This document discusses tools and techniques for improving a developer's daily workflow, including using Vagrant for consistent development environments, Git for version control and collaboration, and design patterns for better code structure. It recommends Vagrant for matching local and production environments, Git and GitHub/Bitbucket for code changes, and following best practices like deleting code and embracing coding standards.

1. Hacking the way you work:
simple tools & tricks for your
daily development workflow
Fotis Alexandrou
JOOMLADAY Greece 2013

2. Who am I
• Developer at PeoplePerHour.com
• Freelance Web Developer (Past)
• Automation enthusiast
• Nervous when talking in public

3. Challenges
• Time management
• Tracking changes & collaboration
• Code structure
• Code maintenance (the horror)

4. Time management

5. Common problems
• “But it worked on my dev machine! What
happened now?”
• “Oh no! we use version 1.3.15 on the server? I
run 2.6.13 which has the feature X
implemented!”

6. Enter Vagrant
• What it provides
– Virtual Machines called “boxes”
– Provisioning
– Requirements: VirtualBox, Ruby

7. Configuration
• Simple Ruby file called “Vagrantfile”
– http://www.vagrantup.com/
• Plethora of pre-packaged boxes
– http://vagrantbox.es
• Provisioning via Puppet or Chef

8. Benefits
• Consistency between local dev machine & production
server
• Ability to use the same provisioning recipes on production
• Prevents from bloating the host OS with many services
• Production server changes can be tested locally before
being applied to production
• Cloud integration (knife, vagrant aws)

9. Provisioning: Puppet vs Chef
• Never ending discussion
• Chef
– Write Cookbooks in Ruby
– http://docs.opscode.com/just_enough_ruby_for_chef.html
• Puppet
– Puppet manifests in Puppet script language
• Both have the same results

10. Common Vagrant gotchas
• Nginx + Apache sendfile (VirtualBox bug)
• Memory increase
– config.vm.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory",
1024]
• Shared folder
– :extra => "umask=0002,dmask=0002,fmask=0002"
• Symlinks
– https://coderwall.com/p/b5mu2w

11. Tracking changes & collaboration

12. SVN vs Git
• Pros
– Simple flow
• Cons
– Brances are separate directories
– Always commiting to repo
– Extreme CPU usage on big repos

13. Enter Git
• Feature branches: No separate directories for
branches
• Submodules
• Stash
• Remotes

14. Remote Repos
• Hosted on 3rd party services
– Github
– Bitbucket
• Can be self-hosted
– Gitlab
– Gitolite
– Gitorious

15. Git
• Pull requests: Non merged commits –Visual
representation of changes
• Squash / Rebase: Merge several commits to
one
– Reverting only one commit if needed

16. Code Structure
• Design patterns
– “Design patterns are reusable solutions to
commonly occurring problems in software
design”
• Help you get a solid start

17. Design patterns
• Not the holy grail
• Help developers read each others code as
structure is somehow pre-defined
• Avoid duplicate code

18. Examples
• PHP design patterns:
– https://github.com/domnikl/DesignPatternsPHP
• Javascript design patterns
– http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesi
gnpatterns/book/

19. Best Practices
• Avoid hacks
• DELETE your code
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev7lM7SWVHE
• Less code is always better
• Refactor while you still code

20. Other tips
• Embrace coding standards
– https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/
• Exceptions are your friends
– Traceable, Catchable
• Read other developers’ code
– Github => Facebook for developers, browse repos,
even in languages you are not familiar with

21. Thank you
• Questions
• Twitter: @falexandrou
• Blog: falexandrou.com