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Joel Butcher
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Writing on Laravel/PHP

Notes on Laravel architecture, platform engineering, security and AI-assisted development.

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  1. Baselines that only shrink: freezing technical debt without pretending it's gone

    5 min read

    How I use baselines to switch on strict static analysis today, hold new code to the full rule, and make sure the recorded debt can only shrink.

  2. The Dark Side of Caching: Don't Hurt Your Laravel App

    9 min read

    Caching can be a highly beneficial tool in your belt to help improve your customers user experience by reducing the need for expensive, repetitive computations, or API calls by storing frequently accessed data in memory.

  3. Beyond ORM: When and Why to Use Raw Queries in Laravel

    6 min read

    Eloquent is great, but raw SQL can be faster & more flexible. Learn when to use raw queries in Laravel & how to do it safely!

  4. Save Your Tests with Repositories in Laravel

    7 min read

    Tired of slow, brittle tests in Laravel? The repository pattern can help! Learn how to decouple your tests from the database, speed up execution, and write cleaner, more maintainable code.