Tobias Schlitt - a passion for php

Next week the Dynamic Languages World conference (aka International PHP Conference Spring Edition) will be held in Karlsruhe, Germany. Nicole organized a Girl Geek Dinner right before the main events start (that means Monday evening). I really like the idea of Girl Geek Dinner, since it's a good attempt to raise the women rate on geek events, which is usually (sadly) extremly low. On the other hand I like to hang around, have some good meal, enjoy a beer and a good technical discussion. Therefore: +1 from my side for Girl Geek Dinner. :)

From May 26th to 28th this year Software & Support organizes a new conference called Dynamic Languages World. In contrast to the usual PHP Conference, which I usually attend, this conference tries to combine the communities around PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and JavaScript. I'm pretty curious about this kind of composite event and hope to get some cool new inspirations. Despite my interesst in those other languages and the concepts they have in terms of patterns, frameworks and application architecture/design, I'll be giving some talks in the PHP area:

• 6 essential PHP development tools in 60 minutes - A summary of 6 tools that every PHP developer should know of, including short introductions to installing and using those.
• Up-2-date: The State of eZ Components - During this session I'll give an overview on the current state of eZ Components, show some interessting new features and give an outlook on the upcoming version.
• Database Abstraction with eZ Components - While the previous talk shows eZ Components overall, this one will dig deeper into the facilities of database abstraction provided by eZ Components.
• Concepts vs. Flamewar - OOP in PHP, Ruby and Python - This title should tell you everything you need to know. ;)

I'm especially looking forward to the last session, which I'll be giving as a co-speaker for my good friend Carola Kummert (alias Sammy). We'll try to sum up the differences in the OO concepts of PHP, Ruby and Python and hope for some interessting discussion (and possibly flaming) in the attending crowd. Let's see how this concept of a talk turns out.

So far, so good. If you did not order your tickets for Dynamic Languages World, yet, take your heels and catch the early bird before March 27th. I'm sure this will be an interessting and productive conference! See you there! :)

Yesterday night I returned from the yearly International PHP Conference in Frankfurt. As usual this was an amazing event, because you get the chance to meet all those people in real live that you usually only talk to by mail and chat. I really like the ambiance in Mörfelden (where the Conference actually is, not far from Frankfurt), but as Lars stated, it's a good thing that IPC is only 4 days, since a lot of community members would need to detox from alcohol afterwards, if it was longer. ;) You see, we had some great party nights, again.

Beside the usually discussions and party, I attended some interessting sessions and hope that I also held some. My slides of the Hands on eZ Components workshop and the Webdav with eZ Components talk are online for you to download and should be online on the conference website soonish, too.

Now I definitly need some relaxing, so its good the weekend is right in front of the door. Looking forward to seeing you at the next conf, mates! Stay tuned.

A couple of weeks after the International PHP Conference Spring Editition, which was held in Ludwigsburg (near Stuttgart) - Germany -, I managed to upload the slides. Here you go:

• PHPotter - Doing magic with PHP
• eZ Components Roundup

While I have not been to any conference since last november, the time of the conferences seems to come again. So, here I go:

• May 5th and 6th: PHP Unconference Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. I'll be there to meet up with the German community and a lot of friends from Hamburg and all over Germany and to possible give some talks, if there is interesst. A large portion of the PHP Usergroup Dortmund will attend, too.
• May 21st to 23rd: International PHP Conference Spring Edition, Ludwigsburg, Germany. Kore and me will be giving 2 talks here and the usually meetup with the international PHP community will take place. I'm quite currious on how this new location will be. Our talks are:
  • The eZ Components roundup, an overview on the status of eZ Components (in German language).
  • PHPotter - Doing magic with PHP, some kind of suprise talk about lots of magic you can do in the PHP language (in English language).
• June 7th and 8th: eZ Conference & eZ Awards, Skien, Norway. This annual Open Source event at the eZ headquaters is one of my favorite events. Beside different talks about open source and CMS topics, there will be an exhibition and the eZ Awards show, which is a great evening event. I'll be giving a talk there, too:
  • eZ Components, a deeper look at the status of eZ Components (in English language).
• June 9th: PHP Vikinger, Skien, Norway. After the success of last year, the PHP Vikinger will again take place directly after the eZ Conference in Skien. This Unconference is especially nice, because of its nice environment (Norway is beautifull!). I'm sure a lot of the usual suspects will attend and we will have a great time!

