Category Archives: Technology

[REVIEW] Laravel Design Patterns and Best Practices

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I saw a post on LinkedIN inviting people to review a new book, and I thought – what the heck. I have reviewed books before, so this could be fun. So – I signed up, and was asked to blog about the book when I am done.

The book I had to review was “Laravel Design Patterns and Best Practices”. Written by Arda Kılıçdağı and H. İbrahim YILMAZ. The book is available at Packt Publishing.

As I am reading the first few chapters, I was generally impressed. As a beginner in Laravel, I found it easy, informative, and the usage of analogies were quite clever. This resonated well with me, as I learn well by understanding difficult concepts by analogy.

Talking of analogies, I am going to describe my overall experience with the book using an analogy. Imagine a comic book with nice big letters. It reads nice. The text forms pictures in your mind as you read them. Awesome. As you turn each page in the comic book, you get more immersed in the book, and you really start to enjoy it.

But suddenly, when you turn the page somewhere near the middle of the comic book, things get a little hairy. Suddenly, you are reading a printed book. No more pictures and very small print that is highly condensed with very little line spacing.

What happened here is one of two things:

  • The book was aimed at absolute beginners, and then switched to advanced level without a gradual build-up. It became far too difficult for me to understand.
  • The book was aimed at intermediate Laravel developers, but the inclusion of the first few chapters were to fill the pages: It is far too elementary for intermediate Laravel developers.

Now – on the Packt website, the following paragraph is found:

This book is intended for web application developers working with Laravel who want to increase the efficiency of their web applications. It assumes that you have some experience with the Laravel PHP framework and are familiar with coding OOP methods.

That brings me to the second possibility I have mentioned: that the book is aimed at intermediate Laravel developers, but that the first few chapters were only fillers, being too elementary to teach intermediate Laravel developers anything.

So, while it was a good read for me up to the point where the book lost my attention, I would recommend that:

  • If you are an intermediate or advanced Laravel developer, PLEASE skip the first few chapters.
  • If you are a beginner Laravel developer, PLEASE read only the first few chapters, and tackle the last bunch of chapters only once you have gotten some more experience under the belt.

I have read several Packt books before, and I generally like them, but I have to say I am slightly disappointed by this one. That being said, it is purely my own opinion, and you might find the experience with this book a lot better than I did.

Happy reading!

Vanishing of e-mail?

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WebProNews posted this article about an executive at Facebook stating that e-mail will probably go away. I have commented the below, what do you think?

Well, that article hits the nail on the dot. E-mail can’t die. It is so integrated into our daily lives that there is no real way to conceive it to just die. But because I like to play Devil’s Advocate, I will contest this statement (without any proof, all just postulates, so don’t see it as opposing your story or the comments of the hundreds of – absolutely correct – commentators on your post).

The other side of the story goes something like this…

Who’s to say there will not be a new technology to take the place of email in the near future? Maybe Facebook is currently busy developing it. Who would’ve thought about 15-20 years ago that cellphones would all but replace conventional telephones?

Furthermore, when Sheryl said email will vanish, did she mean it will vanish like dinosaurs did, or did she mean it will vanish like the Illuminati did? Or even vanish as the KKK in the USA or Apartheid in South Africa? Just think about that… Does “dying” really mean “extinction” in this case?

Now, I didn’t attend the show, or listen to the broadcast, but I am just speculating here: could she have meant “conventional email sent via a computer” would die out? Could she have said that “email will die out in favor of mobile technology”? While these mobile devices certainly all have messaging technologies, and has a “handle” or “nickname” that has the format of an “email address”, does that necessarily make it an email?

And now, let’s go back to the other side for a bit… (sorry Sheryl)… If you take the official definition of email, according to one source on the net: “Email is a way of sending messages from one computer to another.” or another: “Email is the exchange of computer-stored messages by telecommunication”, it could be postulated that even an SMS is an email. So is an MMS, so is ANY other method of receiving a notification via electronic or telecommunications media.

So – will email die? Completely? NEVER, unless they can devise a way to send a message via telepathy. With the human mind sending signals between neurons via “action potentials”, which are considered by some as electrical impulses, that opens up a whole new debate…

Go figure…