PHP Town Hall

Amanda Folson and Ben Edmunds are joined by Jessica Rose to discuss developer relations, travel, and bedbugs.

Amanda Folson officially takes the co-host reins! We ease you in to the transition by Ben grilling… ahem… interviewing Amanda a bit so you can get to know her better.

In this episode Ben and Phil discuss what’s new in their pathetic little lives, the state of the PHP-FIG, and bid an ecstatic.. ahem.. sad farewell to Phil as he departs the podcast. Starting with Episode 51 Amanda Folson will be taking over as co-host. Ben is staying so don’t worry, we know he’s your favorite.

Phil,

An all star cast this episode, as Ben and Phil are joined by regular guest Anthony Ferrara - thinker of good ideas and long-time part-time side-line contributor to the PHP-FIG, Woody Gilk - one-speed rider & BDFL of Kohana, and

Here we’re talking about some awesome stuff the PHP-FIG is working on: PSR-15 (HTTP Middleware). This PSR is in Draft mode, and is potentially not as well known about as some others. There was a bit of a cuffufle getting it started as before it had even passed an entrance vote there were alternatives and rewrites suggested, but now the major players are on the same page and things are moving forward.

We discuss all this, and the reason PSR-7 (HTTP Message) is not enough for the ecosystem to benefit from shareable middleware. Jumping away from PSR-15 for a second there is an interesting bit of insight into why the PHP-FIG didn’t just slap a “PSR” sticker on Symfony’s HTTP Kernel or HTTP Foundation.

Woody provides a bit of the decision-making process in a very tricky aspect of the FIGs job, which is: should standards be built entirely to match existing implementations, or should standards try to improve on the learnings of the existing implementations to better them all as implementations change to support the standard. It’s all a bit chicken and egg, but a very worthy discussion to have.

The notes for this episode were lost when Phil spilt some really hipster orange juice over his

In a future episode we’ll probably talk about data backup strategies.

User-group and meet-up organizer Jenny Wong swings by for a chat about the PHP RFC for a Code of Conduct.

Whilst all three of us think a Code of Conduct is a good idea, we talk through some of the various for and against reasoning that people have, and try to outline the logical failures behind some of the FUD being spread around during this discussion.

We cover a few things, from the intent of a Code of Conduct, explain it’s reach is not as scary as many seem to think, outline a few things that a Code of Conduct does not try to do, and talk about some of the problems minorities have at conferences and online which could be simplified over time with a useful CoC.

This is one of our best episodes yet. Even if you hate Phil and think he’s turned into some sort of social justice warrior white knighting whatever, listen to this and see if the conversation is starting to make more sense to you.

The goal here is to open a few minds, and bring people to the table so a useful conversation can be had, instead of the usual reaction to Code of Conducts which is immediate screaming into the keyboard, mashing out wall-o-text’s about freedom of speech, and assuming people are only interested in inclusivity to impress women…

We can make our community a better place, and Jenny has a few tips on how you can help with that goal.

Another SunshinePHP, and another rotating panel of excellent guests talking about stuff like podcasting, making a bit of money on the side from projects like books and whatnot, and we get some folks on to cover the FIG Secretary positions, which will hopefully help the FIG solve their identity problems.

Oh and Ben Marks was definitely talking about Magento again.

Ben and Phil have a little catch-up to try and get things back on track after a little 2015 lag. Basically this episode is just Sober Phil having a massive vent about how daft some people are on the Internet.

For some reason he accidentally read some /r/lolphp and got into an argument about how they think that PHP 7 is purely a cosmetic change. This was a good excuse to re-emphisize what an awesome set of fundamental changes PHP 7 really was.

Ben and Phil then discuss the FIGs identity crisis before Phil goes off on another ramble about that. We’ll cover that better on later episodes!

Live from PNWPHP ‘15, Ben and Phil are joined by guests Ben Marks, Yitzchok Willroth and later we are joined by returning guest Sara Golemon who popped in to talk about HHVM/Hack while Phil played waiter for the rest of the episode.

Ben talks about Magento and some of his conference traveling madness, as does Yitz, who got trapped in a hotel for a whole weekend due to some interesting combination of Jewish holidays and an argument over the interational date line in New Zealand. Phil also tells us all about his NZ speeding ticket, mowing down possums like it’s Carmageddon, and makes a few terrible jokes because he’s scarily sober.

Listen to API pros Amanda Folson and Mike Stowe talk about API versioning, RAML, and all sorts of interesting API stuff.

Phil ended up having a listen to this after the fact, and found it awesome! This episode is probably better for him not being there, as there are some opinions that didn’t initially match his, but they’re really interesting and make him reconsider a few things.