Becoming a better WordPress Developer

I wrote this as a post for a friend a bit ago with the intention of cleaning it up to publish at some point. I kind of like the informality, so I’m mostly leaving it as is. Enjoy!

Reading core code was a big step in becoming a better WordPress developer.

I remember having a self realization moment a few years ago where I knew that if I reached a point where I never referred to the Codex to figure out how to handle something, then I had become good at this stuff. My self-test wasn’t necessarily that the arguments for register_post_type() are locked in memory, but that I know how to get the answer from core code.

My biggest step toward becoming more familiar with core code was the introduction of an IDE into my toolset. I prefer PHPStorm, but Netbeans is great and open source.

The ability to click on a function I was using to jump to the code in core has gone a long, long way for me. Having functions autocomplete and tell me what to expect in return has been huge in understanding how all the pipes are connected. I know not everyone loves that world and would rather spend time in a text editor, but I’ve been much more efficient since I switched from Sublime Text.

I guess at some point you transcend to Nacin level and have it all memorized.

Previously: Thoughts on Contributing to WordPress Core

My first contribution to core (which I talk about in that post), was a direct result from reading core code. We were pouring over different possibilities and a typo just appeared. Now that I’m familiar enough with the codebase, there are probably some areas I could stare at for an hour or two and find similar little nuggets. See the documented return value(s) in get_blog_details() as an example of a patch waiting to be discovered. 😉

And actually, now that I’m trying to think of more examples, read that post. The “Types of Trac activity in Jeremy’s perceived order of difficulty” is important. The tedious task of going through Trac tickets is more fun when you comment on things. And every time you comment on something you become more familiar. Testing and trying to reproduce outstanding bugs will go a long way as well. Once you have the patch applied locally, there’s a good chance you’ll see something to change.

And that’s where the advice cuts off. There’s plenty more, but reading core code alone will get you started. 🛩