What a great week.
I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people with whom I shared a common perspective on the development of software. Some of them stretched what I expect from myself as a developer and have helped me set new goals. Even though I only came knowing one person at the conference, it never felt like networking. It always felt like socializing.
One of my largest take-aways for the week was a general sense for the direction and increasing maturity of the PHP development community.
The community at php|tek is definitely a skewed sample of the PHP community as a whole. For one example, I’d venture a guess that you’ve got a higher concentration of developers who are considered leaders in the general PHP community. But that also makes it a great opportunity to observe trends in what principles, practices, and patterns of software development are being promoted.
Just to name a few of the great practices I heard being promoted:
- habitual automated testing
- scalable software architecture
- good object-oriented design
- accessibility and usability
- sane project management
A lot of the voices promoting these things can be heard in other channels such as magazines or books. But seeing the sessions covering these topics drawing so many attendees and filling up the rooms leaves me optimistic about the actual interest from the community.
So, I arrived unsure about the PHP community. I departed saying, “Count me in.”
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