“What the hell was I thinking?”; “Huh?”; “Who’s the fucking idiot who did this?.. oh. It was me…”.
Three questions every developer / coder / programmer / whatever-er asks themselves from time to time.
And I am definitely no different.
I built an initial version of a web-based tool for work some time ago. I built it with some speed to get it done as quickly as possible. But I should have taken longer and focused in more on the ongoing code quality.
I wrote tests from the get-go, but I let it slip a little when I would dip back into the project for little updates and tweaks across the last twelve months.
The other day I ran a static analysis tool over the project for the first time.
Christ on a bike.
So for the past day or so I’ve been battling hard to climb up the 9 rung ladder to the highly sought after status of level 9 all green. (Larastan/phpstan this is).
I’m currently on level 7 with about 15 errors to fix.
I have found that from implementing the fixes — many of which have been type hinting and generics-related — I am understanding the code — and the underlying framework Laravel — much better.
I’ve even found a very odd design decision in Laravel. The `auth()->id()` method can return either of the following:
- int
- string
- null
Why not just “int” and “null”?
Anyway.
It’s been fun and I’m looking forward to fighting through level 8 before defeating the final boss — level 9 All Green. 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