We are happy to introduce you David Buchmann. He is one of the core developers of the Jackalope implementation of PHPCR and he works hard to make the Symfony Content   Management Framework happen.

He will give a session at phpDay called “Step By Step: Making a website fly with Assetic, Varnish and ESI”  Friday 18th May at 2:30 pm on track 3.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
* how long is the project supposed to stay on line?
* which tools does my team already know?
* is this more a project with standard cases and some customization (we want a feature-rich framework and customize it) or is it highly custom (we take a lower level framework and build custom things on top of it)

What should I learn next?
The Symfony2 SonataAdminBundle

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
I had courses on scheme at university, but its darn hard to really think functional. just passing around callbacks and having closures is not functional programming.

Who’s your programming hero?
Fabien Potentier

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
More documentation for the chapters that lack documentation.

Who killed JFK?
Not me :->

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
Interesting idea but I have yet to try them out.

What do you like and what not about php?
The weak typing and no compilers make it so fast do develop. it is made for the web. the language is really maturing and getting rid (or at least deprecating) stupid things.
There are great frameworks like Symfony2 evolving, without getting the bloatedness of the java world.
What I like less is the inconsistency in basic methods names or parameter order.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Symfony2, Jackalope.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
Nah, she is happy to have somebody who can not only fix her computer but also create her a homepage :-)

Suggest a book to read.
David Brin – Postman.
Or did you mean a tech book? I have not red any printed tech book last year, it’s all in the internets :-)

You can find David on twitter (@dbu) .

 We are happy to introduce you Giorgio Sironi, a freelance PHP developer and PHPUnit_Selenium mantainer.

He will give a session at phpDay called “What they didn’t tell you about object programming in PHP”  Friday 18th May at 11:00 am on track 1.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
Community, documentation, training of my colleagues, and whether I should not use a framework for this project.

What should I learn next?
Some economics and theory of constraints.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
Keep an eye on it – functional languages like Erlang do not only “solve” the problem of concurrency but also that of distribution.

Sheldon or Leonard?
I think that the characters have undergone a progressive Flanderization towards the absurd, due to many filler episodes and an emphasis on product placement instead of geek culture and plot (Sheldon-style response).

Who’s your programming hero?
The one that doesn’t work overtime. Or Alan Kay.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
Scala case classes, native PSR-0 autoloading and scalar type hints.

Who killed JFK?
I feel there is already too much an American domination in our culture to allocate time to this question.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
Like inheritance, sometimes useful and easily abused.

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?
I was born in ’88. Who are these people? :)

What do you like and what not about php?
I like the ease of deployment, hosting support and dynamic typing. I do not like the kitchen-sink let’s-add-goto and makeCoffee() development model and the focus on procedural programming of the native extensions.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
PHPUnit and related projects due to my focus on testing as executable specification.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
It did, but I think I have a balance now.

Suggest a book to read.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

You can find Giorgio on twitter (@giorgiosironi) or on his blog.

 We are happy to introduce you Stefano Mainardi, a senior PHP developer and Twinbit project manager and ILDN – Italian Linux Distribution Network  - founder.

He will give a session at phpDay called “Mobile Drupal“ Friday 18th May at 12:00 am on track 1.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
The first thing I check is if the name begins with “Dru” and ends with “Pal”. After this bad joke, the three things I consider essential for a good framework are: community, documentation and feedback from other developers.

What should i learn next?
Have you heard of Symfony and Drupal 8? :-)
From the human side, speaking in public is something that every good developer should be able to do, if you have ever done, perhaps it’s time to give it a try.
Finally find more effective techniques for managing your time.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
Before answering this question I should ask for a consultation at my law firm

Sheldon or Leonard?
I’m not a big fan, or rather I never had the time to be. I saw a couple of episodes, but I would say that Sheldon is the perfect revenge of any nerds of this planet

Who’s your programming hero?
Usually my brother. Ok, seriously, I have no heroes, in the strictest sense of the word. All people who contribute every day to create models of freedom for pure spirit of sharing are my undisputed hero.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
A native compiler like HipHop from Facebook

Who killed JFK?
Leland Palmer

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
Whenever I have the perfect algorithm to share with the world, I drink more beer than ever that makes me forget everything.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
A great leap forward.

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?
This is the perfect scenario of the failing question selection algorithm.

What do you like and what not about php?
I love the community, but do not like the lack of self criticism.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Come on, should I really say that again? :P

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
No, she always believed I was some kind of genius, and it’s nice to make her believe that. I am also leaving an aura of mystery into believing that I have superpowers that I never revealed

Suggest a book to read.
I suggest you to contact Jacopo Romei (@jacoporomei) and ask him what’s the next book to read: he has a foolproof algorithm.

