This is the third ‘social’ interview in a series with the phpDay 2012 speakers: it’s ‘social’ because the questions have been submitted and voted online on  Facebook.

We are happy to introduce you Jacopo Romei, an experienced PHP developer and agile coach.

He will give a session at phpDay called “Symfony CMF” Fri 18th May at 5 pm on track 2 and the workshop “Test Driven Development with Symfony2” Fri 18th May at 11 am on track 3.

Here’s her interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
Is it mainstream? Is it supported by a *huge* community? If it’s
exotic, does it feature something worth its exoticness? Is it *truly*
decoupled and not just packed down in procedures?
The hardest one: do I really need a framework? Often the answer is
“yes”, but “often” is never “always”.

What should i learn next?
To communicate. Never seen a project fail for a strictly technical
reason. Effective communication is a keypoint. Even good code is a way
to communicate and – you know? – it’s a way to communicate on the
human side of the project. PC would love assembly, so let’s remind we
write code for humans. :-)

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
I love it. “Maybe I’m amazed” of the way we keep teaching procedural
style first, then OOP and maybe, at last, functional paradigm. I was
lucky enough to be taught functional programming very early, among
fellow students complaining for those lectures. My default choice for
everyday development is OOP by the way.

Sheldon or Leonard?
Leonard. Sheldon is funny, but I’d kill him if it was true and closer
than 50m from me. :-)

Who’s your programming hero?
The open source community. If all the efforts and money now put
somewhere else in IT were put in the open source community, we would
live in a way better world. People cares too much about performance or
about design while if only we understood IT is the core of our next
future life, we wouldn’t give up the open source development model.
All in all Firefox made us free of Internet Explorer, not Chrome. ;-)
Who made the biggest step for a better life?

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
Pure dreamland OK? I’d love some easy way to compile my PHP libraries
into a PHP extension. I know something similar exists, but here I mean
*easy* as in “beer” ;-)

Who killed JFK?
Gabriella Golia.

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
4 vs. 1.5.
Though phpDay could feature a lower rate because of Spritz.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
Sharing behaviors horizontally among classes is something I love and
always strive for. I love traits concept and I’ve been waiting for
them so long. Now it’s time to get the fun out of them.

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?
This is the hardest one to answer. Duran Duran…

What do you like and what not about php?
I *hate* its syntax and all the boilerplate. E.g. I love python’s
enforced indentation.
I like PHP community and its broad mixed paradigm, going from lambda
functions to *mature* OOP.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Symfony CMF, definitely.
Arduino is also taking some mind-share of mine.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
Never. I don’t overprogram, I hate overtime. I want my life to be
healthy and doing too much of one thing is unhealthy.
Conferences on the other hand are a nice excuse to share some time
travelling together.

Suggest a book to read.
“The Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb.
“Pro PHP Refactoring” by Francesco Trucchia and
Jacopo Romei

You can reach Jacopo on twitter(@jacoporomei) and on his italian and english blog.