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We’ve had some great talks in the past about Hyvä and its capabilities (listen to The Hyvä Revolution episode with Willem Wigman), but in this episode Alexander Galdin, Frontend Developer with ITdelight joined us to talk about actually customizing Hyvä for merchants! His in the trenches, boots on the ground perspective was really great to hear! This was an enlightening discussion with Alex, and we hope you learn as much about working with Hyvä as we did!   Show Notes 0:00 Show Intro 1:17 Life as a frontend developer 2:18 Hyvä with a single Magento instance and multiple stores 5:04 Understanding the basics of using Hyvä 8:15 Strategies for having multiple stores 11:15 There are pros and cons to any feature, and there are usually reasons for the design trade-offs 14:10 Alpine.js, and some of the challenges 19:17 Strategies Alex has figured out for overcoming some of the design trade-offs 23:59 How to handle upgrades to to the modules 26:26 Alex’s advice for frontend developers, and the importance of expanding your social networking circle 27:40 The courage of those in Ukraine, and what we can learn from them   Connect with Alexander: LinkedIn Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter https://swiftotter.com https://twitter.com/Swift_Otter https://www.facebook.com/SwiftOtterInc   Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to swiftotter.com/slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

What an incredible privilege it was to speak with Igor Miniailo for the return of Smash The Bug! He has looked at Adobe Commerce from more angles than most of us can even imagine, so it was a tremendous honor to hear about some of the bugs Igor and his team have encountered and smashed recently! In part one of this discussion, Igor and Joseph share similar experiences on the challenges of replicating issues in order to fix them. Show Notes 0:00 Show Intro   1:28 Who is Igor Miniailo? A day in the life of the Chief Architect for Adobe Commerce   2:52 Scaling up to 300,000 orders per hour from 1,800 just a couple years ago for one merchant. Identifying and correcting bottlenecks on the database.   5:53 Temporary tables for search functionality. When designing the commerce search functionality, they decided to make it agnostic to the possible search options.   12:41 When you don’t know the full conditions where the bug is present, it can be challenging to replicate the issue and then fix it. Joseph shares a similar recent challenge; some problems can take so long to get to the solution, and the solution turns out to be easier than expected.   18:39 Modularity. 'Why' is more important than 'how' in many situations– sometimes the solution doesn’t seem like the best option, but there is usually a good reason behind these decisions.   22:46 Making it community contribution-based, and the benefit and success of doing so.   Connect with Igor: LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter https://swiftotter.com https://twitter.com/Swift_Otter https://www.facebook.com/SwiftOtterInc   Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. You can join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around!

