Smash the Bug

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc.

 

Special Guest: Peter Rusin, Certified Senior Magento Developer from Cracow, Poland

 

SHOW NOTES

 

Peter Rusin, a Senior Magento Developer out of Poland, has a unique skill that he loves to exercise. When he comes across a monstrous challenge, he creates a tool to beat it, and he shares it openly with the community. Peter might be a great guy to get to know. He was kind enough to chat with Joseph about what his modules do, why he created them, and how to get started using them.

 

2:55

Peter explains his JS Layout Parcer (shared screen on the YouTube and SwiftOtter.com version of this podcast) which can be found here.

 

6:55

Joseph’s thoughts on checkout modifications and why some companies flat out refuse to do them. 

 

9:58

The difference between developers who assume a big, complicated problem just can’t be solved (most of us) and those who fight to create a solution. The value of investing time in creating solutions NOW instead of later.

 

16:21

When should one use the JS Parcer and what to keep in mind.

 

18:27

Peter explains his system configuration toolkit (shared screen on the YouTube and SwiftOtter.com version of this podcast) which can be found here.

 

22:36

The value of side projects like this when it comes to job interviews and building your career resume (not to mention the growth and happiness you experience when working on your own side projects!)

 

24:41

Why Peter believes his modules truly will make life easier for developers and how it can promote “lazy development” in a positive sense.

 

26:26

Peter’s informed thoughts on continuous learning and enjoying the future of Magento/Adobe Commerce.

Connect with Peter:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

As a CTO, Michal Biarda juggles a lot throughout the day. Working as a solution specialist and architect, training developers on how to write better code, and keeping the company’s daily technical projects on task are just the headlines of his job description. His passion is for helping developers to get away from writing “spaghetti code”, and he’s excited to share more about that with us.

 

SHOW NOTES

 

4:26

How common is this “spaghetti code” and what defines it?

 

5:48

How Michal and his team have been able to conquer the problem of spaghetti code (code reviewing and initial perspective before writing code) and why spaghetti code is so prevalent in India.

 

9:43

Taking a project live versus maintaining it in the long run (version 1 versus version 3) and why this problem really comes down to agencies and their habits, both in cutting costs and also forcing developers to work obscenely long hours.

 

11:51

The most important parts of a code review, according to Michal, and going through the “SOLID Coding Principles” as a step by step guide. Michal uses an experience translating “Chinese Magento” to “Turkish Magento” to exemplify some of his points.

 

18:37

Are plug-ins really a good idea in Magento? What are the pros and cons? What about the “single responsibility principle”?

 

27:25

ORBA’s Magento 2 CodeGen tool, how it works and why it can be so helpful. Find it here.

 

Connect with Michal:

LinkedIn

 

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

It’s Joseph and Jesse’s first podcast together in 2022 and they are absolutely stoked about it. January was a big month for SwiftOtter’s digital agency, and as developers all know very well, a “big month” means lots of difficult problems to solve and lessons to learn! Join Joseph and Jesse to talk about what they’ve learned recently.

 

1:37

Shopware’s $100M funding announcement, why competition right now is a great thing, and what Magento could add or modify to make sure they are demonstrating value as competition gets even stronger.

 

3:50

SwiftOtter’s 2022 Certification Challenge (takes place during the first quarter of every year) and how it’s better than ever this year, with the new collaborative study group meetings every other week. These study groups showcase exactly why becoming certified is an excellent way to grow your skills and prove them both!

 

6:54

Magento/Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 comes out on March 8th, 2022! Joseph has some holdbacks on how amazing it will be in the beginning..(hint: BUG THE MODULE VENDORS!) and even has a nice little rhyme to share.

 

9:28

Skilled problem solving: moving from “if” to “when”.

 

11:00

Jesse’s issue: customers adding products to the cart and getting a zero value. Taking advantage of recent pull requests to start the investigation. Flagging changes, thinking about what values should be returned, and having the willingness to do significant refactoring.

 

15:57

The 3 things that will influence behavior.

 

16:48

The art of identifying what areas are most likely to present a problem, and narrowing down options to reduce wasted time when debugging.

