22m read

Deploying Elixir with Kamal 2

Zero-downtime deployments, secrets management, and self-hosted Elixir apps

elixir, deployment, kamal, docker, devops
13m read

Optimizing Claude Code Workflows for Token Usage

A code-first walkthrough of how I cut a multi-agent Claude Code outline workflow from ~768k to ~85k output tokens — the fan-out cap, failure isolation, the approval gate, and live token tracking, all in real workflow-script JavaScript.

claude-code, ai-agents, token-optimization, javascript, workflows
29m read

Observability for Elixir Applications

OpenTelemetry integration, distributed tracing, and structured logging

elixir, observability, telemetry, opentelemetry, monitoring
25m read

Phoenix Contexts Done Right

When to split contexts, cross-context communication, and avoiding the god context anti-pattern

elixir, phoenix, architecture, domain-driven-design
23m read

LiveView Patterns for Complex UIs

Component design, nested live views, and handling complex state in LiveView

elixir, phoenix, liveview, frontend
23m read

Zero Trust Authentication in Phoenix

Implementing Zero Trust Authentication with nimble_zta and identity-aware proxies

elixir, phoenix, security, authentication
27m read

Event Sourcing with Elixir

Building event stores, projections, and handling schema evolution in Elixir

elixir, event-sourcing, architecture, cqrs
26m read

Multi-Tenancy Patterns in Ecto

Schema-based vs row-based multi-tenancy and query scoping strategies

elixir, ecto, saas, multi-tenancy
22m read

Flow Based Programming With Elixir

Explaining flow based programming using elixir and its ecosystem

elixir, functional programming, programming, fbp
26m read

N 1 Issues With Ecto And Elixir

An overview of n 1 problems with elixir and ecto and how to deal with them

elixir, functional programming, programming
9m read

Founder Mode is Bulls**t

A criticism and rebuttal of Paul Graham's Founder Mode essay -- survivorship bias, false dichotomies, and the cult of the founder

management, startups, founders
16m read

Mastering Elixir in 2024: A study path

Documenting my learning journey in 2024 to become proficient and attempt to master Elixir and its ecosystem

learning, programming, elixir, functional programming
1m read

Blog Update 2022/2023

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

life, writing
8m read

5 Reasons to love Elixir

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

functional programming, programming, elixir
5m read

Exploring Headless Commerce

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

e-commerce, headless, technology
2m read

WTF is Flow-Based Programming

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

programming, functional programming, flow-based programming, software architecture
5m read

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

programming, functional programming, software architecture, elixir
4m read

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.

machine learning, programming, neural networks
5m read

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

programming, vim, tooling, productivity
3m read

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.

machine learning, programming, neural networks
10m read

On Codes on Conduct

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

codes of conduct, community, social justice, equality
2m read

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.

health, quantified self, productivity, self improvement
4m read

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.

testing, programming, TDD, BDD
5m read

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.

futurology, technology, information overload
1m read

Git Tips and Tricks

Useful collection of git tips and tricks

git, programming, tips
3m read

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.

programming, design patterns, PHP
3m read

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.

programming, magento, service contracts, design patterns
6m read

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.

Programming, Software Engineering
2m read

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.

HHVM, programming, hacklang
3m read

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

software design, software architecture, programming
6m read

Flexible PHP Development with PHPFarm

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

programming, PHPFarm, PHP
2m read

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.

php, hhvm, programming
1m read

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

php, programming, tooling
3m read

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.

php, hhvm, hack
1m read

HHVM In The Wild

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

hhvm, hack, programming
3m read

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.

programming, traits, best practices
1m read

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.

php, programming
2m read

Magento Online Hackathon 2014

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

magento, programming
9m read

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.

php, programming
4m read

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).

PHP, Design Patterns, Programming
4m read

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.

php, design patterns, programming
4m read

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.

php, dependency injection, design patterns, programming
4m read

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.

programming, best practices, technical debt
2m read

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.

technology, programming, futurism
2m read

Stop Disrupting Everything

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

startup, technology, innovation
3m read

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

programming, git, best practices
3m read

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

health, quantified self
3m read

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.

burnout, health, lifestyle
3m read

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.

writing, productivity
4m read

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.

hhvm, programming, php, Vagrant
4m read

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.

hhvm, vagrant, programming
2m read

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

technology, futurism, singularity