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Eli White
Eli White is a Conference Chair for php[architect] and Vice President of One for All Events, LLC. The day he found the non-greedy modifier in regex was a complete game changer for him.
twitter: @EliW
Articles
finally{}: We Are All Programmers
By Eli White
Throughout the history of computer programming, people have been told, “Oh, but that isn’t programming.” You just learned some BASIC back in the ’70s? Well, you aren’t a programmer; that gal writing full applications is a real programmer. Oh, you just make webpages with PHP, eh? That’s not real programming—learn Python or Go.
Published in Under the Scope, September 2020
Interviewing Remotely
By Eli White
Given that (in the USA) COVID-19 appears to be here to stay for quite a while, I know several people who are searching for jobs during this time. It does make the interview process rough, or at least non-traditional. You can’t sit in an office surrounded by people grilling you. If the position is distant from you (perhaps remote itself), you can’t fly in to have a full day of going through the office talking to various people, and then taken out for drinks and dinner to show how the company likes to have fun.
Published in Data Discipline, August 2020
finally{}: The Dangers of Intellectual (Sounding) Arguments
By Eli White
OK, I’ll admit that’s a weird title to start with, but bear with me for a bit. I want to talk about a problem that I see happening not only in daily life (with COVID-19) but also in the tech communities for decades. It is the application of several fallacies in a discussion, that manifest themselves as well thought-out, intellectual points of debate. When in the end, they are based on false assertions but are hidden behind the wall of intellectual debate.
Published in Warp Driven Development, July 2020
finally{}: A Question for You: The Future of Conferences?
By Eli White
I’d like to take this month to turn the microphone around a bit and ask a question of you, the reader. With COVID-19 continuing to shut down most of the world, predictions are looking at potentially 3–12 months of it still affecting us. It may completely change permanently how we, as a society, interact.
Published in Advanced Design & Development, June 2020
finally{}: What’s in PHP Eight?
By Eli White
While much of the world shuts down, the PHP core developers have been hard at work preparing for the release of PHP 8.0 at the end of this year! The feature freeze is in just a few months (July 28th), so this is the exciting time when there is a push to get various features into this momentous release! Let’s take a look at a few of the bigger things currently planned for PHP 8.0.
Published in Unsupervised Learning, May 2020 —Available for Free
finally{}: The One About COVID-19
By Eli White
It’s hard to focus on anything else at this point, so let’s talk pandemic. The entire world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic right now, and we’ve only just begun. We have no idea what the next few weeks, months, year(s) will bring as this continues to progress.
Published in Machine Learning and OpenAPI, April 2020
finally{}: Enterprise PHP
By Eli White
This month’s magazine focused on Magento, which by its nature, is one embodiment of Enterprise PHP. But what do we mean when we say “Enterprise PHP” anyway? Several things get drawn up into that phrase.
Published in How Magento is Evolving, March 2020
finally{}: Interview Introspection
By Eli White
Last month, I wrote about certifications and now would like to touch on a tangentially related topic: Interviews. Interviewing developers can be tricky. Unlike some other fields, people can learn enough about coding to make their way through a basic screening, leaving you hiring someone who doesn’t work out in the end.
Published in Cultivating the Developer Experience, February 2020
finally{}: Certainly Certifications
By Eli White
It’s been a long time since I talked about certifications. The last time I did it publicly was back in 2008 when I wrote a blog post about it. A piece that got a lot of strong responses, and almost cost me a job offer later in my career. I think over 10 years is long enough and it may be time to discuss this again.
Published in New Habits, January 2020
finally{}: Giving Thanks
By Eli White
I’m writing this article shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday celebrated in the US. Combined with the fact that 2019 is rapidly coming to a close, I find myself reflecting over the last year and even a bit farther back. I think that there has been a lot that the PHP community can be thankful for.
Published in Expedition PHP, December 2019
finally{}: Frameworks Don’t Make Any Sense
By Eli White
Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about why the title of this article, I feel, is entirely wrong (though I used to believe it). I’m writing about this because I’ve had a sordid history with frameworks and want to share where I’ve landed.
