As a PHP developer I often find myself having to run executable files installed to a project via Composer (e.g. php-cs-fixer, phpunit, psysh, etc.). These binary files typically reside in vendor/bin relative to the root of a project and in order to run these binary files from the project root I would need to cd into the vendor/bin directory first or type out the relative path (e.g. vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix) every time I wanted to run one of these executables.

Use a Linux system long enough and eventually you'll need to schedule a recurring task. Of course the defacto scheduler is cron (and there's nothing inherently wrong with it) but I've grown to like the flexibility and features of systemd timers. Some of the benefits they provide over cron include:

Check out my presentation from the October 2020 azPHP meetup: Don't Fear the RegEx, a crash corse on regular expressions.

I'm excited to announce the immediate availability of Directory Lister 3 Beta for testing and feedback. Everyone is encouraged to download the Directory Lister 3 beta and start testing today. Head on over to beta.directorylister.com to get started.

Frameworks are among the most important tools we developers have and yet they are often taken for granted. The way I see it is a framework has two primary benefits: 1) saving individual developers time by providing predefined solutions to common problems and 2) allowing teams to work more efficiently by giving them a common model for coding standards, file organization, design language and more. However, these benefits quickly break down when framework conventions are broken or ignored, intentionally or otherwise.