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc. Another informative episode of Smash the Bug with Joseph and his guest, Jesse Maxwell, who also happens to be his brother. There is a lot to catch up on as they discuss the latest news and how that impacts developers. They also jump into real-life challenges they face as an agency at SwiftOtter and how they dealt with them. Communication is more important than you might think especially working with clients.  0:00 Show starts. 0:34   Recent release of Chrome 100.  1:30 Headworks. Vendor for modules has changed the way they are releasing or restricting their Composer repository.  5:54 Events are happening again. Magento UK, etc.  7:20 New Magento upgrade—should you do it? Magento 2.4.4 will be supported until November 2023.  8:30 Joseph discussed a challenge they faced in their agency. A client’s products disappeared off the site. Their first course was to run the re indexer but it happened again. So they did it again. They finally drilled down to what it was.  14:46 The fix: dependency injection! 16:18 Jesse was working on an app and had a pesky issue (losing data). The fix ended up taking less than 15 minutes. A co-worker suggested it. Sometimes, it’s good to do the obvious.  20:15 Occam’s Razor 21:44 Communication. It’s a really important area. Internal conversation facilitates good merchant relationships. Communication is the foundation to the work we do. 24:25 Action oriented communication: making clear the purpose of the communication.  26:16 How to drill down and be specific. Ping only the necessary people in comments. Ask questions too. 30:56 An important point is how you layout your communication.  33:44 After you’ve written high quality communication, take a moment and re-read it. Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes.  Connect with: Jesse Maxwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bassplayer7/ Joseph Maxwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwelljoseph/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/swiftotter_joe This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc. We’re going to talk with Yarik Voronyi (Engineering Manager at Adobe), Russell Albin (Technical Principal Architect at Adobe), and Shane Herman (Senior Director of Customer Engineering). Today’s topic is on  sticking points with Commerce Cloud, the challenges people bring upon themselves when they are deploying solutions out to Commerce Cloud and what we can due to avoid the problems.  0:00 Show starts.   1:40 Joseph asks his guests what the most common mistakes they see people making in Commerce Cloud.    1:58  Russell comes at the issue from the developer side. He sees a lot result from live inventory requests. He has cautioned people against it.  He encourages them to figure out what cadence is good enough (every 30 minutes, an hour, etc),and feed Commerce with the appropriate data. Otherwise, real time is always a problem.    4:51 Yarik sees a lot of customers not pay attention to full page caching. He shares a solution to that.   7:00 Shane tells about how some of their clients are using GraphicQL.    9:27 Joseph asks a question about GraphQL and caching. Shane says it doesn’t natively cache but they can use Get.    10:33 Shane talks about how important it is todo so some self-help before you reach out to support. You can save yourself time and headaches.   12:38 Yarik describes the site analysis tool.    14:49 Shane addresses extensions from the marketplace and things to watch out for.   17:26 Russell discusses ideal configurations. In your config.PHP, it dumps some of the config values, to help with the compilation time. You can also add post deploy hook, all of this info is in the Dev Docs.    Google: Commerce Cloud Ideal State : for more info.   18:30 Yarik talks about indexers and index functionality. Extensions often invalidate indexers, and that causes issues in Commerce.    Connect with: Yarik Voronyi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik-voronoy/ Russell Albin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellalbin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RussellAlbin Shane Herman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneherman/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/robot_atx Joseph Maxwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwelljoseph/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/swiftotter_joe This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc.   Special Guest: Peter Jaap Blaakmeer, multi-certified Magento developer and CTO at Elgentos Commerce   Peter Jaap Blaakmeer is the kind of guest who needs no introduction. In fact, if you ever have a few free minutes and want to see something amazing, check out his resume on LinkedIn to see all of the different projects he’s worked on throughout the years. Having been a developer for over 15 years and achieved basically every certification he could possibly want, you could say this guy knows a thing or two about his craft. Peter has recently jumped into a pretty interesting project, and he was very kind to give us a glimpse into his world!   02:03 Peter’s 3 main roles as a CTO, beyond his first designation as a developer at heart. Elgentos’ unique client onboarding experience they provide for their merchants.   04:31 Cypress vs MFTF as a testing environment, from speed to integration.   07:18 Peter/Elgentos’ new client with three separate Magento installations with different php versions, and a long road to combining all three into one.    11:24 How orders aren’t having to be merged, and why that would be a massive challenge.   12:50 A valuable Magento crypt key trick you won’t want to miss!   14:14 The intricate game plan Peter is using to get these websites all merged together (don’t miss this!).   20:53 Peter talks all of us through the original layout/scope, approaching this project, and what the new scoping system is looking like right now. Why Elgentos is strict with their “one website, one store view” rule.   30:01 Peter’s perspective on why this rare occasion is an opportunity for him, and a somewhat exciting challenge to run through, even though it’s frustrating. From import tools to unique tricks, Peter runs through the technical overlay that makes this project above many of his staff’s pay grade.   33:32 How Peter keeps his skills sharp and renews his excitement over new challenges, even after all these years. Truly, some things never change for some developers!   Connect with Peter: LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc.   Special Guest: Peter Rusin, Certified Senior Magento Developer from Cracow, Poland   SHOW NOTES   Peter Rusin, a Senior Magento Developer out of Poland, has a unique skill that he loves to exercise. When he comes across a monstrous challenge, he creates a tool to beat it, and he shares it openly with the community. Peter might be a great guy to get to know. He was kind enough to chat with Joseph about what his modules do, why he created them, and how to get started using them.   2:55 Peter explains his JS Layout Parcer (shared screen on the YouTube and SwiftOtter.com version of this podcast) which can be found here.   6:55 Joseph’s thoughts on checkout modifications and why some companies flat out refuse to do them.    9:58 The difference between developers who assume a big, complicated problem just can’t be solved (most of us) and those who fight to create a solution. The value of investing time in creating solutions NOW instead of later.   16:21 When should one use the JS Parcer and what to keep in mind.   18:27 Peter explains his system configuration toolkit (shared screen on the YouTube and SwiftOtter.com version of this podcast) which can be found here.   22:36 The value of side projects like this when it comes to job interviews and building your career resume (not to mention the growth and happiness you experience when working on your own side projects!)   24:41 Why Peter believes his modules truly will make life easier for developers and how it can promote “lazy development” in a positive sense.   26:26 Peter’s informed thoughts on continuous learning and enjoying the future of Magento/Adobe Commerce. Connect with Peter: LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter   This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

