Three this week: a lesson about feedback loops learned the hard way, a fast new static analysis tool for PHP, and a free tool for catching broken podcast feeds.

The Importance of Small Feedback Loops

Scott submitted a PR with a couple hundred lines of changes and got back 42 comments, a chunk of the work built on a flawed assumption he had to throw out. The fix isn't writing more carefully, it's shrinking the gap between doing something and finding out if it worked. Smaller loops mean errors surface while the code is still fresh in your head, and reviewing a handful of lines catches bugs that get lost in a few hundred.

Mago: Blazing Fast Static Analysis for PHP

PHPStan and Psalm work, but on a big codebase they can chew through minutes and gigabytes of memory. Mago is written in Rust instead of PHP, and on a 134k-line project it ran in 3.4 seconds against 13.9 for the usual tools. It lints, analyzes, and formats, though it's still young: it doesn't cover every rule the established tools do and won't pick up your existing .neon or .xml config.

Is Your Podcast Feed Broken? Check It Free in Seconds

A podcaster's feed looked fine but episodes weren't downloading, and the culprit turned out to be server permissions blocking outside access to the audio files, not the XML. The Unleashed Podcasts Feed Checker runs through artwork, owner info, explicit flags, and whether your audio actually loads from outside your own network, no signup needed. Feeds can break quietly after a hosting change, so it's worth a check now and then even if nothing feels wrong.

See you next Monday.