 

18:00

Another instance of Xdebug completely saving the day right before code needed to get to production, and the real life reason why looking at pull requests is so important.

 

23:00

Joseph’s pet peeve about running queries with your constructor.

 

24:13

Jesse’s thoughts about coding with future functionality in mind and how it actually improves code in the present. Naming, arrays, and grouping as many things together to do one single thing.

 

30:21

Another cart issue where the value came up as zero dollars - infinite loops, and adding breakpoints somewhat randomly with Xdebug to start a search.

 

Connect with Jesse:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Leon Helmus has been around the block a few times. He’s gained a lot of experience with Magento 1 and Magento 2 in a relatively short amount of time, and with 6 Magento/Adobe certifications, he has very clearly validated his skills. Leon was happy to come share with us a few of the crazy circumstances he has worked through and the challenges he’s overcome in recent past.

 

SHOW NOTES2:185 different parties connected with the same project. Using things like “feature environments”, how do you make sure good code gets into the staging environment with all of these 3rd party developers and complicated groups involved?5:38How does Leon’s CI Pipeline handle this kind of management and what tools are they using to keep things streamlined and smooth?9:30SwiftOtter’s Magento 2 driver which can be found here.12:20Testing, acceptance environments and production deployment without losing process continuation.15:32Feature branches to prevent bad code from getting to production.19:00Code reviews have been on Joseph’s mind a lot recently, but we haven’t talked about automating code review yet. How will that work and when will automated checks be performed?25:07Leon’s most important piece(s) of advice to give, based on his experience. --Connect with Leon:LinkedInConnect with Joseph:LinkedInTwitter

 

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

It’s Christmas week in America and Joseph’s got his Santa hat on! Grab a seat and let’s talk about what’s in the near future for us developers, going into 2022, and the “how”, “why” and “when” behind code refactoring.

 

SHOW NOTES

 

1:17

End of life for PHP 7.3, PHP 8 and the next version of Magento.

 

3:52

The new “Breeze” theme, which is supposed to be a high-performing Luma theme and compete against the new Hyvä themes.

 

5:32

Certification news: Adobe’s certification “refresh cycle”, all of the updates coming our way very soon, when SwiftOtter will have new materials ready, and if the new tests are looking easier or harder.

 

8:26

The new MacBook Pro - is it worth it? How fast is it and how does it change Magento development? Why is speed so important when you’re debugging, aside from the time aspect?

 

13:20

What really is “refactoring code”, why might you do it, and what should you be thinking about when you do it?

 

25:55

What happens when you get into a massive class, say it’s 500 lines of code, and you just can’t even figure out where to start?

 

28:15

Jesse shares the key aspects that he would be looking for, in respect to refactoring code. “Can I put this code in a single box that does one thing?” - Jesse

 

29:41

SwiftOtter’s increasing emphasis on understanding architecture and what actually goes into building things the right way.

 

Connect with Jesse:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

 

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Here we are! After getting hung up on the wonderful world of Hyvä themes and the amazing future in store for the Magento frontend, we’re finally back to talk about the Magento revolution. You might also call it the “Magento fork” or “The Mage-OS distribution”. Willem has much to say about where Magento might be in 3-5 years and how MOSCA's plan is moving forward.

SHOW NOTES

1:30

Where will Magento be in 3 years, and why was the open letter written and published in September of 2021? Why are “microservices”, “SaaS” and “PWA” all sore spots for Willem? Why is Willem not ready to give up on the Monolith structure of Magento Open Source and why did they decide that the open letter was the right path to take to change?

8:55

What were the core intentions behind creating and maintaining a Magento Open Source clone? Is it more of a precautionary action to keep Adobe in check, or a hostile takeover?

12:15

How has the community responded to this movement and is that response changing as time goes on and the idea normalizes?

12:58

The Poland event in September, big names who showed up at the drop of a hat to talk about the future of Magento, and the history of where this whole idea really started (back when Ben Marks was involved).

14:58

Adobe’s initial response to their plans and how “fork” really wasn’t the right word to describe their plans.

16:33

The actual technological explanation of what the Mage-OS Distribution will look like, how it will be structured, and when the community might gain access to it. Willem gives us a peek behind the curtain on what needs to happen regarding funding, leadership and the logistical aspects of this startup.