As a CTO, Michal Biarda juggles a lot throughout the day. Working as a solution specialist and architect, training developers on how to write better code, and keeping the company’s daily technical projects on task are just the headlines of his job description. His passion is for helping developers to get away from writing “spaghetti code”, and he’s excited to share more about that with us.   SHOW NOTES   4:26 How common is this “spaghetti code” and what defines it?   5:48 How Michal and his team have been able to conquer the problem of spaghetti code (code reviewing and initial perspective before writing code) and why spaghetti code is so prevalent in India.   9:43 Taking a project live versus maintaining it in the long run (version 1 versus version 3) and why this problem really comes down to agencies and their habits, both in cutting costs and also forcing developers to work obscenely long hours.   11:51 The most important parts of a code review, according to Michal, and going through the “SOLID Coding Principles” as a step by step guide. Michal uses an experience translating “Chinese Magento” to “Turkish Magento” to exemplify some of his points.   18:37 Are plug-ins really a good idea in Magento? What are the pros and cons? What about the “single responsibility principle”?   27:25 ORBA’s Magento 2 CodeGen tool, how it works and why it can be so helpful. Find it here.   Connect with Michal: LinkedIn   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter   Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

It’s Joseph and Jesse’s first podcast together in 2022 and they are absolutely stoked about it. January was a big month for SwiftOtter’s digital agency, and as developers all know very well, a “big month” means lots of difficult problems to solve and lessons to learn! Join Joseph and Jesse to talk about what they’ve learned recently.   1:37 Shopware’s $100M funding announcement, why competition right now is a great thing, and what Magento could add or modify to make sure they are demonstrating value as competition gets even stronger.   3:50 SwiftOtter’s 2022 Certification Challenge (takes place during the first quarter of every year) and how it’s better than ever this year, with the new collaborative study group meetings every other week. These study groups showcase exactly why becoming certified is an excellent way to grow your skills and prove them both!   6:54 Magento/Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 comes out on March 8th, 2022! Joseph has some holdbacks on how amazing it will be in the beginning..(hint: BUG THE MODULE VENDORS!) and even has a nice little rhyme to share.   9:28 Skilled problem solving: moving from “if” to “when”.   11:00 Jesse’s issue: customers adding products to the cart and getting a zero value. Taking advantage of recent pull requests to start the investigation. Flagging changes, thinking about what values should be returned, and having the willingness to do significant refactoring.   15:57 The 3 things that will influence behavior.   16:48 The art of identifying what areas are most likely to present a problem, and narrowing down options to reduce wasted time when debugging.   18:00 Another instance of Xdebug completely saving the day right before code needed to get to production, and the real life reason why looking at pull requests is so important.   23:00 Joseph’s pet peeve about running queries with your constructor.   24:13 Jesse’s thoughts about coding with future functionality in mind and how it actually improves code in the present. Naming, arrays, and grouping as many things together to do one single thing.   30:21 Another cart issue where the value came up as zero dollars - infinite loops, and adding breakpoints somewhat randomly with Xdebug to start a search.   Connect with Jesse: LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter   This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Leon Helmus has been around the block a few times. He’s gained a lot of experience with Magento 1 and Magento 2 in a relatively short amount of time, and with 6 Magento/Adobe certifications, he has very clearly validated his skills. Leon was happy to come share with us a few of the crazy circumstances he has worked through and the challenges he’s overcome in recent past.   SHOW NOTES 2:18 5 different parties connected with the same project. Using things like “feature environments”, how do you make sure good code gets into the staging environment with all of these 3rd party developers and complicated groups involved? 5:38 How does Leon’s CI Pipeline handle this kind of management and what tools are they using to keep things streamlined and smooth? 9:30 SwiftOtter’s Magento 2 driver which can be found here. 12:20 Testing, acceptance environments and production deployment without losing process continuation. 15:32 Feature branches to prevent bad code from getting to production. 19:00 Code reviews have been on Joseph’s mind a lot recently, but we haven’t talked about automating code review yet. How will that work and when will automated checks be performed? 25:07 Leon’s most important piece(s) of advice to give, based on his experience. -- Connect with Leon: LinkedIn Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter   Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

It’s Christmas week in America and Joseph’s got his Santa hat on! Grab a seat and let’s talk about what’s in the near future for us developers, going into 2022, and the “how”, “why” and “when” behind code refactoring.   SHOW NOTES   1:17 End of life for PHP 7.3, PHP 8 and the next version of Magento.   3:52 The new “Breeze” theme, which is supposed to be a high-performing Luma theme and compete against the new Hyvä themes.   5:32 Certification news: Adobe’s certification “refresh cycle”, all of the updates coming our way very soon, when SwiftOtter will have new materials ready, and if the new tests are looking easier or harder.   8:26 The new MacBook Pro - is it worth it? How fast is it and how does it change Magento development? Why is speed so important when you’re debugging, aside from the time aspect?   13:20 What really is “refactoring code”, why might you do it, and what should you be thinking about when you do it?   25:55 What happens when you get into a massive class, say it’s 500 lines of code, and you just can’t even figure out where to start?   28:15 Jesse shares the key aspects that he would be looking for, in respect to refactoring code. “Can I put this code in a single box that does one thing?” - Jesse   29:41 SwiftOtter’s increasing emphasis on understanding architecture and what actually goes into building things the right way.   Connect with Jesse: LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter   Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music!

