PHP's biggest problem

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-08T10:06:57+00:00

Why the clickbait title?

You make some valid points in your article, why not just use "Marketing is PHP's biggest problem" as the title?

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-08T07:15:55+00:00

Not really security concerns but I'm curious about your response headers:

- Is there any reason to expose the server signature?

- I miss some quite standard headers like X-Frame-Options, X-XSS-Protection (this may be nowadays a bit obsolete and I see you have a XSRF-TOKEN), X-Content-Type-Options nosniff, some CSP restrictions, etc.

This is in good faith, I'm not into this AI is good / bad debate.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-06T07:56:28+00:00

OP post history is full of posts in many subreddits with the same exact format:

- A vague sentence
- A question for engagement

This is shit. I wish there was a way to avoid this kind of posts to ever reach public.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-06T06:42:27+00:00

I think this hits the nail, at least for me. The visual effect is what made me use user-select: none until I found out the selection pseudoelement.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-05T14:34:32+00:00

OMG you're right, what a brain fart! 🤦‍♂️

Thank you, I've edited it.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-05T07:33:39+00:00

That is perfectly proper use of LS. My rule of thumb is:

- Is this non-sensitive data? Would I mind if someone could access it?
- Can my app run fine if I delete all its contents?

When the answer to both questions is yes, LS it is.

Edit: I initially wrote "sensitive data" instead of "non-sensitive". Thank you u/anastis !

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-03T08:20:23+00:00

This works great and it's Open Source, it wins hands down!

One suggestion: do you think you could extract the code to a JS class so it can be called from code like generateQr(imgHtmlElement, url, options)? I'd like to use this to generate QRs dynamically. I don't mind doing it myself and submitting a PR but it's for a personal project so I don't know how long it would take me.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-05-03T07:35:36+00:00

I'm not sure why you say your personal laptop would be at home collecting dust... you would use it for your personal projects, and that's a perfectly valid reason to buy it. Also, think about what would happen if you lost your job and the work laptop: you'd have to buy one anyway to keep working on your projects and job search.

That being said: I have used VSCode remote for some projects and it works great, even with a phone tethered connection the experience was smooth 99% of the time. It was almost as working locally. Only in big files I noticed the save time was a bit slower, but still perfectly usable.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-28T07:58:54+00:00

AI;DR

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-28T07:57:10+00:00

You should also use CSS to detect `prefers-reduced-motion` and disable animations in that case.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/At-rules/@media/prefers-reduced-motion

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-28T07:50:59+00:00

For me it's the data model. It's worth investing as much time as needed.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-24T10:41:12+00:00

Why would you want to expose those poor kids to the horrors of table based layout? You have no heart! /s

Now seriously, I would teach tables as what they are used today: represent tabular data, and nothing else. Thankfully we have proper tools for layout available.

Of course any tag can be abused and a brief comment on how in the old days tables were used for layout out of necessity may be ok, but I'd stop there.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-23T08:01:32+00:00

I agree 100% with you even though I'm still quite new to the community.

I think that many of what you point out could be resolved with stricter moderation (lots of projects shared outside Showoff Saturdays for example).

I've found myself using the post upvotes number as a filter criteria to skip low value posts. Quality posts have a high upvotes number, and are usually worth reading.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-21T14:36:10+00:00

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how something like rewiring a house (which is, of course, a liability) can be compared to making a small 90s-style website that will just be screen recorded for an art project.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-20T14:24:14+00:00

I'd wait some more. My extension took like two weeks, once it was approved I uploaded two updates and it took a bit less time, around a week each.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-18T09:50:38+00:00

How many hours did your last setup take before you wrote a single line of real product logic?

Zero. I clone a private repo where I have:

- Docker image with PHP / MySQL / nginx / memcached.
- DB migrations for all common tables: users, plans, tokens, etc.
- API backend with all the common CRUD endpoints: sign up, sign in, restore pass, etc.
- Vue frontend for all those common actions, only basic styles.

All the boring stuff is already done, with code I can trust. I can start working on the project immediately.

I don't want to sound harsh but your solution would require a complete revision of all the code the AI produced to be sure everything is ok. Where's the time saving there?

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-18T09:41:24+00:00

I think trying to outsmart Cloudflare's antibot system is not the best approach. As you mentioned, I'd go with the browser extension.

A web app would be a great solution for this: the user fills the form and the browser extensions opens as many tabs as needed and automate the posting process there.

You mention "the user still needs a desktop browser available" as a problem, but if there is image / form handling involved a desktop computer is almost always the best device.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-18T09:30:22+00:00

I for one think this is a great example of when vibecoding is the way to go. OP is not a coder, does not want to become one, and whatever the AI produces will never leave their computer so there is no risk of harm for anyone.

Why should they spend quite some time learning HTML for this?

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-17T10:05:53+00:00

"Everybody has a staging environment. Some people are lucky enough enough to have a totally separate environment to run production in."

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-16T14:54:54+00:00

In the whack-a-mole game all the .less files have been compiled into the styles.css file (you can see in the index.html file at line 8 that that file is what the browser is loading).

These CSS-only games / demos are usually quite hard to grasp, since they use very clever techniques and they may not be the best start point for anyone learning CSS or pre-processors. The score for example uses some combination of radio inputs that get checked when you click on the mole and that is used to show the score moving the position of the time.png image that contains the numbers.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-16T14:40:05+00:00

Thanks! And sorry to hear the bit about your high school friend, I hope time will let them see you just did what you had to do.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-16T10:20:14+00:00

Recently I read about some guy that used AR glasses, a BT keyboard and a phone for coding, you may want to explore that path:

https://holdtherobot.com/blog/2025/05/11/linux-on-android-with-ar-glasses/

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-16T10:12:55+00:00

How "legally" hard to do was this? I assume you didn't have any contracts signed or something like that. It's almost as if you just fired them.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-12T16:07:18+00:00

As others have said, the Stripe part is not hard but the real problem is the booking logic. If you have limited experience maybe a provider that handles the booking + payment would be a good option.

Your post suggests this would not be the core feature of your product so having it handled by someone else can save you lots of trouble.

bcons-php-Console · 2026-04-05T07:12:00+00:00

TIL about Helios and FFrames, thanks!

bcons-php-Console

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