Preface

Have you ever been to a PHP conference? If not, I’d highly recommend it, it is the closest you can get to a living and breathing PHP community. A few weeks ago, I flew from London to St. Louis, Misouri, to speak at php[tek] (the PHP conference run by php[architect]). After the conference, there was a small tradition within the PHP community known as WurstCon. Essentially, hundreds of PHP conference attendees cram themselves into a small hot dog shop and host a hot dog convention, often to the complete surprise of the staff there. Likewise, community nights at PHP events are the warmest and most accepting community occasions you’ll ever run into; the PHP community is surely one that other development language communities envy.

As of PHP 7, the PHP project has changed dramatically; but what I love, remains strong. The warmth you will feel at any PHP conference, the openness in the documentation, and adoption in the language. Yes, there are practices that are undoubtedly bad within PHP itself; however, think of what the PHP community has recently achieved, ranging from PHPUnit to Composer. Throughout this book, bear in mind the improvements in PHP 7, a few of which I’ll share with you. The trajectory of the project is now certainly upwards, and let’s not forget that this wasn’t always true. The PHP community has learned its lessons from the past, whilst the language maintains the flexibility to write what is bad.

This book will seek to impart strong software engineering skills to you with the focus on implementing them in PHP. At the time of publishing this book, there is a certain void and a necessity for this kind of material. This book seeks to be the lighthouse that will not only demonstrate software design theory, but also seek to impart practical information of real value to improve the quality and maintainability of the code you write. This book leaves no stone unturned throughout the software development cycle and will seek to confront the reasons as to why the majority of software projects fail whilst also addressing design, redesign, and safeguard effective code.

This book goes beyond traditional design patterns as envisaged by the Gang of Four and details the practices that passionate PHP developers need to be successful as software engineers or leads on detailed PHP projects. This book will introduce you to the core knowledge required to understand project management techniques, why the majority software development projects fail, and why you can make yours a success.

Originally, I gave thought to writing a book on PHP when Mandi Rose, who I worked with previously, suggested I put together a book on the practices I’ve learned with PHP. Needless to say, at the time that suggestion was made, the best of my career was undoubtedly ahead of me; when the opportunity actually arose to write something like this, I felt I had learned dramatically more as time progressed. By no means should you see this book as the be-all and end-all of PHP practices; instead, you should use it to increase your knowledge base on PHP, but by no means limit it to this. In this book, I aim to give something, however small, back to the PHP community; after reading this book, I would encourage you to get stuck in and share what you’ve learned with others.

Later in this book, I will advocate Extreme Programming as a methodology and courage as a key value of this methodology. I will ask you to bear in mind the explanation of courage in The Values of Extreme Programming: “We will tell the truth about progress and estimates. We don't document excuses for failure because we plan to succeed. We don't fear anything because no one ever works alone. We will adapt to changes whenever they happen.” This is, of course, some key advice we should all follow and seek to genuinely understand risks instead of cowering behind them. For many of us, the code we write during parts of our career is the highest expression of our labor. Indeed, the late nights turning into early mornings we spend debugging and developing are what ultimately allow us to demonstrate the fruits of our labor. In essence, as software engineers, the code we write defines who we are, as such we should be open to constantly refining and refactoring our processes, which is what this book aims to support you in doing. I am incredibly honored that you chose to allow me to help you to reach this end.