“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. 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