Brent — Curator of Stitcher’s Community Feed, a community-driven, hand-curated content aggregator highlighting thoughtful, high-quality writing from across the web. The feed focuses on software engineering, open source, web development, infrastructure, and the human side of building technology. Readers can browse recent picks, follow via RSS, or contribute their own suggestions.
239 articles from this blog
A developer details optimizing a PHP script to process 11 million database rows in seconds, focusing on SQL query batching and moving logic to PHP.
Explains the upcoming partial function application (PFA) feature in PHP 8.6, detailing its syntax and benefits for writing cleaner code.
A developer reflects on being accused of using AI to write blog posts and discusses the broader rise of AI-induced skepticism in online content.
A developer details optimizing a server-side analytics system, reducing processing time for 11 million rows from hours to minutes.
Discusses the unsustainable expectation of long-term support for open source software and the necessity of regular updates.
A developer shares lessons on managing open source projects, focusing on people skills, ego management, and leadership structures for success.
A look at PHP's evolution in 2026, focusing on PHP 8.5 features like the pipe operator and the upcoming partial function application.
A developer explains a caching bug that caused an RSS feed to display the wrong content and apologizes for the potential inconvenience.
Overview of new features in PHP 8.5, including the pipe operator, clone with, #[NoDiscard], and closure improvements.
Explores the concept of 'PHP Editions' inspired by Rust, proposing opt-in breaking changes as a way to modernize PHP while maintaining ecosystem stability.
A developer shares their wishlist for future PHP features, including PHP editions for opt-in breaking changes and interface default methods.
A developer simplifies a content scheduling system by replacing a cron job and state machine with a smarter database query using future publication dates.
A developer reflects on how over-reliance on Tailwind CSS has eroded their ability to write raw CSS, leading to a feeling of being 'vendor-locked'.
A developer revives a dormant RSS aggregation project by rebuilding it with a new framework, HTMX, and simplified UX, rediscovering motivation through refactoring.
Explains the differences between PHP's readonly properties and private(set) asymmetric visibility, discussing their use cases for creating immutable data objects.
A developer reflects on using PHP 8.4's property hooks for a year, explaining their benefits and practical applications in code.
Explains the new pipe operator in PHP 8.5, showing how it simplifies chaining operations and improves code readability.
Explains Tempest framework's 'discovery' feature, which automatically scans and configures code without manual setup.
Announcing PHPverse 2025, a free online event on June 17th to celebrate PHP's 30th birthday with talks, Q&A, and giveaways.
Explains how Tempest PHP framework uses typed data objects for automatic request validation, simplifying web development.
