How To Roll Your Own

As we mature as software developers, it becomes more and more important to increase the speed with which we are able to develop or applications. This can be done in a number of different ways, e.g. use a new IDE, use a new framework, pull in a specific package via composer, … .

In the last couple of years however, I have felt the need to take this concept one step further by creating a set of custom PHP packages that are perfectly in line with my own preferences and work flow. These packages have allowed me to significantly speed up the development of my projects by reducing the amount of repetitive actions and boiler plate code.

In this talk, I would like to give you a brief demonstration of the tools and techniques I have used to accomplish this and show you can do the same for your projects, be it Laravel, Symfony, Drupal or Wordpress. Additionally, I will highlight some of the lessons I learned over the last couple of years while taking this approach.

Transcript

1. How To Roll Your Own
   Building your own development tools
   

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2. www.ixudra.be - @ixudra
   

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3. First website
   

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4. Latest work
   

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5. Lots of progress
   

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7. A
   utom
   ation
   R
   educe
   errors
   Increase
   flow
   Development speed
   

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8. #1: Reduce errors
   

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9. Increase technical knowledge
   

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10. Increase functional knowledge
    

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13. #2: Increase
    flow
    

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14. Better tools
    

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15. - Dave Barry
    “Meetings are an addictive, highly self-
    indulgent activity that corporations and other
    large organizations habitually engage in only
    because they cannot actually masturbate.”
    

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16. – New York Times, 2004-10-11 (i.e. BEFORE Facebook)
    On a typical day office workers are interrupted
    about seven times an hour, which adds up to 56
    interruptions a day, 80% of which are
    considered trivial, according to time-
    management experts.
    

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17. How to reduce interruptions
    • Buy noise cancelling headphones
    • Shut off email notifications
    • Shut off Skype/Slack/Facebook notifications
    

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18. How to reduce interruptions
    • Buy noise cancelling headphones
    • Shut off email notifications
    • Shut off Skype/Slack/Facebook notifications
    

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20. – Bill Gates
    The first rule of any technology used in a
    business is that automation applied to an
    efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.
    The second is that automation applied to an
    inefficient operation will magnify the
    inefficiency.
    

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21. Automation
    

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23. A
    utom
    ation
    R
    educe
    errors
    Increase
    flow
    My personal growth
    

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24. A
    utom
    ation
    For this talk
    

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25. Disclaimer
    

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26. How it all started
    

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27. /ixudra/ixd-template
    • Custom project template
    • Preferred file and directory structure
    • Project config
    • Commonly used composer packages
    

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29. Custom Laravel packages
    /ixudra/generators
    

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30. Custom Laravel packages
    

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31. /ixudra/portfolio
    

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33. /ixudra/csi
    

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34. /ixudra/curl
    

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36. In retrospect
    • Very time intensive but very much worth it.
    • Focus is on reusability
    

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37. Other examples
    

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38. Other examples
    

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39. Benefits
    • Huge gains in development speed
    • Increased consistency in all of my projects
    • New skills and and techniques can easily be
    transferred to other projects
    • Learned lots of new things in doing so
    

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40. Benefits
    • Huge gains in development speed
    • Increased consistency in all of my projects
    • New skills and and techniques can easily be
    transferred to other projects
    • Learned lots of new things in doing so
    

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41. Benefits
    • Huge gains in development speed
    • Increased consistency in all of my projects
    • New skills and and techniques can easily be
    transferred to other projects
    • Learned lots of new things in doing so
    

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42. Benefits
    • Huge gains in development speed
    • Increased consistency in all of my projects
    • New skills and and techniques can easily be
    transferred to other projects
    • Learned lots of new things in doing so
    

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43. Disadvantages
    • Being stuck in the same routines makes it more
    difficult to learn new things
    • More difficult to jump into a new project that
    doesn’t follow your workflow
    • Developing packages is hard
    • Very easily for packages to become obsolete
    

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44. Disadvantages
    • Being stuck in the same routines makes it more
    difficult to learn new things
    • More difficult to jump into a new project that
    doesn’t follow your workflow
    • Developing packages is hard
    • Very easily for packages to become obsolete
    

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45. Disadvantages
    • Being stuck in the same routines makes it more
    difficult to learn new things
    • More difficult to jump into a new project that
    doesn’t follow your workflow
    • Developing packages is hard
    • Very easily for packages to become obsolete
    

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46. Disadvantages
    • Being stuck in the same routines makes it more
    difficult to learn new things
    • More difficult to jump into a new project that
    doesn’t follow your workflow
    • Developing packages is hard
    • Very easily for packages to become obsolete
    

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47. How to start your own?
    

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48. Time vs effort
    

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49. Step one: check the competition
    

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50. Step one: check the competition
    

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51. Step one: check the competition
    

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52. Step two: environment setup
    

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53. Step three: research best
    practices
    

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54. Step three: research best
    practices
    http://phppackagechecklist.com
    

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55. Step four: implementation
    

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56. Step five: documentation
    

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57. Step six: set up reminders
    

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58. Closing remarks
    • Call for action
    • Create one or more of your own packages and
    let me know how it all worked out
    • Take a look at my packages and tell me what
    you think
    • Rate this talk to help me improve my speaking
    abilities
    

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59. Closing remarks
    • Call for action
    • Create one or more of your own packages and
    let me know how it all worked out
    • Take a look at my packages and tell me what
    you think (http://github.com/ixudra)
    • Rate this talk to help me improve my speaking
    abilities
    

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60. Closing remarks
    • Call for action
    • Create one or more of your own packages and
    let me know how it all worked out
    • Take a look at my packages and tell me what
    you think (http://github.com/ixudra)
    • Rate this talk to help me improve my speaking
    abilities
    

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61. www.ixudra.be - @ixudra
    Thank you all for listening
    http://github.com/ixudra
    

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62. Thank you all for listening
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTdA7kf2cUM
    https://joind.in/talk/c4100
    

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