Published in Object Orientation, November 2019
finally{}: Dark Matter Developers
By Eli White
Back in 2012, Scott Hanselman wrote a blog post on Dark Matter Developers, and I think the concept still rings true today, maybe more. So what are they?
Published in Coding Without Fear, October 2019
finally{}: 25 Years of PHP
By Eli White
PHP was released in the fall of 1994, making 2019 the 25th anniversary of PHP! We’ve certainly come a long way from the early days of the web. I’m not sure how many people reading this were around back then, but I was. Things were not pretty back then.
Published in Renovating Applications with Symfony, August 2019
finally{}: Semver, PHP and WordPress
By Eli White
Recently there was a big announcement that with WordPress 5.2, that they would be updating the minimum required version of PHP to 5.6. That’s a huge deal, but as can be expected, a vocal minority of the PHP community immediately erupted in anger
Published in Find the Way With Elasticsearch, July 2019
finally{}: Conferences and Community
By Eli White
So as someone who runs conferences for the community (And does so full-time, so does need to make a buck or two), I wanted to address a recent discussion that came up on twitter. A gentleman who was running a design conference in Dallas (for only $200 ticket price), was ranting about speakers, and how dare they ask for hotel and travel coverage for just going a 50-minute talk. I’d like to use this as a discussion launching point about events in general, and the costs involved in putting them on.
Published in How to Tame Your Data, June 2019
finally{}: The State of PHP
By Eli White
I’ve spent a while now working on my seven deadly sins series of articles, and so it’s been a while since we’ve stepped back to look at PHP itself. Where are we as a language, and as a community?
Published in Serverless, ReactPHP, and Expanding Frontiers, May 2019
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Wrath
By Eli White
For our final installment of this series, it’s time for us to address Wrath in how it relates to programming. Wrath, commonly known as Anger, in the middle ages was considered the opposite of Love. Those who were wrathful had spurned love, choosing to act in rage instead. I saved it for last in this series because it manifests in many different ways in life and code.
Published in The New Frontend Fundamentals, April 2019
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Envy
By Eli White
We only have two sins left to discuss to complete our series, and this month we’ll discuss Envy (saving Wrath for our final installment). Now envy can manifest itself in many different ways in programming, that can impact you, and your code, negatively.
Published in Building Bridges, March 2019
finally{}: New Year’s Resolutions
By Eli White
I’m usually not one to make resolutions at the start of a New Year. Mostly because I almost immediately would break them all. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about upcoming topics in technology and cool things on the horizon. So I want to present a list of things that I will be keeping an eye on and learning more about this year, and suggest that you join me in the process.
Published in Setting Up to Succeed, January 2018
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Lust
By Eli White
As we return to our discussion of the deadly sins of programming, we find ourselves ready to talk about lust. After all, this is February, a month known for that term. Wait, how does lust relate to programming? Well, to get to the bottom of that we need to look at older definitions of lust. Then it often just referred to “intense longing” for anything that you desire.
Published in Out on a Limb – February 2019, February 2019
finally{}: Resolutions of Collaboration
By Eli White
I’m taking a break in my series of topics on the Seven Deadly Sins of Programming to talk about a positive aspect instead of a negative. The topic of collaboration is an important one to all open source projects in general. I’d love to see the PHP community wholeheartedly embrace it and make a new year’s resolution to collaborate more.
Published in DevOps Depths – January 2019, January 2019
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Greed
By Eli White
As you are reading this magazine, we are in a time of winter holidays and typically associated with a spirit of goodwill towards others. That is embodied often as giving presents to people as a gesture of that goodwill. Unfortunately, this can have the opposite effect at times of causing greed to form as people want more and more given to them. Alternatively, they may misinterpret it as greed, as a specific green haired character learns in his holiday tale.
Published in Better Practice – December 2018, December 2018
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Sloth
By Eli White
This month I touch on the sin of sloth in programming. I mean, I don’t want to. I want to go flop on the couch and watch some TV and relax. However, I’ll avoid the sin itself and manage an article this month.
