The hidden cost of AI-written tests
Since AI started to write our tests, the suite grew four times in less than a year. Six steps that kept it fast: 11,782 tests in 47 seconds instead of 310.
Hałas Piotr
How gRPC with opcache.preload Used All Our MySQL Connections
Two small changes made PHP-FPM workers hang and filled all 700 MySQL connections. The outage story, the fix, and a minimal repro.
Debugging PHP in Docker with an AI Agent and Xdebug
For a while now I have used LLMs to automate parts of my work. One of those parts is debugging with Xdebug. PhpStorm has an MCP server for it, but it only handles simple GET requests — so I wrote my own.
I spent a full day on a “five-minute” Docker migration
We ditched Docker Desktop for Colima — and then PHP started segfaulting. A story about a simple migration that was not simple. On the way: a free tool that was not really free, a segfault with no logs, and a kernel that breaks its own contract. It ends deep inside the Linux syscall table — with a fix you can copy in five minutes.
Build a Website with Nginx and SSI, Part 1 – Basics
It is not easy to split one big service into smaller services. A common way to do this is to load parts with extra requests. But some parts are important for SEO. If you load these parts with AJAX, your search ranking can go down. In this case, Server Side Include, or SSI for short, can help.
Continue readingBuild a Website with Nginx and SSI, Part 1 – BasicsHow to run PHP scripts, part 1 – the PHP built-in server
Welcome to a series of articles about ways to run PHP scripts. I will show you other ways to run your scripts. You do not always need the usual Apache/Nginx + PHP-FPM setup. In this first part, we look at the easiest method. This is the server built into PHP.
Continue readingHow to run PHP scripts, part 1 – the PHP built-in serverPHP Traits: How to Use Them the Right Way
There are many ways to stop code duplication in classes. The simplest way is inheritance. But what if a class needs code from many different classes? PHP does not allow multiple inheritance. So the only way is to use traits. A good trait works well in any class. This post shows you how to write a good trait.
<?=’Hello world!’;
Many people start learning a new programming language with a simple program. It is called “Hello world!”. But even this simple program can be written badly in PHP. In this post, I want to show you a good way to write “Hello world!”.