Conference: php[world] 2019

I spent last week outside Washington D.C. at php[world] 2019. It was the first PHP specific conference I have been to and it was great. I attended the whole day workshop on testing in PHP and learned a ton. If you get a chance to attend one of Steve Grunwell’s presentations it’s definitely worth your time. He mentioned he will be presenting a similar talk at WordCamp US later this week. If you are attending, be sure to check it out: https://2019.us.wordcamp.org/session/confidently-testing-wordpress/.

The next two days were the standard hour-long presentations on various topics. Some of my favorites:

(Note: I will add links to the videos when they become publicly available.)

It is also the 25th anniversary of PHP as a language and there was a lot of talk about why and how PHP got where it is. There was a shared proudness that PHP came about not as a well-planned exercise in computer science. Instead, it was as a community of people just trying to get things done. That is why you will find things like mismatched naming conventions and duplicated functionality. While PHP gets complaints about those things today, it also is the defining reason it is so popular. It was a really interesting perspective on the evolution of a programming language over time.

I do have to say that the area where I stayed was a bit disappointing. Just a lot of chain restaurants and not much to do nearby. Having said that, I stopped by the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center by the airport before I flew out and it was amazing! I had never heard of it before, but it is a hangar by the Dulles airport that is part of the National Air and Space Museum. I left myself an hour and wish I had more time there. It was huge, there were over 200 planes including an SR-71 Blackbird and a Concorde. Oh yeah, and you could walk right up to the Discovery shuttle! (See header image) It was free and definitely worth your time if you are nearby.

Overall, it was a really good conference. I also learned that there is a similar conference in February called SunshinePHP held in Florida. As one of the Michiganders looking outside my window today and seeing the first snowfall, I kind of wish I had chosen that one instead…

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