accelerando, artificial cats, downloads of consciousness, nanotechnology, etc. but of all of them one got my particular attention; Manfred Marcx glasses.

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2015-07-17
5m read
futurology, technology, information overload

On Encrypting Magento Extensions

Should Magento Connect Allow encrypted extensions

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2015-07-09
4m read
magento, programming, DRM

Git Tips and Tricks

Useful collection of git tips and tricks

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2015-04-04
1m read
git, programming, tips

Getting Started With Magento and Docker for Development

Setting up a Magento development Environment with docker

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2015-03-05
5m read
magento, programming, docker

Design Patterns in PHP: Adapters

The adapter pattern also referred as the wrapper pattern, I find that wrapper is a more fitting name since it describes clearly what this pattern does; it encapsulates the functionality of a class or object into a class with a common public interfaces.

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2015-01-25
3m read
programming, design patterns, PHP

WTF are: Service Contracts (Magento 2 Edition)

The Service layer allows modules to provide a well-defined public API and effectively hiding the business logic and preserving data integrity.

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2015-01-12
3m read
programming, magento, service contracts, design patterns

The Async Software Development Manifesto Revised

The Async Software Development Manifesto has been making the rounds on sites like HackerNews and /r/programming; and while I dont agree entirely with all that is proposed, some of the points made by the author made so much sense that I felt motivated to break them down and make some contributions of my own.

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2014-09-29
6m read
Programming, Software Engineering

Exploring Hack: Building a MicroFramework

So to get started I've decided to build a micro-framework using HACK and HHVM, building a simple microframework should be a challenging enough task to illustrate some of the more interesting features of the language and at the same time it has an achievable goal so we don't end on a never ending development cycle.

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2014-08-06
2m read
HHVM, programming, hacklang

Swiss Army Knife Syndrome

A tool with so many features and implements that ends up being completely useless, in my experience the same problem can apply to software; more often than not as developers we will try to include a feature or a piece of code

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2014-05-20
3m read
software design, software architecture, programming

Flexible PHP Development with PHPFarm

Learn how to use PHPFarm to create flexible development environments that can run multiple php versions side by side

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2014-04-18
6m read
programming, PHPFarm, PHP

Is HHVM/Hack the new face of PHP?

HHVM could change (is already at some extent) the way developers see and think about PHP performance, and how PHP should work. Even if you don't care and never plan to use HHVM or HACK in any of your projects the mere fact that they exist is a good thing for the PHP community.

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2014-04-08
2m read
php, hhvm, programming

Working with Psysh

I previously mentioned Boris, a terrific REPL for PHP, and while Boris is a great and functional REPL, is not the only available

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2014-04-03
1m read
php, programming, tooling

Hello Hack

Recently Facebook unveiled Hack, a new programming language that aims to provide developers with the tools to write and ship code quickly while catching errors on the fly.

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2014-03-23
3m read
php, hhvm, hack

HHVM In The Wild

HHVM is taking the PHP world by storm, and as PHP developer there many things to be excited about HHVM.

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2014-03-22
1m read
hhvm, hack, programming

Exploring Traits

Traits are a mechanism for code reuse in single inheritance languages such as PHP. A Trait is intended to reduce some limitations of single inheritance by enabling a developer to reuse sets of methods freely in several independent classes living in different class hierarchies. The semantics of the combination of Traits and classes is defined in a way which reduces complexity, and avoids the typical problems associated with multiple inheritance and Mixins.

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2014-03-17
3m read
programming, traits, best practices

Laravel Learning Resources

Collection of resources for learning Laravel

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2014-03-15
0m read
laravel, programming, learning

Boris The Missing PHP REPL

REPL(read-eval-print loop) can be great tools for quickly testing concepts, experimenting and getting quick feedback when learning a new language. Many languages and frameworks provide some sort of REPL like the rails console or laravel's artisan tinker.

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2014-03-13
1m read
php, programming

Magento Online Hackathon 2014

This past weekend the Magento Community hosted the first Magento Online Hackathon, here is a quick recap of my experience.

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2014-03-08
2m read
magento, programming

Magento and HHVM

If you are developer or system administrator working with Magento running one or more medium sized stores, chances are that you are familiar with the many challenges of optimizing and scaling Magento.

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2014-02-17
9m read
php, programming

Design Patterns in PHP: Singletons

The singleton pattern is useful when we need to make sure we only have a single instance of a class for the entire request lifecycle in a web application. This typically occurs when we have global objects (such as a Configuration class) or a shared resource (such as an event queue).

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2014-01-27
4m read
PHP, Design Patterns, Programming

Design Patterns in PHP: Using Factories

The factory pattern is a class that has some methods that create objects for you. Instead of using new directly, you use the factory class to create objects. That way, if you want to change the types of objects created, you can change just the factory. All the code that uses the factory changes automatically.

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2014-01-19
4m read
php, design patterns, programming

Playing with dependency injection in PHP

Dependency Injection is a software design pattern that allows avoiding hard-coding dependencies and makes possible to change the dependencies both at runtime and compile time.

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2014-01-06
4m read
php, dependency injection, design patterns, programming

Technical Debt

Technical Debt, chances are that you as developer have heard that term at least once before; but ask yourself do you really understand technical debt and when is appropriate to use it.

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2013-11-04
4m read
programming, best practices, technical debt

We are consuming data the wrong way

We are essential using the same technology as it was invented 30 years ago, when the few websites where just black text and a white background. Sure, we have css5, html5, javascript, server side languages, etc.

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2013-10-28
2m read
technology, programming, futurism

Stop Disrupting Everything

The term disrupt is nothing more than the last on a long list of buzzwords that poison the start up scene.

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2013-09-14
2m read
startup, technology, innovation

5 Rules for Writing Great Commits

One of the most underestimated skills that a developer can have is the ability to make well documented, clean commits. Writing good commits can save everyone involved in project tremendous amounts of time, money and effort

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2013-09-05
3m read
programming, git, best practices

Fitbit Flex and the Quantified Self Movement

I believe that information empower us to make better healthier decisions, and this has certainly proven to be true in my case after a my first month of using the Fitbit Flex

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2013-08-29
3m read
health, quantified self

Burnout

We all been there, feeling tired, bored and even sick of our work; burnout is very common in the tech industry, probably more common that most people want to realize.

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2013-08-02
3m read
burnout, health, lifestyle

Week 1: 500 Words a day

A week ago I decided to follow the example of the amazing Nathan Barry in order to try kick start this blog and work on a couple of book projects that I want to launch. The basic idea revolves around creating the habit of writing a specific amount of words every day no matter what.

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2013-07-30
3m read
writing, productivity

First steps on HHVM

Currently a few applications are fully supported like wordpress and drupal; more complex applications like Magento are still not 100% with HHVM due to bugs in the HHVM implementation.

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2013-07-27
4m read
hhvm, programming, php, Vagrant

An Introduction to HHVM

In early 2008 Facebook began working on **HipHop**(now HPHP), a PHP execution engine; its original motivation was to convert Facebook massive PHP code base into C++ in order to save resources and increase the application performance. The original release was known as HPHPc a **PHP** to **C++** compiler.

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2013-07-24
4m read
hhvm, vagrant, programming

More than human

In the last couple years, we have seen the emergence of new and exciting technologies aimed towards closing the gap between man and machine

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2013-07-21
2m read
technology, futurism, singularity