Two Talks at php[tek] 2024

I’m way behind on posting about this, but php[tek] 2024 is just around the corner this April in Chicago. I’ll be giving two talks this year, and have a referral code that will save you $50 on your ticket!

Building for the PHP Command Line Interface

I love writing PHP CLI commands, and I love giving this talk. I’ve been waiting for a reason to refresh it.

Executing PHP from the command line enables us to interact with our applications in new and interesting ways: from performing site maintenance to scaffolding new projects, CLI tools like WP-CLI, Artisan, and Symfony’s Console component make it easy to interface with our code without ever opening a browser.

Attendees will be introduced to popular PHP CLI tools and their default capabilities. We’ll discuss characteristics of good CLI scripts, strong use-cases for writing custom commands, then write several CLI programs across different platforms.

Up to my Eyeballs in Technical Debt!

This talk is especially apt given the work I’ve been doing lately (upgrading a 20+ year old PHP monolith to run on the latest versions of the language), so I have all sorts of new experiences and insights to share.

Every decision we make in our projects has the potential to increase or reduce technical debt. While the only way to completely eliminate the debt is to never write any code, there are steps that we as engineers, project managers, and project stakeholders can take to mitigate our risk.

This talk covers the concept of technical debt, its potential to devastate projects, and red flags that project teams can look for to reduce its impact before it spirals out of control.