Free the Geek.fm with Matthew Setter matthew@freethegeek.fm (FreetheGeek.fm with Matthew Setter)

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
ABAPSAPZend Framework 1 (now Laminas)PHP LondonPHP and MySQL Web Development (Developer's Library)LaravelGuest(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.
SupportIf 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 PHPIt's better if people worry less about the tool and more about testing conceptsThe people who write the best tests are also really talented programmers, because you can't be a shitty programmer and write good testsTesting is an intermediate skill. You have to know how code before you can write testsWhen approaching testing something, ask: "How would I manually do this?". Don't think about testing concepts or a framework straight awayIf 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 WordPressBill 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 patternPest PHPPHPUnitTest-Driven Development by Kent BeckRectorPHP's Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)NixOSMozillaThe RemoteOK.io threadLaravelGuests: 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.
SupportIf 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.

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