21:14

Joseph asks Willem to step outside of the Magento community for a few minutes and talk about a few things from a truly objective perspective. Joseph brings up the great merchant exodus that we are seeing away from Magento, and asks Willem for his honest opinion on where Magento is at in its lifecycle.

29:17

Several months after the call for a Magento Open Source roadmap, Adobe came out and defined their roadmap, indicating that OS would only be getting maintenance fixes and security fixes in the future. Willem shares his opinion on what we can see from Adobe in the next 5 years and what our responsibilities might be to pick up their slack.

32:53

What conversations are taking place in the task force meetings regarding community and ongoing innovation.

39:01

Why the Magento community is so special, and why it’s a shame if Adobe doesn’t “celebrate and harvest that energy”.

41:41

How the market has changed in the last 5 years and where Magento is really positioned in the market at the moment, taking into account the Big Commerce and Shopify boom at that time.

Check out Hyvä HERE

Connect with Willem:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating ecommerce developers around!

[Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music]

Matt Sherer has been around PHP and Magento development for quite some time now. Having been a part of the Mediotype team before it was swallowed up into Blue Acorn iCi, he came to love the Magento community atmosphere and camaraderie present among eCommerce developers. He doesn’t get much time these days to interact with the community, which is one of the side effects of taking on the responsibility of a technical architect role at a thriving agency. We’re glad to have him on this show to share his experience with us and show us what it really looks like to transition from a senior developer into the responsibilities of an architect!

SHOW NOTES

1:05

What does everyday life look like for a solutions architect at a major Magento agency?

3:16

To quote Matt, “you can’t get into Magento without challenges”, so sometimes it’s hard to find that one tough experience to share. Matt’s most recent difficulty centered around a merchant changing major plans at the last minute. We’ve all dealt with this before, but when it actually happens, it comes down to the architect to identify the changes, make sure everyone understands them completely, set expectations between all parties involved, organize a timeline and project the timeline/potential cost.

5:16

What are the practical differences between being a senior developer and an architect? Matt argues that it is primarily a “social role” and centers around “people management”, but of course it is much more complicated than those very simple descriptions.

8:10

How Matt believes a developer, architect or anyone in the Magento/eCommerce space can stay driven, creative and productive and defend against burnout (which he has faced). Joseph talks about reaching “critical mass” and how a decline into burnout is not a quick thing, but a slow process that can be identified before it becomes a huge problem. Matt’s former boss used to say “the last 10 percent is the hardest" (when running a Magento project).

Connect with Matt:

LinkedIn

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music

We thought this episode was going to be about MOSCA and the Mage OS Distribution, but we spent so much time talking about something else (something very important) that we decided to do two episodes with this special guest. Willem Wigman has been around the Magento ecosystem for about 10 years. After freelancing, pushing hard with Magento 1, and then burning out on the transition to Magento 2, Willem found himself back to working on Luma and hating it. He developed such a disdain for Luma that he ended up deciding to fix it by reinventing the wheel, and that is where we got Hyvä, a Magento front-end that makes sense. Why does it make sense? Let’s dive in and see!

SHOW NOTES

1:12

Who is Willem Wigman, where did he come from and why does Hyvä exist?

3:26

Why shouldn’t every website be on PWA and how to decide if that is the right option or not. He believes every website doesn’t need to act like an app, and that loading speed, situational logic and actual purchase psychology all have to all be taken into account.

9:14

Why exactly is Hyvä so much better than Luma?

12:12

Why it’s actually GOOD that Hyvä is not free, but is paid tool, and how we can look forward to this great tool expanding and improving quickly. Willem explains his vision for a “Hyvä ecosystem”.

16:24

A quick introduction to MOSCA and the Mage OS Distribution, what Willem thinks about Monolith vs Microservices/de-composed front-end. He explains why a lot of people started to give up on Adobe’s plan for Magento and why he thinks this new energy in the community is helpful.

