A quick guide to writing good code

Are you writing a high quality code? Most of the developers would probably say yes. The really honest one would say that it might not be perfect but it’s OK. Both answers are fair. Most of us are very serious about the job we do and we always try to give our best (at least most of the time). The big question here is that if we’re all genuinely convinced about a reasonable quality of our code why there is so much technical debt wherever we look?
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Parsing binary data in PHP on an example with the PCAP format

Not every problem should be solved with PHP. For certain types of applications it’s simply more appropriate to select a different programming language. You might be glad to hear that parsing binary data, is **NOT** one of them. If you don’t have to worry about microseconds and the biggest concern is development time, PHP might be in fact a very good tool for the job.
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A painless guide to Apache CouchDB for a PHP developer

World of technology loves buzzwords. There is always something new which allegedly is the game changer, and we all should upgrade in the matter of urgency. On the other hand, absorbing new knowledge costs time and effort. It’s difficult to decide which technology is worth sacrificing brain glucose levels.
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API-based Web Application with Backbone, Require.js and Slim framework

A single-page application (SPA) was something I’ve been exploring for the last few months. I always liked the idea of moving certain responsibilities to the client’s side. After all, why would you like to waste server’s RAM/CPU to buil a HTML page (and pay for a transfer to deliver it) when a web browser is perfectly capable of doing that on its own? You will not only save money but also provide a better user experience. In addition to the performance, moving the presentation layer to the web browser gives a clearer division between back-end and front-end code.
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Continuous Integration for PHP with Jenkins

Today I would like to show you how to setup an continues integration server for a PHP project with Jenkins. If you don’t know what the continues integration is have a look at Wikipedia. In a simple words It can be explained as a process of frequent commits to the project’s mainline and running all sort of automated tests to discover problems as soon as it’s possible. CI comes with a long list of benefits and only two disadvantages (according to Wikipedia). One of them is “Initial setup time required”.
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Sucesfull planning in software development

All successful people have a plan. They plan literally everything from work related stuff to details of their personal live. One of my friends used to plan how much he’s going to earn the next day. He used to make up a number and write a short sentence in his notebook like “Tomorrow I’m going to earn £5,000” (It was actually 25,000zl because he lives in Poland). In some mysterious way he was able to earn that money which was astonishing even himself. Obviously if you don’t own a business your salary won’t spontaneously change over a night but a good plan will help you to manage your boss, the development and ultimately will contribute to your success.
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