Three posts this week. One PHP function I wasted years reinventing, a podcast about spotting duplicated code, and a system for finding podcast guests when your show is small.

Stop Parsing URLs Manually in PHP

I spent years writing twelve lines of strstr(), explode(), and regex to pull the host or query string out of a URL. PHP has shipped parse_url() since version 4, and it hands back scheme, host, port, path, query, and fragment in one array. Pass a second argument like PHP_URL_HOST when you want a single piece, and pair it with parse_str() to turn a query string into an array in two lines.

Community Corner: JSCPD with Andrey Kucherenko

I talked with Andrey Kucherenko, the creator of jscpd. It finds duplicated code across dozens of languages. We got into why copy-paste bites you later and how the tool has grown to fit agentic coding workflows, where an AI assistant churns out repeated blocks faster than you can review them.

How to Find Guests for a New or Small Podcast

Booking guests feels like it takes charisma. It's a sourcing problem you can systematize. I make the case for chasing peers at your level instead of celebrities, since someone with a million followers doesn't need your listeners. I lay out six places to look, four quick questions to qualify a name, and why keeping an ongoing pipeline is what saves you from missing an episode when a guest cancels.

See you next Monday.