PHP Architect Podcasts

In Episode 30

In this episode, we dive into How Magento is Evolving and chat with Magento evangelist Ben Marks.

Topics

* The free magazine issue courtesy of Adobe and Magento.

* An interview with Ben Marks on how Magento went from an open-source project to its acquisition, the value of the community and ecosystem, how Magento 2 changed the landscape, how to get started working with the platform, and the future.

* Approaches for updating legacy codebases.

* Using asynchronous processes.

* How stepping away can help you when you’re stuck on a problem.

* Options for setting up development environments for a project.

* What exactly the term “Enterprise Software” means.

In Episode 29

In the February episode, we dive into the issue Cultivating the Developer Experience and interview Jennifer Schrader.

Topics

* Benefits of structuring code reviews.

* The value of integration and functional tests.

* Content management systems in PHP

* Sulu CMS and its focus on Developer Experience (DX)

* Jennifer talks about her experiences trying out pair programming and working with PHP.

* TLS certificates and encryption with Lets Encrypt.

* Technical Debt, Y2K, and upcoming Unix timestamp bugs.

* Project Estimates and Costs.

* Interviewing and hiring programmers.

* Oscar’s editorials

In Episode 28

In this episode for January 2020, we take a look at this month’s issue “New Habits.” This month we’re joined by php[architect] book and magazine author Matthew Turland.

Topics

* Using (or not) PHP arrays to write cleaner code.

* Learning how browsers render HTML+CSS

* Talking about writing object-oriented code with Matthew Turland, updating his Web Scraping book, speaking at conferences, and his involvement in the PHP community.

* Confessing our security sins

* The Whys and Hows of Testing

* Working with Ansible to configure servers and the value of documenting your infrastructure.

* Arizona PHP and user groups in general.

* Certifications in the tech industry

In Episode 27

For December 2019, we take a look at this month’s issue “Expedition PHP.” Our guest this month is Michael Akopov.

Topics

* php[tek] Call for Speakers and tips for submitting your talks.

* Migrating to a new framework.

* Mental health in technology.

* Why and how you can contribute to Open Source.

* Understanding how encryption ciphers works.

* A real-life example of how thinking like a computer helps to understand a bug.

* An interview with Michael Akopov about his background and diving into using serverless applications with Laravel Vapor.

* Further discussions about understanding and using the Dependency Injection pattern.

In Episode 26

Just before the Thanksgiving holidays in the United States, we reviewed the November 2019 issue “Object Orientation.”

Topics

* Evolution of object-oriented programing in PHP and understanding how to use objects effectively.

* Avoiding career stagnation and networking at conferences and user groups.

* PHP 7.4’s release and what features we’re looking forwards to.

* Eric becomes the new Community Corner contributor.

* Chatting about building PHP extensions and CouchDB with Lochemem Bruno Michael.

* Thinking like a computer (sometimes too much?) and the value of abstractions.

* Understanding Dependency Injection and how to get it to “click.”

* The value of frameworks versus “plain” PHP.

In Episode 25

Our crew sat down and snagged some interviews in the atrium at php[world] in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. This episode packs a lot into one hour and 13 minutes.

Topics

* Practical static analysis tools like Psalm and PHPStan and moving away from DocBlocks to using native PHP 7 type hints.

* John reflects on how his first talk went and the keys to giving a good talk.

* Cal Evans on php[world], the breadth of the PHP community, new stuff in PHP 7.4, searching for PHP related information online, and his new role with SiteGround.

* Taylor Otwell discusses how Laravel started, what’s new in Laravel 6, the potential impact of PHP 7’s JIT compiler, focusing on open-source and educational efforts in 2020, and funding open-source work.

* Gary Hockin goes over his advice in Community Corner about getting started in public speaking, how speaking at conferences can impact your career, and how to choose talk topics.

* Samantha Quiñones chats about her keynote at php[world], the history of computing, COBOL, preparing talks, PHP’s strength as a web-first language, and working at SkillShare.

In Episode 24

Eric, John, and Oscar discuss some of the articles in the September 2019 issue “Master of Puppets”.

Topics

* History of PHP, celebrating “25 Years of PHP”, and the Impact Awards at php[world]

* Using Puphpeteer to automate Chromium browser tasks and testing.

* Code style, and refactoring legacy code.

* Code editors from VIM (and why Eric thinks everyone must learn it) to PHPStorm and Visual Studio Code.

* Promoting speaker diversity at conferences.

* Joe Ferguson joins to chat about generating PDFs with PHP, networking via user groups and conferences, migrating to Laravel 6, Homestead, and Open Sourcing Mental Illness (osmi.org).

In Episode 23

Eric, John, and Oscar go through the August 2019 issue.

Topics

* Getting started with Symfony 4

* Managing legacy codebases

* PHP++ and the future of PHP

* Karl Hughes talks about running the Chicago PHP User Group.

* Writing better object-oriented code

In Episode 22

Eric, John, and Oscar talk about the July 2019 issue and this year’s php[world].

Topics

* John’s talks at php[world] in the fall and a few tips for preparing and rehearsing new talks.

* Getting started with Elasticsearch and working with specialized search solutions.

* Defensive coding practices and defending against insider threats.

* Maura Teal about her upcoming talk on WordPress Under Pressure: Tales of Sites at Scale, learning to program from her parents, WordPress’ reputation, and scaling large multi-site installs.

* Local development environments with Docker, Devilbox, as well as Amazon Linux.

* Preventing burn out with advice from Community Corner.

* WordPress, PHP, and semantic versioning.

In Episode 21

Eric, John, and Oscar are back post-php[tek] to discuss the June 2019 issue.

Topics

* John and Oscar mention what they liked from speakers and sponsors at php[tek].

* Eric’s experience with serverless application performance and thinking about when and where to use it.

* A functional approach to taming arrays with PHP’s built-in functions for map, reduce, sort, and filter.

* Memoization and how you might already have used it to speed up function calls.

* Managing keys, secrets, and passwords securely.

* Chris Tankersley joins the episode to talk about writing for php[architect], going to conferences, and dives into the Data Structures extension he covered in this issue.