Published in Generics and Project Success – November 2018, November 2018
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Gluttony
By Eli White
Continuing our series on the sins of programming, I want to touch on the sin of gluttony in programming. (And no, I don’t mean to infer anything about the size of our waists.) Over the years, over decades, we have continued to add layers of complexity to our code, under the auspices of making it easier to understand, or easier to maintain.
Published in Internal Journeys – October 2018, October 2018
finally{}: The Seven Deadly Sins of Programming: Pride
By Eli White
Programming is an art, programming is a skill, programming is a job, programming is a lifestyle. With all of that comes joy but also pain. In fact, programming itself can mirror life, and therefore comes with all positive and negative aspects of that. There is a multitude of bad habits that we as programmers can have that end up self-sabotaging ourselves and our code. Today, I want to talk about the sin of pride.
Published in Magniphpicent 7.3 – September 2018, September 2018
finally{}: Work / Life / Kids … Balance?
By Eli White
I work from home and making sure that there is a proper work/life balance is essential for mental and physical health. However, with the prevalence of remote work, it’s not as easy to separate the two. We gain the benefit of not needing to commute. We obtain the ability to have extremely flexible hours. However, it can be all too easy to slip back into work.
Published in Masterful Code Management – August 2018, August 2018
finally{}: Do We Need Developers?
By Eli White
Proportionally fewer people are graduating from college with degrees in computer science & related fields. In 2005 and 2015, there were approximately the same number of Computer Science graduates, but there were overall 31% more college graduates, meaning that the percentage of CS degrees dropped significantly. Why is this happening?
Published in Navigating State – July 2018, July 2018
finally{}: Open Source & Commercial Entities
By Eli White
In a way, that title is misleading, because, in the end, this article is going to be primarily about the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub. However, it’s a great time to use that as a discussion point of the merits of the various methods of providing software, and how companies choose to get involved with open source as well.
Published in Command and Control – June 2018, June 2018
finally{}: Innovation in PHP
By Eli White
One of the fantastic things about the PHP language is that we, the community, are constantly evolving it. If you take a look at PHP code from just a few years ago, it can appear alien compared to anything written in modern PHP today. In fact, I’ve often stated that PHP was, in fact, unique among all the programming languages that exist currently. Yes, quite a few of them are open source; however, PHP is the only one truly embracing the open source concept. It is continuously changed, and not by a single gatekeeper but by a broad and vast team of engineers who use the language every day.
Published in Treasure, Old & New – May 2018, May 2018
finally{}: On the Creativity of Programmers
By Eli White
Throughout my career, I regularly got frustrated with many managers (and subsequently the companies) for which I worked. This became a recurring theme and led to me bouncing between dozens of jobs over a relatively short period. I could never quite put the finger on exactly what the problem was, but I just kept getting frustrated at not feeling like I had any say in the software that we were creating, nor that I was considered part of “the team.”
Published in Testing in Practice – April 2018, April 2018
How Many Tools?
By Eli White
As programming has continued to evolve, things have gotten a lot more complicated. I mean we’ve come a long way since the early 80’s when I was writing: `10 GOSUB 200` Complexity is good in what it allows us to now do. At the same time, complexity makes it much harder for new developers to enter the ecosystem. It makes it harder in general for developers as their skill set needs to expand wider and wider, instead of focusing on a single task.
Published in Long Running PHP, March 2018
finally{}: Blue Collar Coders
By Eli White
All jobs come with a salary, and that salary is usually tied to a simple concept: Supply and Demand. Yes, it’s often the case that jobs that pay more, require much more intensive training that whittles out all but the most die-hard people, but that itself is a limiting factor of supply.
Published in Know Your Tools, February 2018
finally{}: Poised for Growth
By Eli White
If you look at the JavaScript community at the moment, you will find an ecosystem that is exploding with constant innovation. New tools and new frameworks are being created so fast, that the community has begun to make fun of itself for it. It can attract younger programmers eager to be always on the cutting edge of technology, and it is something that PHP is missing at the moment.
Published in Talking Code, December 2017
