Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Developer Tips, Tricks & Resources”
Serious software development calls for performance optimization. When you start optimizing application performance, you can’t escape looking at profilers. Whether monitoring production servers or tracking frequency and duration of method calls, profilers run the gamut. In this article, I’ll cover the basics of using a Python profiler, breaking down the key concepts, and introducing the various libraries and tools for …
Background: After dealing with a large, difficult APM vendor, ClearSale was in dire need to switch to a reliable solution that was easy to implement, able to provide all the information they needed in one place, and provide enough value to speed up quality application building. Solution: After checking out a live demo of Retrace, Stackify’s APM tool, it was …
JavaScript has come a long way in recent years. Browsers are becoming more robust and machines are growing more powerful. Pair this with the recent development of Node.js for execution of JavaScript on servers, and you can understand why JavaScript has exploded in popularity. Developers continue to push the boundaries of what can be done with JavaScript, which leads to ever more …
As applications are getting more complex, it’s becoming harder to deliver high-quality applications. Tools like Application Performance Monitoring (APM) are essential for the development process. To get good performance data, developers need to deal with the rising trends of containerization, microservices, heterogeneous cloud services, and big data. To simplify this, and mitigate the amount of in-depth involvement and the time developers spend …
PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages for building web applications because it’s easy to use. No matter what you build, making it easy to log errors is key to ensuring a short code-test-learn feedback cycle. Because PHP was developed way before today’s modern browsers, it didn’t really have an easy way to log errors to the …
Logging provides critical value to applications with insight to usage, stats, and metrics, and saves us when debugging a problem. But we often leave logging to poorly implemented afterthoughts. So what should we know to get the most out of our logging? We will look at the Rails logger and some logging best practices. What is the Rails Logger? When …
When developing PHP applications, error logs tend to be underutilized due to their apparent complexity. The reality is that PHP error logs are extremely helpful, especially when configured and used properly. While there are advanced tricks to truly squeeze every last drop of utility out of error logs, this article will cover the basics of configuration and the most common …
Troubleshooting is a critical skill for developers and DevOps. As our software grows more sophisticated, our problems do too. The cloud adds a new layer of complexity since we need to know how to find a problem that doesn’t occur locally, but has cropped up on a remote system. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to troubleshoot Ruby applications. …
Many online applications use a web server as the primary point of contact for their clients. At least 43% of those systems are running the Apache HTTP Server. If you’re responsible for one of those systems, you need to work with the Apache error log. Apache provides comprehensive logging via several different files, but the error log is the most important. You can even say …
If you’re a software developer, then you understand how vital application logging is in software development and a critical part of logging is something called logging levels. Log entries generally contain essential information—such as a timestamp, a message, and sometimes additional stuff like an exception’s stack trace. Those pieces of information are useful because they allow someone reading the log entry to …
Garbage collection is a key component of many modern programming languages, including C#. It’s even hard to imagine what programming would look like in C#, and other modern languages like Java, Ruby, and many others, without this tool. Despite being a valuable asset that makes a better programming experience, garbage collection can still give you a hard time, specifically with …
If you use PHP or you find yourself “adopting” a PHP app (like I did a few years ago), you must know how to debug PHP. In this detailed guide to PHP debugging, you’ll see some debugging techniques that apply to almost any programming language. But don’t worry. I’ll get into the specifics that apply to PHP, from the basics all …
When developing PHP applications, error logs are under-used because of their apparent complexity. PHP error logs are helpful, especially when configured and used properly. While there are advanced tricks to truly squeeze every last drop of utility out of error logs, this article will cover the basics of configuration and the most common use cases so you can get up …
Logging is an important part of supporting the complete application life cycle. From creation to debugging to planning new features, logs support us all the way. By analyzing the data in the logs, we can glean insights, resolve bugs much quicker, and detect problems early as they happen. In this post, we will talk about the who, what, when, where, …
There are many things to praise about the Ruby language: adherence to the object orientation paradigm, simplicity, elegance, and powerful meta-programming capabilities. Unfortunately, performance isn’t top of mind when people think about the many qualities of the language. For years, people have been denouncing the Ruby programming language as slow. Is it? Sure, some people will spread a fair amount …
We know Node.js for its lightning-fast performance. Yet, as with any language, you can write Node.js code that performs worse for your users than you’d like. To combat this, we need adequate performance testing. Today, we will cover just that with an in-depth look at how to set up and run a performance test and analyze the results so you …
Both Node.js and PHP are popular platforms for websites, APIs, and other types of web content. They have a few similarities, but their differences far outweigh those similarities. In this post, we’ll take a look at how they stack up against each other. It’s Node.js vs. PHP… let’s get ready for the showdown! Similarities First, let’s take a deeper look at …
Around 1996, when I attended my first programming classes, C++ was the language of choice if you wanted to have a job in this industry. The Internet was young and not as widely available as it is now. Ruby and Python were still in their infancy. Now, in 2018, both have evolved and matured well enough to be in the …
Are you looking to get up and running with logging in Node.js? Do you want to understand best practices (and pitfalls) for structuring application logging in Node.js? If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in the right place! For me, logging was always a somewhat mystical and frustrating idea. I could grasp the concept that you wanted to output information about …
In today’s post, we’ll cover Ruby frameworks. There is one I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about, and its name is Ruby on Rails. If you walk up to a random software developer and ask them to name a Ruby framework, it’s very likely that Ruby on Rails will be their answer and that would hardly be surprising. I think it’s …