You can find Stefano on twitter (@stefanomainardi) and on his blog.

 We are happy to introduce you Jordi Boggiano,  the author of a few open source apps/libs (Composer, Monolog, php-console etc.), and frequent contributor to other OSS projects (Symfony2, Twig and others).

He will give a session at phpDay called “Dependency Management with Composer”  Saturday 19th May at 15:30 pm on track 1.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
Usually the expected project duration is the main factor. If it’s going to have to be maintained for the next 5 years, unless it’s really really simple, I generally start with Symfony. Otherwise Silex for simple/short-term projects. Obviously that’s based on my personal knowledge, and it does not apply to everyone.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
Answering this question would not be without side effects.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
Native Unicode support.

Who killed JFK?
Who voted for questions like this? In both cases, I guess sometimes it’s best if we don’t know the answer :)

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
Given $now and $start being unix timestamp, this should draw an accurate function of beer bottles per hour:

$attendees * 9 / M_PI * 2000 * (1.5 / min(3600*3, $now – $start))

You can try to make a chart out of it as an exercise ;)

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Composer because I spend most of my free time working on it lately. The
rest is mostly piling up unread notifications on github.

Suggest a book to read.
If you like spaceships and sci-fi, the Hyperion Cantos is great.

You can find Jordi on twitter (@seldaek) or on nelm.io page.

This is the fifth ‘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 Thijs Feryn, an evangelist at Combell, the number one Belgian hoster, he supports communities and has a particular love for the PHP   community.

He will give a session at phpDay called “CLI, the other SAPI”  Saturday 19th May at 14:30 pm on track 3.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
The learning curve is important, but also if you’re looking for components or a more full-stack implementation.

What should i learn next?
Learn C and contribute to PHP. I should start doing that myself, but haven’t yet. Try to learn about Devops, it’s interesting material.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
Methods are functions too… so learn the functional stuff and apply it to OO if possible.

Sheldon or Leonard?
Who?

Who’s your programming hero?
I’m not that geeky to have one.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
The possibility to pre-compile PHP apps/files either in a compiled phar format or just as compiled php files.

Who killed JFK?
Your mom (sorry for that). Euhhmmm … the US government … I don’t know.

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
I don’t even drink alcohol.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
I kinda like it.

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?
Slayer!!!

What do you like and what not about php?
I love the PHP community, but PHP as a language could be more ambitious.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Varnish, Nginx, Zend Framework, PHP itself.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
No but the fact that I go to conferences all the time did.

Suggest a book to read.
Evolution of a cro-magnon by John Joseph.

You can find Thijs on twitter @ThijsFeryn
 

 We are happy to introduce you Lukas Smith, an experienced PHP developer, he spends most of his time playing with Symfony2 as well as pushing the PHPCR ecosystem.

He will give a session at phpDay called “PHPCR – PHP Content Repository Specification” Friday 18th May at 5:30 pm on track 2.

The Interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
As I work in a web agency, the main criteria is does it cover the common use cases. Does it do this in a way that facilitates code reuse and testing?
Furthermore how strong is the community in producing quality extensions and supporting each other?

What should i learn next?
PHPCR :)

What are your throughts about functional programming?
Its been a while since I have taken a serious look at functional programming. Back in University we learned Opal. I loved the beauty of the final solutions, but dreaded refactoring.

Who’s your programming hero?
My father. I still remember when we got this weird Apricot computer and he wrote an english word trainer in Basic. I “played” with it all day :)

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
Getting interfaces for common stuff like caching, logging, http request/response etc.

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
0.0

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
I would have preferred Grafts (https://wiki.php.net/rfc/horizontalreuse#grafts_-_class_composition_not_implemented)
We still have a lot of learning to do, but it has the potential of becoming a very significant tool for PHP developers.

What do you like and what not about php?
I like that so far I never felt that a problem I needed to solve required me to program in another language.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Symfony2 and PHPCR .. though I guess these days also Drupal, despite having never used it, let alone installed it :)

Suggest a book to read.
I know SQL is not hip these days, but “SQL Performance Tuning” by Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer was probably the most important book for my career. I learned so much, which gave me the confidence to really step up and from there I was able to grow my knowledge in every direction I needed to go.

You can reach Lukas on twitter(@lsmith) and on his blog.

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.

We are happy to introduce you Stefan Koopmanschap (@skoop), co-founder of PHPBenelux, now active in the PFZ.nl events team , symfony community manager.

He will give a session at phpDay called “A Practical Look At Symfony2” Saturday  May 19th at 12 am on track 1.

The interview:

Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
Many things. Of course the project. Not every framework fits every project. Also, who will be working on it? The team determines much of the choice. If you prefer Symfony2, but your team has extensive Zend Framework knowledge, a project that is on a tight deadline will not be the right project to make the switch to Symfony2.

