Tag: linux

Developer advice

As the organizer of the SoFloPHP User Group I am often approached by entry to mid-level developers asking what they can do to advance in their career or become better developers.  Of course I am nowhere near perfect but have been around long enough to get a few bumps and bruises along the way, so below is what I usually share as some pointers:

Note: While some of these items are kind of PHP specific, others may find useful items as well.

  • No self-respecting person should be up at 4:05am sending emails.  Get some sleep. 🙂  It is OK to stay up late once in awhile, but force yourself to get to bed at a decent time (10) each day.  And try to get up early each day also (6 or 7), which will help you get much more out of your days. 😉
    • The myths about developers working all night on caffeine are false.  Yes, it happens sometimes, but it is rare.  Well rested developers learn more, write better code, and get more work done…period!
  • Track your time, and get in the habit of knowing what you did with each hour.  I personally use Hamster religiously, and find that I get much more done each day as a result. (I have it set to nag me every 15 minutes if I have not set an activity.)  If you are not using Linux as your desktop environment I am sure there are time trackers for the other operating systems, find one.
  • Certifications will not actually carry much value on your resume, so I would not make them a main focus.  Sure they do carry some value, but perhaps not in the way you desire.  Achieving a certification is a great personal accomplishment and will make you feel better about yourself, as well as give you bragging rights among developers.  (Most developers tell you they don’t care about certifications, but deep inside they are simply envious.)  While many certifications are not a true gauge of actual knowledge, they do represent a certain amount of skills.  However, I have found that most employers do not even notice certifications.  I am not saying don’t get them. What I am saying is to be aware the actual accomplishment may be different than you perceive.  When I started getting certifications it reinforced, in my own mind, that I knew what I was doing.  That gave me more confidence overall in my jobs, and was still a big “win”.  But do them in your spare time, not as a focus item.
  • Pick an IDE to use and learn it FULLY. I will not recommend one in this post, so explore and find one that fits how you want to work.  Then learn it COMPLETELY, and use it ALWAYS.
    • If an IDE causes you pain, don’t use it any more.  Pick another one.  This tool will be where you spend most of your day, so you should not be forced to spend your time debugging and fixing your IDE.  It should not crash regularly.  You should not dread opening it, instead you should look forward to launching it.
    • Use all parts of your chosen IDE. (FTP, version control, testing, coding, debugging, issue tracking, etc.)
    • Learn the keyboard shortcuts, they will save you time.
    • Just because an IDE is free does not mean it is good.  You should base purchases on value provided, not $$$.
  • Pick a plain text editor, and learn it well.  There are times you just need to do a quick edit, and opening an IDE, creating a project, etc. is just overkill for this.  Again, there are many of these available so I will not recommend a certain one.  Pick what you like best.
    • The best ones come with syntax highlighting.
    • There are some free ones, but don’t be afraid to pay a few bucks for a good one.
  • Pick a pet “full stack” PHP framework to learn, FULLY.  I recommend either Zend Framework 2, Symfony2, or CakePHP 2.* since these 3 are the most common.  But as with an IDE you should learn one COMPLETELY, and use it most of the time.  Each framework has its strengths and weaknesses, so choose one that works best for you.
    • Good frameworks have mechanisms in place where you can add plugins, modules, or helpers in case the framework does not fully support what your trying to do.  But stick to the framework as much as possible.
    • Feel free to write your own framework, but ignore the urge to use it for employers.  As professional developers we owe it to our employers to use more widely available frameworks.  It is just smart business.  It means businesses can find other developers easier, onboard them faster, and train the group more.
  • Always strive to make yourself replaceable.  If you are replaceable you are also promotable, and you can go on vacation pain free.
  • Learn to use GIT for source control, and use it for EVERY project you do no matter how small.  Sure there are other source control products out there, but currently GIT is the way to go.  All it takes is the command ‘git init’ in a directory and you are of and running.  No excuses!
  • Do things publicly so others can see.  Such as github, BitBucket, etc.  I recommend having code in some sort of public place for others to see how you code.  Don’t be shy.  I’ve had other developers provide feedback on code I posted on github, in a constructive way, and it helped me advance my skills.
  • Your LinkedIn profile is your best career tool as a developer.  Tweak it, adjust it, get everyone you can to contribute to it.  Add projects to it, etc. (See “Build your brand” below.)  Don’t connect with everyone who pops up, and be stingy with what recruiters you allow to connect with you.  If someone is not going to help your career in some way, they do not belong in your connections on LinkedIn.
  • Pick up small projects here and there that are NOT urgent, and you can take your time on.  These little projects will afford you a way to learn new things.
  • Get active in the PHP community.  I mean really active.  Sure, it’s OK to be a member of other communities as well, but the PHP community (world-wide as well as local) is what will really “do it” for you. (If you are going to make a career doing PHP.)
  • Give talks at local user groups, blog about your experiences, follow other blogs of good people (phpdeveloper.org is a good place to see activity of PHP community members blogs. Chris Cornutt does a great job at filtering out relevant posts and adds the best of them on this site.)
  • Get somewhat active on Twitter, join IRC channels, travel to a couple of conferences each year and get to know people “doing things”.  Then eventually start submitting talks to the conferences so you can go talk, and have your expenses covered to go to it.
  • Build your “brand”.  By this I mean to say YOU are the product.  Everything you say and do is your offering.  Your name is your “brand”.  Build the reputation carefully, and before you do anything ask yourself, “Will my customers like/buy this?”  If the answer is “yes”, then go for it.  If the answer is “no” re-evaluate.
  • If you are a woman, be careful.  While women are becoming a larger part of the tech community there are still many men who are not used to it yet.  They are jerks, and your feelings will get hurt sometimes in the process.  Learn to ignore them and focus on the good parts as you grow.  KNOW you are going to do great things, and work toward that progress.
  • Learn Linux via command line.  No need to go crazy with this one, but since most web servers are on Linux it is a good idea to have some knowledge in this area.  You should at very least know:
    • Basic vim commands to edit files on the server.
    • Be able to navigate the OS files and directories.
    • Be able to manipulate files on the server. (cut, copy, paste)
  • Spend some time each day on Stackoverflow.  Try to pick a problem someone posted and help them.  “Doing” is the best way to learn, and there are plenty of problems posted to Stackoverflow daily.  This is addictive, so manage your time and limit yourself.  But do it!

