Marian Pop

Marian Pop is a PHP / Laravel Developer based in Transylvania. He writes and maintains LaravelMagazine.com and hosts “The Laravel Magazine Podcast”.

twitter: @mvpopuk

Articles

Understanding PHP Classes Visibility, Constructors, and Modern Features

By Marian Pop

Classes are everywhere in modern PHP. You use them constantly, extending controllers, creating models, and building services. But there’s a difference between using classes and understanding them. When should a method be private versus public? What does `final` actually prevent? Why would you use `readonly`? These decisions shape how maintainable your code becomes. by Marian Pop

Published in Wanted: PHP Developers, January 2026

Artisan Way: Refactor to Enums in Laravel

By Marian Pop

You can create a custom type that is limited to one of a discrete number of potential values by using enumerations, sometimes known as “Enums.” Because it allows for “making incorrect states unrepresentable,” this is particularly useful when constructing a domain model. by Marian Pop

Published in Database Freedom, July 2022

Laravel: Pest Control

By Marian Pop

PEST is a PHP testing framework built on top of PHPUnit that offers a functional approach to writing tests, eliminating as much boilerplate as possible and focusing on the tests themselves. It was created by Nuno Maduro (Laravel Core Team member) in 2020, and since then, it has had 1.6M downloads. by Marian Pop

Published in One Last Slice, May 2022