What should i learn next?
Everything! ;)
This really depends on what you’re working on, and what problems you need to solve. I’ve recently been looking a lot into Composer, as it solves a problem (dependency management) that I encounter in many projects. I’ve also been digging into Cilex, a CLI application framework, as I need to write some CLI processing applications. So, look at what you’re working on, and try to predict what the next thing will be that you need. If you can not figure something out, just look at what technology looks interesting, and pick something.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
It has it’s place, but it’s still used in too many places where OO would be a better fit.

Sheldon or Leonard?
Oh man, a nearly impossible choice! I’ll go for Sheldon, but I couldn’t tell you why.

Who’s your programming hero?
Oh wow. Programming hero? This is a tough one. I really respect a lot of developers, but I don’t really idolize anyone (which is what the word “hero” seems to imply). But to pick a few that I really respect a lot: Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Fabien Potencier and Mike van Riel. What they do for Open Source and PHP is priceless.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
I would love to see a bit of a clean-up. More consistency (needle/haystack anyone) and predictability. However, I know this won’t happen. It breaks too much BC, and most people seem to agree that the current way works well enough.

Who killed JFK?
It must’ve been Brain, with a little help from Pinky

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
Depends on the conference and the people that are present. Mine is probably quite low, but I know enough people that have quite a high beer per hour factor at conferences.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
I honestly haven’t used it, haven’t needed to use it. And I usually start understanding new features once I’ve found a use for them.

Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?
Duran Duran

What do you like and what not about php?
It gets the job done quickly, and it has the most awesome community. And there are so many cool open source tools available that make life so much easier. What I like less is the earlier mentioned inconsistency, and the flamewars that sometimes occur in the PHP community or between different frameworks.

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Symfony2, obviously. Silex. Cilex, I’m starting to dig into Phing a bit. Composer. PHPDocumentor of course. And many more.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
Hm, not my love for programming, but perhaps my love for attending/speaking at conferences. Being away from home so much can be hard on the family. Not just my wife, but also my kids. I’m not doing as many conferences anymore that I did last year. I actually wrote something about that in my PHP|Architect community column in December. Oh, and I’m bringing my wife to Verona :)

Suggest a book to read.
I’ve recently started reading “The Thoughtworks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation”, by a variety of Thoughtworks employees. So far, I’m really liking it and learning a lot of stuff from it.

You can reach Stefan on twitter(@skoop) and on his blog.

We are happy to introduce you Lorna Jane, an experienced PHP consultant, developer,  trainer and leading the joind.in open source project.

She will give a session at phpDay called “Best Practice In API Design” Fri 18th May at 11 am on track 2.

Here’s her interview:

 Things that you consider before choosing a framework for a project?
Whether I’ve used it before, how good their documentation is, how good
their community is, and whether anyone would recommend this tool to
me.  Bonus points if I know the main developer(s) and am confident I
can get help if I need it!

What should I learn next?
Ask yourself this question after a conference; we come together and
get exposed to so many new ideas.  Pick the one that you’re still
thinking about two days later, not the one that you “ought” to be
doing next.  Our passion is what makes us who we are – so follow
yours.

What are your thoughts about functional programming?
Love it and will still write code this way if I’m doing something that
does have a beginning, a middle, and an end!

Who’s your programming hero?
How could I choose just one??  The people I look up to the most are
the people who have taken the time to look down to me, and help me
take one more step towards where I am today and where I will be in the
future.  Not just those that have interacted with me directly, but
also people whose blogs I’ve read, whose books I have, and whose talks
I’ve seen.

What features would you like to see in the next PHP version?
I’m pretty happy with PHP right now, but I’m excited about the
improvements on pecl_http and the suggestion that it might be in core
one day.

What’s the average beer per hour factor during conferences and a normal hangout?
I’m pretty consistent about my beer intake, regardless of what kind of
event I’m at.

What do you think about php 5.4 traits?
I think they’re a great feature but lots of the explanations of traits
that I’ve seen make them seem complicated.  I’m sure as more people
start to use them, we’ll understand them better as a whole community.

What do you like and what not about php?
I love how anyone can get started, but some days I hate that anyone
can get started!

Which opensource projects are you following the most?
Actually I’m leading one, joind.in!  I have been watching the Symfony
2 and ZF2 framework projects too, and I love the new PHPDocumentor2
project.

Did your love for programming cause you some troubles with your partner?
Actually my husband Kevin introduced me to programming and taught me a
lot, you can meet him at phpDay :)

Suggest a book to read.
I’m totally biased of course but you could always read my new book
“PHP Master”, co-authored with Davey Shafik and Matt Turland.

You can find Lorna on twitter (@lornajane) or on her blog.