June 5, 2026

Stop Writing Recursive Directory Functions Use RecursiveDirectoryIterator Instead

A few years back, I spent an entire afternoon debugging a recursive function that was supposed to scan a project directory and list every PHP file. It worked great on small folders. Then I pointed it...

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May 29, 2026

Stop Letting Claude Search Your Codebase

I kept burning tokens watching Claude search through my repository for information it already could have had. The pattern was always the same. I'd ask Claude to add a feature, and before it wrote a...

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May 25, 2026

Weekly Digest - May 25, 2026

It was a big week last week because PHP/JS Tek 2026 happened, which meant conference talks, post-conference sausage, and apparently a five-act musical. Here's everything I published this week. If...

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May 22, 2026

Wurstcon: The Musical

Last night after Wurstcon someone started singing a "hot dog related song" and somehow we got on the topic of how we need "Wurstcon: The Musical" I gave Claude the following prompt: Plan a five...

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May 22, 2026

Claude Code Commands That Get Smarter Every Time You Use Them

I fell into an embarrassing pattern with Claude Code. I'd run a command, Claude would do something slightly off, I'd correct it, Claude would fix it, and we'd move on. Then, less than an hour later,...

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May 21, 2026

Advanced SQL: The Features You've Been Ignoring (But Shouldn't) - PHP/JS Tek 2026

I presented my talk on Advanced SQL at PHP/JS Tek 2026. Advanced SQL: The Features You’ve Been Ignoring (But Shouldn’t) While your app sleeps, your database dreams... of being useful. This talk...

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May 20, 2026

PHP Tek/JS 2026 - Day 3

These are my raw notes from PHP Tek/JS 2026 Day 3. AI works best as a fast collaborative implementation engine Now Describe intent Guide the agent Classic Workflow Ticket -> Analysis -> eng...

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May 20, 2026

Taming Time in PHP: Best Practices and Gotchas - PHP/JS Tek 2026

I presented my talk on Time in PHP at PHP/JS Tek 2026 Join.d T-Shirt Giveaway Podcast Support Community Corner UnleashedPodcasts LinkedIn LinkedIn Mastodon:...

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May 20, 2026

PHP Tek/JS 2026 - Day 2

These are my raw notes from PHP Tek/JS 2026 Day 2. "Sometimes it takes courage to eat breakfast" Framework to manage change? "You already know what to do. the gap isn't knowledge it's courage"...

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May 19, 2026

PHP Tek/JS 2026 - PHP Tek/JS 2026

These are my raw notes from PHP Tek/JS 2026 Day 1 The Trust Protocol - "Trust is not a value. Trust is infrastructure" Need to be able to have trust but it's very easy to have trust failures The...

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