21:06

Willem suggests that if Hyvä isn’t a good idea for a merchant, it’s pretty likely that Magento wasn’t a good option in the first place. Joseph and Willem just plainly say it: “Magento 1 to Magento 2 is a downgrade (regarding loading speeds)” and they discuss the realities of when Magento isn’t the right fit at all.

26:56

When is Hyvä probably NOT the right solution? What will you have to re-write with Hyvä, as opposed to when you use PWA solutions, etc.

30:55

What have been the biggest challenges agencies face in the first 6 months using Hyvä and what should they anticipate when they incorporate this new tool? Willem compares it to learning a new dialect within the same language, and insists that most skeptics end up changing their mind, accepting any minor downsides for the sake of all of the great upsides.

34:14

How Hyvä is built with debt and legacy code in mind, and defends against decay and future maintenance. Due to its stable format, Hyvä has seen very few unhappy customers, and many of their customers have said that 1000 euros is a “steal” for what they are getting.

40:19

Willem’s mysterious book recommendation for us! “Good friends buy each other this book” -Willem

Check out Hyvä HERE

Connect with Willem:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating ecommerce developers around! [Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music]

Eric Allatt is an 8-time certified Magento developer (kind of a lot, right?) who is kind of obsessed with website performance. He loves it so much that he has developed a pretty robust module that helps people to increase their speeds and strip the weight that holds them down!

SHOW NOTES

2:46

Eric explains his Cyberic Performance project (which can be found HERE) and what led him to create it.

5:41

How to fire up his module and put it to use in your daily work. Of course, we would all love to have a module that just automatically works with any website, but that isn’t quite the case. “Starting in yellow and finishing in green” as opposed to “starting in yellow and finishing in red”). What to look out for and what needs to happen before you look to use this module. Eric believes that this module, even at its worst, can certainly still help you out in certain ways.

8:02

How Eric’s module is different from others in its bundling, and how he has come to understand the resources available in RequireJS.

13:32 - 30:35

Eric’s 6 steps you can take to achieve incredible speeds in Magento. Some of these tools will seem simple, but Eric helps you to understand exactly what to do with these tools.

23:50

Magento’s list of modules can be found HERE.

27:42

Does actually disabling a module have a positive impact on performance?

30:35

The law of diminishing returns, as it relates to Magento performance and ongoing optimization efforts.

 

Connect with Eric:

LinkedIn

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

[Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!]

Ivan has been around since the beginning. To be specific, he was one of the core Magento 1 developers, brought into the Magento company as an “Adobe Flex” developer. His experience and skillset give him a keen ability to spot inefficiencies, performance bottlenecks and security issues within the platform. Naturally, he has some very valuable tips to share from his experience that might just help you fix whatever issue you’re dealing with now or in the future!

--

SHOW NOTES [more at SwiftOtter.com]

3:45

The majority of the merchants Ivan works with are dealing with database overload and don’t know what to do. His first exercise is to try and find “esoteric solutions” that will solve their unique problem, not just for the time being, but for the future, allowing them to continue to build their databases without the fear of another major breakdown.

6:13

Ivan shares a story about a Magento 1 customer in ~2018 who wanted to have a website with 200 different domain names and the major challenges that this brought up.

8:53

A tip for developers, regarding databases, when approaching certain merchant concerns.

9:37

Joseph’s controversial “anti-ProductRepository” post he put out earlier in 2021 and Ivan’s project which can be found HERE. Ivan explains this project he has been working on and how “preloading” works to your advantage.

12:40

For further explanation of Ivan’s preloading strategy, see his Meet Magento UK talk right HERE. 

14:40

Ivan’s frustration with the current Open Source management and how long it takes for a pull request to get attention. 16:40 A short discussion on what this Mage Open Source Task Force will yield and what might actually happen. Ivan believes the Mage-OS and Adobe can coexist and actually have a functioning relationship that is helpful, without throwing the whole thing out, but he has much to share about what he thinks the challenges, opportunities and realities are surrounding this process.

27:45

Watch “Load in the Loop” HERE. Eric Hileman of MageMojo presented issues in the websites hosted on MageMojo, then he and Ivan worked to solve those issues on the show. It’s very entertaining and educational!

--

Connect with Ivan:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Connect with Joseph:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest!

This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers!

Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

[Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music]