Article

The Future of PHP is … Here Already

Acquia Blog, September 2013
I had fun writing about the “new” features of PHP (everything from PHP 5.3 onwards, so not all that new!) for Acquia’s blog. Acquia are the company behind Drupal, which is just moving to require PHP 5.3 as a minimum, and I really wanted to get the message out to all those devs on PHP that there are some very nice features ahead!)

Article: https://www.acquia.com/blog/php-future-here-already

Slides

API Design

Hackference, August 2013
I’ve spoken in a number of different cities, in a number of different countries – and this time, I got to speak in my home town of Birmingham! The hackference was in its first year, and it was a great crowd; I really enjoyed giving my API design talk there and had some good discussions during the rest of the event about the points that I raised.

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Software Project Estimation Techniques

DayCamp4Developers, July 2013
It’s daycamp4developers time again! I was delighted that Cal reassured me that I hadn’t yet overstayed my welcome at this event and invited me to speak at this edition of the online conference. My topic was officially called “Software Project Estimation Techniques” but the talk was unofficially entitled “how late??”. It talked about why estimation is difficult, and introduced some processes to help teams of developers estimate and deliver more accurately.

Feedback:

Slides

REST for Web Developers

DrupalCon, May 2013
The DrupalCon version of this REST talk, showing off how the features of HTTP come together to create elegant and simple web APIs for data exchange between systems. Mostly HTTP theory with some GitHub examples included.

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Tools for Better PHP

php|tek 2013, May 2013
This talk aimed to show off some of the tools that support my PHP process, and that I hope will be helpful to anyone who sees the presentation. This includes, but is in no way limited to:

  • PHP Code Sniffer
  • PHP Documentor 2
  • Phing
  • Jenkins
  • Gearman
  • Supervisord

Feedback:

Slides

Upgrading PHP

php|tek 2013
PHP gets better and better all the time, 5.4 and 5.5 have really impressive features – but also improved security and performance. This presentation aimed to combine tastes of the features that were added in PHP 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 – but to combine these promises of a better life with practical advice on how to get from your current platform (whatever it is!) and catch up with the good stuff.

Feedback:

PS PHP 5.2 has been end of life for some years. Please upgrade!