In this episode, I had a wonderful chat with fellow Australian and former expat, Nigel James, about his journey from SAP consulting to PHP, and what life was like as a consultant over so many years in London. Our time there overlapped, but we never met. We also talked about why PHP is still an excellent choice to develop with, how Laravel is a Marketing-lead development (and that that's not a good thing), and so much more.

So if you're keen to get into software consulting, or want to do better at it, tune in to hear from someone who's been doing it for years.

Some key takeaways are:

• Programming is simple: Sequence. Selection. Repetition.
• Almost regardless of your career path as a developer and your skills, you need to develop some business savvy.
• A great selling point for PHP (at least in the early days) was that you didn't have to pay Microsoft  for so much; this was one of my key motivations too, back in the PHP 3.x days.
• Are layoffs necessarily all bad, or can they actually be helpful?
• Are layoffs in tech truly necessary right now, or are they being made to satisfy investors?

Links

• ABAP
• SAP
• Zend Framework 1 (now Laminas)
• PHP London
• PHP and MySQL Web Development (Developer's Library)
• Laravel

Guest(s): Nigel James (@njames // phpc.social/@njames).

Hosted By: Matthew Setter.

Thanks for tuning in to Free the Geek. If you'd like to be a guest on the podcast or know someone who'd make a great guest, email me: matthew[at]matthewsetter.com. This podcast is produced by Matthew Setter for the Web Dev With Matt podcast network.

Support
If you want to support the show, you can always buy me a coffee. I'd greatly appreciate your financial support.

★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode, I had a long and winding discussion about software testing with the legendary Grumpy Programmer Chris Hartjes.

We talked about the importance of learning the essentials of software testing rather than focusing on a particular framework, as that makes your skills so much more transferable. We discussed how to approach testing; it's not a framework-first approach. And we also discussed the latest PHP testing framework, Pest PHP, covering what it brings to the table and whether people should just stick to older veterans, such as PHPUnit, or not.

Some key takeaways are:

• You should learn the essentials of testing first, and not a specific tool such as PHPUnit or Pest PHP
• It's better if people worry less about the tool and more about testing concepts
• The people who write the best tests are also really talented programmers, because you can't be a shitty programmer and write good tests
• Testing is an intermediate skill. You have to know how code before you can write tests
• When approaching testing something, ask: "How would I manually do this?". Don't think about testing concepts or a framework straight away
• If people would spend as much time learning the fundamentals (of testing), they'd see that their skills are transferable.
• Composer saved PHP. It kept PHP from just being the thing that runs WordPress
• Bill Joy on Linux and macOS: "Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It's a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.'

Links

• The Arrange, Act, Assert pattern
• Pest PHP
• PHPUnit
• Test-Driven Development by Kent Beck
• Rector
• PHP's Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
• NixOS
• Mozilla
• The RemoteOK.io thread
• Laravel

Guests: Chris Hartjes.

Hosted By: Matthew Setter.

Thanks for tuning in to Free the Geek. If you'd like to be a guest on the podcast or know someone who'd make a great guest, email me: matthew[at]matthewsetter.com. This podcast is produced by Matthew Setter for the Web Dev With Matt podcast network.

Support
If you want to support the show, you can always buy me a coffee. I'd greatly appreciate your financial support.

★ Support this podcast ★

Want to know about why Podman is a better choice than Docker? Then this episode is for you. Come and listen to Arne Blankerts explain why - in great detail.

Want a rollingly good chat about C-based languages, PHP, life in tech in Brisbane, Australia, and what it's like to keep up in tech? Then this is the episode for you. Darryl and I have a great conversation that I'm eager to share with you for these and so many more reasons.

Come listen to Doug Bierer share his years of experience and knowledge as a developer coding in Basic and Assembler, working with Novel & Dr DOS and Windows and MS-DOS, and so much more!

Come listen to Mihalis Tsoukalos share his wealth of knowledge about systems programming in C-based languages, what it takes to be a great developer, the importance of documenting your code, and so much more!

In this episode, very reminiscent of early episodes of the podcast, Oliver and I have a rip-roaring chat about so many common experiences as developers. From managing the bus factor, pair programming, preparing hand over information before going on holidays, to working remotely vs working in an office, this is a wonderful episode.

In this episode, Karl and I have an absolute blast of a conversation, one which got off to quite an unexpected roller-coaster beginning. We talk not specifically about any tech, as such, but rather on life and career, and how important it is to live and work with intention.

Come listen to this warm and friendly chat with Andreas Heigl about how to be a better public speaker, why some developers only work "9-to-5", and what it was like taking over an established user group (phpugffm).

Come listen to this warm chat with Andrey Breslav, the lead language designer of Kotlin at JetBrains. He shares his journey to becoming a professional software developer and how Kotlin came about.

Come listen to this rousing chat with Cal Evans, voice of the PHP community, talk about how to be a better communicator, which is an essential skill as a developer, plus fun things you can do with WordPress.

Come listen to Joel Clermont share the principles of effective learning, so that you can learn quicker and better than you do now. Joel was kind, generous, and charming during our fireside chat. I know you're going to get so much out of it.

In this episode, I talk with Stuart Herbert about so many great topics, including psychological safety, PRs before the term was coined, writing code used by organisations such as NASA and he Australian Weather Service, and loads more!

In this episode, Steve and I have a wonderful, warm chat about how he started streaming, what got him to use Laravel instead of Slim PHP, what it's like contributing to open source, and loads more!

In this episode, the first one of the new series, I chat with Matthew Turland about loads of things, including TypeScript, Functional Programming, and the Principle of Least Surprise.

In this episode, I give my five core tips for successfully working from home + a special bonus tip. If you're just starting out working from home, this is the episode for YOU!

In this episode, I talk with Stefan Koopmanschap about starting a software development company, conference speaking, running user groups plus loads more! Stefan shared a load of excellent advice in this warm, fireside chat.

In this episode, I talk with Matthew Turland about the effort involved in updating one of his technical books and programming in multiple languages (PHP and Ruby) plus loads more! Matthew shared a load of excellent advice in this warm, fireside chat.

In this episode, I talk with Matt Stauffer about how he started Tighten, how he got into Laravel, why he's such an active member of the community, what he looks for when hiring developers and loads more! Matt shared a load of excellent advice that you can start using today in your career.

In this episode, I have an extremely interesting, inspiring, but most of all educational chat with my mate Najaf Ali, founder of Happy Bear Software, about what it's like to go from being an independent software consultant and freelancer to running a software consulting business.