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.