If you've been following open source development for the last little while, you may have heard of Travis, the free continuous integration service for open source projects. I've been interested in trying it out, but I haven't had a project I thought was suitable for testing with it.
Until now! As luck would have it, the most recent UpThing installment added a PHPUnit-based functional test. This means that I've got something I can send to Travis. :)
It's been nearly two months since my last Late Night Links post. A lot has happened in that timeframe - including a change in employers for me. Exciting stuff! Nevertheless, I've still been taking note of interesting links that I come across, and I've found a few useful ones you might be interested in.
When developing websites and web applications, you will often have a local environment set up for testing in your browser. But what if you want to test it on another machine or device on your local network?
Chances are, the hostname of your computer won't work as a valid virtual host on a mobile device (and some computers). Additionally, you might have multiple projects on the go that all need unique virtual host names to operate properly.
This problem used to be solved by the "hosts" file (in /etc/hosts on Linux/Mac and C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts on Windows), but there's a better way! You can use IP reflection services or wildcard DNS records to let you use nearly any virtual host name you want.
Over the years, I've heard the advice "Be Lazy" many times. It's good advice, but it has a downside. Some people seem to misinterpret what it means.
You see, there are two kinds of laziness: physical laziness, and mental laziness.
The advice "Be Lazy" means "use your brain to conserve your physical energy by solving problems efficiently and reusably".
It does not mean "spend your physical energy and time in solving problems with brute force or copy-and-paste". That's the wrong way to be lazy, because it creates much more work in the long run.
So don't be lazy: be smart.
Think about problems before you start working on them. Sometimes, thinking first means you can eliminate problems without a single line of code.
That's the right way to be lazy.
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