Month: February 2015

A Promise

There were some very inspiring keynotes and talks at php uk 2015 which lead me to catch up with many of the speakers. I’ve been a member of the php community since 2008 although my involvement has been very on and off. I’ve a few years worth of experience since then and it’s certainly time I gave something back; so I have made a promise, to Jenny (@miss_jwo), to the php uk community and to you – in the next year I will give at least one public talk.

I have too many ideas to know what the topic will be but:

  • it will be tech related,
  • it will most likely involve php,
  • it will possibly be rubbish but
  • it will be given.

More news to follow…

This weeks lesson : frustration

This last week has been a lesson in frustration – changing requirements, dependency on offshore decision-makers, flakey debugging environments and forgotten code constraints.

These things have always lit a fire under my calm exterior and left me wanting to scream, throw the laptop out of the window and snap at all my colleagues who only want to help. This week was different and it’s a strange (and wonderful) new world.

Continue reading This weeks lesson : frustration

Some things never change

The lessons here are ones I’ve taken a while to learn and they are relevant to coding and most things in life and they have not changed in the six years since I first posted them!

I hope this blog post helps others learn them quicker:

  • Conclusions drawn, even by the ‘wise men’ in a community should never be taken on their own, as gospel.
  • Always check the date of a resource if you can.
    (most of the posts on here are several years old!)
  • Do your own tests.
  • Join in discussions and check your view against that of others.
  • Go back and review your own conclusions after time, has anything changed? new techniques or technology been released? did you jump the gun?
  • Never be afraid to admit you would change your mind (even if it’s only to yourself).
  • Never be afraid to try something new.

It’s been a while…

I’ve moved domains, changed jobs, closed my business and visited at least two new countries since last posting on any public blog!

Porting the blog across from the old domain has involved fixing it, reading it and potentially pruning it heavily (still ongoing).

I’ve learned that while my career has moved on and I’ve taken on more then less responsibility and expanded my (coding) languages count from few to many some fundamental things don’t change and I’ve found myself returning to some core lessons – again for the first time. Posts to follow!