A few years ago, I sold a software called aeSecure, which was a Web Application Firewall. In order to prevent my proprietary code from being picked up by someone who could then sell it, for example, I had developed an obfuscation script.

Since then, I've released a reusable version of that script: https://github.com/cavo789/php_obfuscator.

And what if, today, with artificial intelligence, this type of code was no longer of any interest? The aim of this article is to see if it's always a good idea to make your code unreadable.

For years now, I'm using https://github.com/jakzal/phpqa to run a lot of static analysis tools on my PHP codebase.

The list of available tools is huge; see by yourself: Available tools.

In this blog post, we will see how we can take advantage of all these tools and increase the quality of our scripts.

Imagine you can execute a query like SELECT customer_id, first_name, last_name, email FROM customers ORDER BY last_name ASC; in your Excel sheet and that Excel will connect your Microsoft SQL Server database, run the query there, get the result and put the data directly in your sheet. Would be nice, no?

Imagine your sheet has already a nice layout with colors, titles having filters enabled and f.i. has a name (like rngMyCustomers). It would be nice if the updated data still keep all the layouts and just extends the name; no?

Stop imagining, it's just so easy!

For people who like working in a console, Windows Terminal can be seen as a successor of the old DOS console; you know the black screen where you can type commands like dir or mkdir.

Windows Terminal is a multi-tab software so instead of having multiple windows, you just have multiple tabs but the most killing features for me is the possibility to have a DOS console in one tab, a Powershell one in a second tab, having one or more tabs for Linux and why not, a tab for a SSH connection.

And that feature is really comfortable! Using the same window, you can have multiple active consoles and f.i. share your Linux history between tabs. Pretty cool!

As you probably know, CTRL+R in the console will give you access to your HISTORY i.e. you'll retrieve the list of the commands you previously typed in your console. Just like using UP or DOWN keys but with a very small search engine.

And it makes the job but, honestly, this is really basic, no?

The Fuzzy Finder (aka fzf) command line utility will explode the possibilities linked to searching in the history but, in reality, this is just one of the consequences of installing fzf, which is so much more powerful.

Let's have a look.

A few days ago, I've updated my Putty configuration to set the default font-size to 12; no more 10.

Today, by starting Putty, whatever on which server I wish to join, I got the No supported authentication methods available followed by, in my case (server sent: publickey, gssapi-keyex, gssapi-with-mic, keyboard-interactive) fatal error.

I've only understand the origin of the problem by looking at the window caption: Putty tries to connect to a server other than the one I want. Why? And, ah, ok, last time I've modified my settings I was working on that server so, the solution should come from: how can I reset my Putty settings?

ZSH supports plugin and one of the wonders is the zsh-autosuggestions one.

That one will suggests commands as you type based on your previous history and completions.

The more you use your Linux console, the more valuable this plugin will prove to be, as it will learn from you; it will know which commands you have already executed and will suggest them as soon as you start typing the first characters. Finish thinking "Gee, what were the parameters I used for ...".

zsh-syntax-highlighting is another gem for ZSH.

As you type, you'll be able to tell from the colors that, for example, something isn't quite right.

If you type head followed by a space, ZSH will display this word in green: this command exists and is valid. If you type heat there, the word will appear in red: this command does not exist.

It sounds simple, but it's so practical.

ZSH is a powerful alternative to Linux Bash offering a lot of features like auto-completion (I like this so much), plugins and even themes.

The idea here is to empower your Linux console, both the command line like, f.i. new aliases out-of-the-box and make the look and feel even better.

I've chosen Oh My ZSH since years, let's see how to install it followed by a discovering some features.

It's only been ten days or so since I learned the trick, even though it was well documented: managing service startups and, above all, blocking one if the other isn't ready (official documentation).

Imagine a two services applications like Joomla (see my Create your Joomla website using Docker), WordPress, LimeSurvey, Laravel and many, many more use cases: you've an application and that application requires a database.