In this section you can read posts I've written myself.

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Saying goodbye to WIP commit messages

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 5 minute read

There are two kinds of developers: those that write commit messages and value a repo's history and those that don't. I'm in the latter camp: most of my commit messages just read "WIP", much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues. I've tried to change my ways, but I just can't get into the habit of writing good commit messages.

But now I have a solution: I use the power of AI to write my commit messages for me. In this blog post, I'll show you how I did it.

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Skipping tests conditionally in Pest

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 7 minute read

In this blog post, I'd like to show the easiest way to skip tests conditionally in tests. Using the simple technique, which can be used for other things besides skipping tests, you can make your tests much more flexible.

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Discovering PHP's first-class callable syntax

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read

When looking at recent changes in the Laravel framework, I saw some PHP syntax that I didn't see before. Because I've been working with PHP for over 20 years and have a firm grasp of the language, I was surprised to see new syntax for the first time.

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Strategies for making Laravel packages customizable

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 10 minute read

While attending Laracon India, many people approached me to ask how we handle the maintenance of all our Spatie packages. One of the ways we keep maintenance burden low is by making our packages customizable. In this blog post, I'd like to cover some of our best tips to make a Laravel package easy…

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