Pro PHP NYC
PHP has changed a lot recently, and deserves some respect. Kenny and I have thought a lot since CICON about the need for a quality PHP group in New York.
As of tonight, I’m excited to say — you can sign up for Pro PHP NYC and get in on one.
This isn’t a typical PHP meetup group. This group is for people writing real web code in PHP. Not people giving it a crappy name with single-file spaghetti code, but real engineers.
If this suits you, sign up — we’ve got some amazing events coming up!
Rasmus and I
There I am with Rasmus, the creator of PHP..
I went to a talk tonight by Rasmus at the Etsy headquarters in Brooklyn. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him speak, but it is the first time I’ve heard him tell his/PHP’s backstory.
The thing that really struck me was his description of how PHP wasn’t really made to be a programming language in the sense that we use it today. This is really central to his common criticism of frameworks (which is often seen as crotchety).
The problem is (as he laid out), you build this templating language, and then people say: “what is the harm of adding if/else”. Once you oblige, everything breaks down:
- If we have
if/else, why not addswitchstatements? - If we have
switch, why are there no functions? I’m constantly repeating things! - If there are functions, why are there no classes? Other things have classes!
- Where are closures?!? Namespaces!?
Rasmus is put in a position where, regardless of what he thinks PHP should be, PHP being the most popular web programming language has forced him to make concessions to benefit a community whose use isn’t his own anymore.
Its an amazing position to be in, that I didn’t understand until tonight. An entirely new level of respect and appreciation.
CICONF London Talk
A few days ago, my talk got posted for ciconf in London. This year, I’ll be talking about the state of testing in CodeIgniter.
As the blurb says, we all know we should be testing our applications and libraries, but its not very straightforward to get things set up. Also, sometimes CI can put in you in an awkward place where unit testing seems just downright nasty.
Things I hope to cover:
- Getting things set up
- An overview and comparison of PHPUnit
- Library and Helper Testing
- Model Testing
- Handling external requests in Tests
- Controller Testing
- View Testing
- Unit vs integration tests
- Some tools to measure effectiveness
It should be a good talk, with some great discussion — so if you’re going to the conference be sure to stop by!
PHP in London
A few days ago, I wrote a post about how excited I was to be going to CICONF in London. Now, even cooler news — I’ll be speaking at the conference! I have to mention again, I’m super excited for the trip, for the conference, for the discussions, for the beer.
Find me in London, and I’ll buy you a beer. Ask me anything about Sparks, CodeIgniter Reactor, or PHP. See you there!
CICONF London
A little over a month from now (feb. 15-22) I’ll be headed to foggy London town for a week of ESBs and Savoury Pies. If all goes right, I’ll come back with an accent, and randomly start inserting the letter U into words where it doesn’t belong. Luckily, in preparation, last time Phil Sturgeon came over, I had him teach me some proper English (see: this Austin Powers clip while we practiced drinking IPAs.
Of course – for part of my stay, I’ll be at CICONF London. If its anything like CICON NYC (note to the spelling difference), it’ll be a great time, with some fantastic people talking code.
Hope to see you all there!