Of course there are many more tips, but I wanted to hit on some key items without writing a book on this blog post.  I hope you find this information helpful, and if you can think of some other hints and tips please feel free to share in the comments.

Good luck!!!

CentOS networking not active after installation

I needed to install a CentOS 6.4 server in a VM and after installing I was not able to hit anything on the Internet, or any network for that matter.  When I tried using the yum packages manager I received the error “Couldn’t resolve host ‘mirrorlist.centos.org…” and I was at a loss on what to do next.  I was not able to ping anything.

This led me to look into the networking and and upon opening the /etc/resolv.conf I found it totally empty.  So I then opened /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and found the issue.  The line “ONBOOT” was set to “no”.

The complete file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 after I altered it: (NOTE: the only thing I altered was the ONBOOT flag.)

DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=09:00:27:D7:61:8D
TYPE=Ethernet
UUID=q93perfj-earf-ewrf-wqer-546877145475
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

After changing “ONBOOT” to “yes”, then rebooted for the configuration to take effect, all is good now.  I probably could have simply done a networking restart, but reboot on a fresh system was pretty fast.

Skype sounds audio distorted in Ubuntu

Now that I have Skype installed on Ubuntu 13.04 I discovered that the various Skype sounds were distorted.  It was almost like the sounds had some static mixed in with them.  I thought it was probably just a problem with the new version of Skype, or the new sound drivers.  However, I made a discovery that fixed the issue.

I tried the AlsaMixer fix, but it didn’t work. (A reboot simply resets the PCM to 100 again, and the sound is still crackly.)  So it all came down to a simple file edit to get it fixed.

Edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa using the command:

sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa

Add the following to the end of the line shown:

pulse audio file

So after adding “tsched=0” to the end of the line “load-module module-udev-detect” you will be all set.  After a reboot the sounds is still good.

Enjoy!  Hope it works for you.

Skype for Ubuntu 13.04 Ringtail

I am running the new version of Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail, and so far really like it.  However I’ve had a bit of trouble with Skype, because I could not get it to use the indicator area of the tray.  Other than that it seemed to work fine.

When I installed Skype I did it from the Skype website, and didn’t realize there was a package at http://archive.canonical.com/ partners already carrying it because that repository is not turned on by default for Aptitude.

The repository can be activated by either command line, or by using the Software & Updates which enable it for command line or Ubuntu Software Center, or Synaptic Package Manager.

Via terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
sudo apt-get update

Via GUI:

Open the System Settings and click on the Software & Updates icon, or using the Dash you can simply type “Software & Updates”.  Once it opens you can select the “Other Software” tab and check the first box titled Canonical Partners.

Software and Updates

Now we are able to install Skype from the Canonical Partners repository no matter what method you wish to use.

Install Methods:

From terminal

sudo apt-get install skype

Or search for it through Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic Package Manager and install nromally.

It will install some other required packages with it, but after the install it now works as expected with the indicator and all.

Enjoy!

Executing CakePHP script using Windows Scheduled Task

In Windows adding a scheduled task is just not as straight forward as adding a CRON job using Linux. (Don’t get me started on troubleshooting a Windows Schedule Task that did not run for some reason.) However, it is not so difficult once you get it figured out. Here is what I did:

In this case I wanted to run a CakePHP script as a CRON job, or more accurately, as a Windows Scheduled Task since this customer insisted I create the application and use a Windows server. (I used XAMPP, so it wasn’t too bad.)

In order to run the script and take full advantage of the models in CakePHP it required that I use the CakePHP shell. Luckily the CakePHP developers created a ‘cake.bat’ script that enables this to happen on a Windows machine.  Normally on a Windows or Linux server you can navigate, via command line, to the ‘app’ folder and execute the ‘cake  name_of_script’ command, but using Windows Scheduled Tasks you need to execute the bat file.

Windows Scheduled Task Settings:
Run: C:\path\to\cake.bat  script_name {without the extension .php}
Start in: C:\path\to\app\folder
Run As: type in the appropriate users

Then of course you will need to go to the Schedule tab and set in the schedule you desire for your script.

Here is a screenshot: (you can see the default folders for xampp were used)

IMPORTANT: This entire process assumes that you have already created your script and placed it in the appropriate directory “/app/vendors/shells/{name_of_script.php}”.  It also assumes you understand how to create a cronjob for CakePHP to use.  (see below for a sample)

Sample content of ‘script_name.php’:

class ScriptNameShell extends Shell {
 
	var $uses = array('model1','model2');
 
	/**
	 * the main function is kicked off like a contructor
	 *
	 */
	function main() {
		echo 'Doing something.';
 
		$callingSomething = $this->otherFunction();
 
		echo $callingSomething;
	}
 
	function otherFunction() {
		$content = 'This is content from otherFunction.';
 
		return $content;
	}
}