So, if you are interessted, have any questions or just want to have a beer or 2 with the community, don't hesitate to join us on one of the conferences! :)

While I did not have a camera with me to this years International PHP Conference, I definitly saw lot's of flashes all of the conf. I wonder where all those photos have gone? Aaron already posted his on Flickr, but where is the rest?

If you have your photos online somewhere, please leave the link as a comment to this entry! Thanks! :)

During his keynote on the International PHP Conference 2006 Bray performed a little comparison between Java, Ruby (mainly Rails) and PHP. While I first thought, this could only be some dumb marketing stuff, the presentation was actually really good. Tim first introduced his comparison basis (Scaling, Dev Tools, Dev Speed and Maintainability) and explained his views on the 4 topics and which keywords he considers under each of them. This introduction was really good and well-founded. After that, he showed and explained a diagram to make the actual comparison:

While I agree on his views on Scaling and Dev Tools, I want to criticize the the other 2 points:

Dev Speed:

Surely Ruby on Rails is a fantastic framework, which allows extremely rapid development of web applications. Pure PHP is definitly slower. But while Rails is a Framework for Ruby, he did not consider frameworks for PHP in his exploration. There are lots of frameworks for PHP out there, which can do a lot for you, to rapidly create PHP applications. I never used Cake, but it seems to be quite far grown as a Rails implementation in PHP. Beside that, you have a lot of libraries and frameworks in PHP which follow a different approach than Rails does, but can also speed up your development drastically. Zend Framework, PEAR and not at last our own enterprise component library eZ components, to just name a few.

I think PHP should (almost?) be on the same level with Ruby here.

Maintainability:

There is a huge crowd of crappy PHP applications out there, no doubt here. But anyway, it is quite possible to write well-designed and easily maintainable applications in PHP, too. The reason I think so, is widely covered in the section above. We also have the fitting frameworks and there if you stick to certain paradigms, you can also write well maintainable PHP applications. For the reason that PHP does not force anyone to do this, we might still be behind Rails, but not as much is shown in the chart.

I am of the opinion that PHP and Java are quite equal in this point and are not that far behind Ruby.

But anyway, those maybe just my personal views on the topic and maybe I'm just biased by 6 years of PHP experience. In fact the keynote was really good and I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Tim for being there!

Kore and me just finished out talk "The eZ Components roundup" at the International PHP Conference 2006 in Frankfurt. You can find the slides at the PHP talks website.

The conference is (as usual) like a family meeting and I enjoy the time with all those PHP geeks. :)

After some conference-free time over the summer, I'll attend 2 conferences until the end of the year:

• Zend Expo San Francisco (USA), Oct. 18th - 21st
• International PHP conference Frankfurt (Germany), Nov. 6th - 9th

I'll give talks at both events. Especially interessting might be my workshop about "Distributing PHP applications with PEAR", where you can learn how to set up a PEAR channel server, how to package your application into the PEAR package format and how to distribute your applications through your own PEAR channel (usin the PEAR Installer 1.4.x). It'll take place on Sunday, November 6th at the Frankfurt conference.

I'm pretty much looking forward to seeing Frisco (I've only been once to the US by now, which was Atlanta in 1996) and to meeting all of you PHP geeks attending those conferences, too. :)

Via Zak:

Software & Support Verlag, the producer of internationally renowned conferences such as JAX, International PHP Conference, ApacheCon Europe and others, announces a new conference for the international Free Software/Open Source community:

Open Source Database Conference 05
November 7 to 9, 2005
Frankfurt, Germany

As some of you might have already realized, this conference is in parallel to the International PHP Conference and taking place in the same location. The schedule for the conf looks as follows:

• Open Source Database Conference 05: November 7 to 9, 2005
• Event location: NH-Hotel Frankfurt-Mörfelden
• Main conference: November 8 and 9, 2005
• Power workshops (tutorials): November 7, 2005

Software & Support is currently calling for papers, so if you are interessted in getting there and having a session, please provide your session abstracts here. Some more info on the sessions that should be provided:

• Duration of a session: 75 minutes
• Duration of a power workshop (whole day): ~ 6 hours
• Duration of a power workshop (half-day): ~ 3 hours
• Closing date: August 19, 2005

Sounds like a good extension of the MySQL conference they did last year in combination with the PHP Conference. So come on guys, take your heels and propose some interessting knowledge transfer! :)

The International PHP Conference 2005 Spring Edition in Amsterdam ended on Wednesday. As usual, it's been a great PHP event and meeting all those community members was really cool again. Sadly I had to leave on Wednesday noon, because of a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

What I really wonder about is, that until now, I did not find any