This is why we can’t have nice things.
Short answer: yes. Filed under: things I learned the hard way.
Very interesting to hear. (thanks NextDraft)
Team meeting to kick off our SVN to Git migration. With ice cream, of course.
http_build_query() Separator Tip
I ran into an interesting “bug” in Twitter Tools last night that I traced back to http_build_query(). I expected that the query strings generated by this function used & as a separator for the key=value pairs, but on one of our test servers, the separator being used was &. This is a php.ini config setting, so my expectation was clearly based on false assumptions. If you want to make sure that you get a & separator, you can pass it in as the 3rd parameter.
You’ll find this is particularly important if you’re making requests for remote data from within WordPress via wp_remote_get() or similar technique. If you are working on something that is run within WordPress, you can look at using add_query_arg() as an alternative to this as well.
When the Internet connection goes down at midnight, I read that as “go to bed and push your commits in the morning”.
“Daddy, I got out of bed!” And so it begins…
While we were working on the new Boston Globe website, we devised a technique to mitigate the size of requests for users that may have limited bandwidth. Before I describe it here, I should really warn you up front: it broke. But we planned for that.
There is currently no easy way to determine where the canonical data in a complex system resides and how it is updated, and my bet is we will see a new set of tools and languages evolve to create abstractions which will make it possible for mere mortal programmers like myself to get these architectures right.
This feels like one of those Good Ideas… going with it.
I think one of us does not fully grasp the rules of Simon Says.
Summary: there is no silver bullet.
Kellan points out a great follow-up to the previously linked Michael Wolfe piece. While the Wolfe piece is extremely entertaining, it’s also very true that there are smart ways to approach planning for software development. The value of experience cannot be overstated in these situations.
I don’t understand why the studios seem so intent on driving people to pirate movies. The experience (warnings about piracy, trailers, etc.) with a legitimate DVD or Blu-Ray is already awful and it seems they are trying to make it worse.
It’s no longer possible to write a single app that takes advantage of the full range of Mac OS X features. Some APIs only work inside the Mac App Store. Others only work outside it. Presumably, this gap will widen as more new features are App Store–exclusive, while sandboxing places greater restrictions on what App Store apps are allowed to do.