Creating iOS Ad Hoc Builds with Expo & React Native

When creating mobile phone applications for iOS, there is a whole load of background checking that Apple’s systems do before they’ll let an app run on your iPhone. To the point that it isn’t really your iPhone. It’s theirs that they’re letting you use. A lot of the checking comes down to what is says…

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How To Build Mobile Apps

A common question I am asked when I tell people I’m a software engineer is this: “I’ve got an idea for an app. How do I build it?” So in this article I’m going to explain a little bit about how to build mobile apps. Now I don’t mean to be flippant, but asking a…

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Laravel: How To Create A Favourite or Short List Feature

So we’re going to assume you have a web app, something like RightMove. You can browse properties and if you like them, you can click a little heart icon which will add a particular property to your favourites list. But we’re not going to refresh the search page every time the user clicks the heart.…

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Cooking Links

Want to store these for later… https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/how-to-make-curry-sauce/ https://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=13741

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How To Code Faster

As a coder, I regularly find myself trying to do things I’ve never done before, so learning new stuff is still a very big part of my job. This can lead to excruciating days of zero progress on projects. This post is just a few notes about how to code faster. In other words, a…

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Things I’ve Learned From Building An Internet Platform, Solo

Between March 2021 and now, I have built an internet platform. All by myself. After qualifying from Makers Academy, this seemed like the ultimate full stack development challenge. The way I saw it, if I succeeded, I’d have my own startup, and if I failed, I’d at least have a great interview story. How many…

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My Initiation Into Mobile Application Development with React Native

I’m sorry to admit that it’s taken me over a year since graduating from Makers to actually get my teeth into mobile development. Now, to be fair, my wife and I have had a baby in that time which does turn your world upside down for a while. But still, a year is a long…

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Laravel + React Native: The Perfect Stack?

Of course, there are multiple reasons that certain languages and frameworks may or may not be used for certain projects, but for your average CRUD app (which let’s be honest is MOST apps), PHP based framework Laravel for web and backend; and JavaScript based framwork React Native seem to cover all the basis for creating…

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How To Write Tests For Laravel Apps in PHP

There’s surprisingly little out there (that I could find) about writing tests for Laravel applications. Of course, there’s the Laravel documentation, but in many cases I have found it to be either not detailed enough, or in a very counter-intuitive order. I would have really liked more examples. So here are some of my own.…

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The Flaw In Test Driven Design

In software engineering, the concept of test driven design works as follows: Step 1. Write a test, for example, “when we load a a particular URL, we expect there to be a page there”. That’s a pretty simple test. In PHPUnit, it would look like this. Step 2. Write the code to make the test…

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