Forem: tyler-wel

How do you keep up with technologies and programming news?

tyler-wel — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 03:57:33 +0000

I feel a bit overwhelmed by all different news, blog, and tutorial sites, I have no idea where to look for the new trends, releases, etc.

How and where does everyone keep up with the news and trends?

Setting up Laravel and React in WSL

tyler-wel — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 10:27:02 +0000

Recently I was given an assignment to build a simple web app using Laravel. Having never used PHP before, this was an interesting challenge! Because setting up environments is never fun, I decided to write this post to summarize my notes and hopefully help out anyone else looking to get Laravel up and running. I setup my environment using WSL, but this guide should work for any Unix system.

Prerequisite

If you're a Windows user, first you're going to want to get WSL setup and running. For more information please see: Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10.

Getting Started

From a fresh WSL install, we'll want to install the following packages:

Apache 2.4.29
PHP 7.2.24
Node 8.10.0

Step 1 - Node, Apache, PHP

The following commands will get the above packages, and other dependencies installed.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install apache2 curl openssl zip unzip git libonig-dev nodejs npm

Check nodejs and npm were installed correctly with:

$ node --version
v8.10.0
$ npm --version
3.5.2

After confirming nodejs and npm are ok, confirm apache is ok, and if not, get it running

$ apache2 -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
Server built:   2019-09-16T12:58:48
$ sudo service apache2 status

You can confirm the server is running and restart/start/stop it with the following commands when needed

sudo service apache2 status
sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service apache2 start
sudo service apache2 stop

Now that apache2 is up and running, it's time to get all the required php packages installed! In this tutorial, we're going to go with PHP 7.2.

sudo apt install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php php-cli php-cgi php-mbstring php-zip php7.2-gd php-xml php7.2-sqlite

You can visit PHP Function Reference for more info on some of the above packages.

Step 2 - Composer and Laravel

The composer installation guide comes with an SHA-384 installer check, so I recommend visiting the installation guide for more information. If the second step of the following commands fail, please see the guide.
Download Composer

Summarized Composer Installation (Feb 2020)

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'e0012edf3e80b6978849f5eff0d4b4e4c79ff1609dd1e613307e16318854d24ae64f26d17af3ef0bf7cfb710ca74755a') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php --install-dir=~/.composer/vendor/bin/ --filename=composer
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

If the composer-setup.php command fails, please create the directory yourself and re-run.

mkdir -p ~/.composer/vendor/bin

Make sure composer is added to your .bashrc

echo 'PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin/' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Finally, confirm composer installed correctly

$ composer --version
Composer version 1.9.3 2020-02-04 12:58:49

Laravel install is much simpler! Just run the following commands and you're good to go

composer global require laravel/installer

$ laravel --version
Laravel Installer 3.0.1

Step 3 - React Framework

Laravel comes with VueJS scaffolding as default, but I personally prefer working with React. Luckily, switching over to React is very simple! Just run the following commands in the directory of your choice and you'll be good to go.

laravel new project_name
cd project_name
php artisan preset react
npm install

The above commands will create a new Laravel project named project_name in a directory of the same name. It will set the preset scaffolding to React and install all the required node modules.

Step 4 - Build and Go!

We're almost there! To get your new Laravel app running, run the following commands

composer install
npm run dev

Once those are finished, you will want to duplicate the provided env.example and rename it to .env and setup you're preferred database.

If you want something lightweight and simple, you can just set

DB_CONNECTION=sqlite

and delete the other DB_ lines. This will use the database file in the default directory database/database.sqlite (make sure to create this file yourself!)

Lastly, get our API_KEY filled in with:

php artisan key:generate

And that should be it!! If everything went smoothly, you can run

php serve artisan --port=8181

and you're good to go! Open up the basic site at localhost:8181 and have fun working with Laravel and React!

Final Comments

If you have any questions, advice, or found something wrong in this explanation, please let me know down below!

Morning Routine Analysis!

tyler-wel — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 22:00:15 +0000

So when trying to figure this week's post topic, I went back to last week's post and had an epiphany. Lately I've been getting more into Data Science and Machine Learning..... so why not take the comments about everyone's morning routine and extract some data! Well... there was only 22 people who responded but, hey! It's still data! Not a big enough sample size to make any real conjectures, but still was fun to look at the data.

Data!

Kids/Animals (Care): This category was for anyone who cared for a pet or child. There weren't many responses dealing with children, so I decided to lump this as a "care for".
Coffee/Tea: Anyone who needed to start off the day with some coffee or tea
Exercise/Stretching: Exercising and stretching was commonly together, so also lumped these two together
Yoga/Meditate: Same as above but less hardcore
Study: Bit of studying in the morning is always good!
Shower: Gotta get clean. I was surprised to see 3 respondents saying they took cold showers!
Read/Podcast/Music: Anyone who did any reading/listening at home/on commute
Work Prep/Todo: Prepping today's todo was pretty common!
Eat: Most important meal of the day
Emails/Blogs/Messaging: Anyone checking their emails, blogs, messaging, and/or social media
Other: This includes anything that I couldn't find a good classification for

With a total number of 22 respondents, here's the data!

Summary

Overall it's interesting! Of course there is not enough data to make any conclusions. If anything it's interesting to see what people wrote. Coffee/Tea and Showering seem to have come out on top! I wonder if there is any bias? Maybe reading another person's comment effects how one responds?

I would love to do more surveys/data collection in the future! Still a beginner in the world of data science.

If you have any advice, please let me know down below!

What is your morning routine?

tyler-wel — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 22:30:23 +0000

So I wanted to try and do at least a post a week, and I didn't have much time to prepare one this week. So I wanted to open up another discussion!

So, to any of you glorious readers stumbling upon this post, what is YOUR morning routine? Wake up and sit on reddit until you're almost late to work? Make sure you got that cup of coffee before attempting anything? Immediately get up and get to coding?

I personally spend a bit too long reddit before stumbling into the shower, getting ready just in time, and racing off to work. On the train to work, listen to some DnD podcasts and study Japanese. Right before arriving to work I make sure to get some tea or water for the day and a coffee. Upon arriving at my desk, it's off to coding right away! Who needs to check emails or read chat anyways.

Here's a few threads from the past I dug up if you're interested in reading more about routines!
Do you have a morning routine?
Planning My Daily Routine
The Miracle of a Morning Routine

What’s a blog?

tyler-wel — Sat, 25 Jan 2020 02:50:29 +0000

So what IS a blog? I’ve never been much of a social media person, and this is my first blog. I've always just been more of a lurker. An overwhelming majority of blogs these days seem to be tutorials, or maybe I'm just in the wrong places. To anyone reading this, what is a blog to you? A place to learn new skills or perspectives on things? Discussion zones?

I’m sure it’s going to take me awhile to get the hang of being a blogger, and I’ll be surprised if more than a single person ever reads this. But I guess you gotta start somewhere!