Engineering,
taught
&
leadership,
practised.
I'm Steven — CTO at Digitonic, a PHP engineer since 2010 and a keen golfer with a terrible handicap. This is where I write it all down.
…and a few friends I can't name.
Latest from the journal
PHP 8.6's SortDirection Enum: Typed Sorting in Laravel Queries and Collections
PHP 8.6 adds a global SortDirection enum, and Laravel 13 already accepts it in orderBy() and sortBy(). Here is what it does, what it deliberately does not do, and the one validation gotcha that will bite you.
Filament Tables That Work on a Phone: Stacked Rows in v5.2
A ten-column Filament table on a phone scrolls sideways forever. Filament v5.2 added stackedOnMobile() — here is how to use it, and the four things you still have to fix yourself.
Stop Fighting pecl: Installing PHP Extensions with PIE
pecl is deprecated and PIE is the official replacement. Here is how to install, pin and verify PHP extensions, and how PIE slots into a multi-stage Laravel Dockerfile.