Here we are! After getting hung up on the wonderful world of Hyvä themes and the amazing future in store for the Magento frontend, we’re finally back to talk about the Magento revolution. You might also call it the “Magento fork” or “The Mage-OS distribution”. Willem has much to say about where Magento might be in 3-5 years and how MOSCA's plan is moving forward. SHOW NOTES 1:30 Where will Magento be in 3 years, and why was the open letter written and published in September of 2021? Why are “microservices”, “SaaS” and “PWA” all sore spots for Willem? Why is Willem not ready to give up on the Monolith structure of Magento Open Source and why did they decide that the open letter was the right path to take to change? 8:55 What were the core intentions behind creating and maintaining a Magento Open Source clone? Is it more of a precautionary action to keep Adobe in check, or a hostile takeover? 12:15 How has the community responded to this movement and is that response changing as time goes on and the idea normalizes? 12:58 The Poland event in September, big names who showed up at the drop of a hat to talk about the future of Magento, and the history of where this whole idea really started (back when Ben Marks was involved). 14:58 Adobe’s initial response to their plans and how “fork” really wasn’t the right word to describe their plans. 16:33 The actual technological explanation of what the Mage-OS Distribution will look like, how it will be structured, and when the community might gain access to it. Willem gives us a peek behind the curtain on what needs to happen regarding funding, leadership and the logistical aspects of this startup. 21:14 Joseph asks Willem to step outside of the Magento community for a few minutes and talk about a few things from a truly objective perspective. Joseph brings up the great merchant exodus that we are seeing away from Magento, and asks Willem for his honest opinion on where Magento is at in its lifecycle. 29:17 Several months after the call for a Magento Open Source roadmap, Adobe came out and defined their roadmap, indicating that OS would only be getting maintenance fixes and security fixes in the future. Willem shares his opinion on what we can see from Adobe in the next 5 years and what our responsibilities might be to pick up their slack. 32:53 What conversations are taking place in the task force meetings regarding community and ongoing innovation. 39:01 Why the Magento community is so special, and why it’s a shame if Adobe doesn’t “celebrate and harvest that energy”. 41:41 How the market has changed in the last 5 years and where Magento is really positioned in the market at the moment, taking into account the Big Commerce and Shopify boom at that time. Check out Hyvä HERE Connect with Willem: LinkedIn Twitter Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating ecommerce developers around! [Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music]

Matt Sherer has been around PHP and Magento development for quite some time now. Having been a part of the Mediotype team before it was swallowed up into Blue Acorn iCi, he came to love the Magento community atmosphere and camaraderie present among eCommerce developers. He doesn’t get much time these days to interact with the community, which is one of the side effects of taking on the responsibility of a technical architect role at a thriving agency. We’re glad to have him on this show to share his experience with us and show us what it really looks like to transition from a senior developer into the responsibilities of an architect! SHOW NOTES 1:05 What does everyday life look like for a solutions architect at a major Magento agency? 3:16 To quote Matt, “you can’t get into Magento without challenges”, so sometimes it’s hard to find that one tough experience to share. Matt’s most recent difficulty centered around a merchant changing major plans at the last minute. We’ve all dealt with this before, but when it actually happens, it comes down to the architect to identify the changes, make sure everyone understands them completely, set expectations between all parties involved, organize a timeline and project the timeline/potential cost. 5:16 What are the practical differences between being a senior developer and an architect? Matt argues that it is primarily a “social role” and centers around “people management”, but of course it is much more complicated than those very simple descriptions. 8:10 How Matt believes a developer, architect or anyone in the Magento/eCommerce space can stay driven, creative and productive and defend against burnout (which he has faced). Joseph talks about reaching “critical mass” and how a decline into burnout is not a quick thing, but a slow process that can be identified before it becomes a huge problem. Matt’s former boss used to say “the last 10 percent is the hardest" (when running a Magento project). Connect with Matt: LinkedIn Connect with Joseph: LinkedIn Twitter Do YOU have an incredible debugging story to share? Send your story to [email protected] and you might be our next podcast guest! This podcast exists to inspire, educate and entertain eCommerce developers who are serious about improving their skills and advancing their careers! Have you joined the free SwiftOtter Slack community? It's exploding and we don't want you to miss out. Go to SwiftOtter.com/Slack to join for free and get plugged into what might be the best group of collaborating developers around! Special thanks to TrendingAudio for our awesome theme music