Bryce Embry

Bryce is a teacher, manager, and programmer who has been working in IT since the 1990s. Twenty years ago he was teaching students to create video games. Ten years ago he was leading a large school district’s IT department. Today he’s writing software to help medical researchers collaborate. At home Bryce has a wife, a half dozen kids that come and go, a woodworking shop that matches his modest skills, and a guitar that’s too good for him.

Articles

Escaping An Abandoned Framework

By Bryce Embry

In the past few years, I’ve been involved with four teams who built their bread-and-butter applications on the classic Zend 1 framework. Each team realized the framework was no longer supported, and each has struggled to figure out their next step. On each of these projects, I’ve seen triumphs and tragedies. In this article, I want to share what I’ve learned about struggling to get out of an abandoned framework.

Published in Expedition PHP, December 2019 —Available for Free

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Your Code

By Bryce Embry

When I made the transition from hobbyist to professional programmer, I discovered it isn’t enough for my code to work; it also has to be easy to maintain. At first, I wasn’t sure how to make it happen. Then, when I read Robert Martin’s book *Clean Code*, I discovered good code is written with people in mind, follows a consistent format, has short functions, uses meaningful names, and avoids comments. Applying these principles has dramatically improved my code and can change your life as well.

Published in Treasure, Old & New – May 2018, May 2018