DEV Community: Atugonza ( Billions ) Joel

Maximizing Productivity as a Developer: Choosing the Right Path

Atugonza ( Billions ) Joel — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 10:22:01 +0000

Tech Learning for Developers

Billions .A. Joel
It's hard to wrap your head around what to learn for your optimal productivity and gain as a developer.

But you should understand that it's the job description that gives you what to learn. Many devs tend to fail to choose the right path because they are following someone else's path but it doesn't work like that.

Find someone that works for you, a language or framwework that gives you comfort to work with, then learn all other technologies around the same as the job demands.

This way it is easier for you to pick up one framework at a time and once you have a good grasp and understanding of the underlying concepts its easy to pick up another one.

For example, if you love PHP, find jobs around Laravel, such jobs have a detailed job description that can help you know what you'll need in future.

Basing on that build sample projects with those technologies, you'll never realized how you grew into a senior dev in just a little time.
I can tell you within 6 months you will know livewire, alpine, Vue/React, AWS/Digital ocean/Azure or even nuxt .

While doing all this, be careful not to be swayed away by hype in other tech stacks or frameworks.

With consistency your skills should be needed globally and you'll never have to worry about finding a job.

Good luck 😊
Follow me on Twitter @billionsjoel.
Let's connect.

Beyond Technical Interviews: Rethinking Hiring Criteria for Top Talent.

Atugonza ( Billions ) Joel — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 06:41:54 +0000

Although technical interviews are a commonly-used tool to identify the most suitable candidates, they often overlook the immense potential of many good or even exceptional employees.

As a developer myself, I can attest to this fact. I am someone who consistently goes above and beyond to resolve issues, even if they are not within my designated responsibilities.

I am always willing to carry the weight of the company on my shoulders, and I consistently exceed performance expectations. However, I struggle when it comes to technical interviews.

Whether due to nerves or other factors, I may not perform as well as I know I am capable of.

My personal experience has given me a unique perspective on how to hire the best candidates for my future endeavors. I am now convinced that technical interviews should not serve as the sole criterion for assessing the suitability of a candidate. In my next piece, I will elaborate on alternative benchmarks that should be used for hiring, in order to ensure that companies attract and retain top talent.

Don’t forget to clap if you find this article interesting.

Follow me here: https://twitter.com/BillionsJoel

How to Install PHP 8 on a Mac with Homebrew

Atugonza ( Billions ) Joel — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 02:45:44 +0000

PHP is a popular programming language used to create dynamic websites and web applications. In this article, we'll guide you through the process of installing PHP 8 on a Mac using Homebrew, a popular package manager for macOS.

Before we start, it's important to note that the following steps assume you have Homebrew installed on your system. If you haven't installed it yet, you can do so by following the instructions on the Homebrew website.

Step 1: Update Homebrew

The first step is to update Homebrew to the latest version. Open the Terminal app and run the following command:

brew update

During the update process, you may encounter fatal errors such as "homebrew-core is a shallow clone" or "fatal: --unshallow on a complete repository does not make sense." These errors occur because Homebrew clones a subset of the repository to speed up the update process. To fix this, run the following command:

git -C "$(brew --repo homebrew/core)" fetch --unshallow This command fetches the complete repository and fixes the "shallow clone" error.

Step 2: Install PHP 8

Now that Homebrew is up to date, we can install PHP 8. Run the following command:
brew install php

This command installs PHP 8.x and its dependencies. You may encounter errors such as "The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local" or "Error: Could not symlink include/php/TSRM/TSRM.h." These errors occur because the formula is not symlinked correctly. To fix this, run the following commands:

brew unlink php@7.3 brew link --overwrite php

The first command unlinks the old version of PHP (7.3 in this case), while the second command forces the link and overwrites all conflicting files.

Step 3: Verify the Installation

To verify that PHP 8 is installed correctly, run the following command:

php -v
This command should output the version number of PHP 8.1 installed on your system.

Step 4: Install PHP Extensions

PHP 8.1 comes with some built-in extensions, but you may need to install additional ones for your specific needs. You can install extensions using Homebrew. For example, to install the gd extension, run the following command:

brew install php-gd
This command installs the gd extension for PHP 8.x

Step 5: Configure PHP

By default, PHP 8.1 uses the built-in PHP server, but you can also use other web servers such as Apache or Nginx. To configure PHP with a web server, you'll need to edit the server's configuration files. The exact steps depend on the web server you're using and the specific configuration you need.

Conclusion

In this article, we've shown you how to install PHP 8 on a Mac using Homebrew. We've also covered some of the common errors you may encounter during the installation process and how to fix them. With PHP 8 installed, you can now start building dynamic websites and web applications on your Mac.