Eric Van Johnson

Eric Van Johnson is one of the members behind PHP Architect, a collective of highly skilled frontend, backend, and mobile developers driven by passion and dedication. Their unyielding commitment to excellence is evident in the exceptional services they provide.

Beyond his work with PHP Architect, Eric plays a pivotal role in the organization of the php[tek] conference as well as the San Diego tech community as a leading organizer of San Diego PHP (SDPHP), a local user group that fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange among PHP enthusiasts. His voice also reverberates in the podcasting realm with PHPUgly, PHPRoundtable, and the php podcast, where he shares insights, experiences, and discussions on various tech-related topics.

Eric’s journey into the world of coding began in the early ’80s, a time when many of his peers were diving into the universe of Atari 2600 or Intellivision. Instead of a gaming console, his father presented him with a TRS-80 Coco equipped with BASIC. This thoughtful gift ignited a spark in Eric, leading him down the path of self-taught coding, a passion that has remained undiminished through the years.

On a personal note, Eric wears the hats of a devoted husband and a proud father. He has a penchant for baseball and has an undeniable affinity for scotch. A light-hearted anecdote from his past reveals his humorous side: Eric had to reluctantly hang up his baseball cleats as he found it rather challenging to balance running the bases without spilling his scotch!

Mastodon: @eric@phparch.social

Other Socials

twitter: @shocm

Articles

What’s the Big Idea? PhpStorm for VIM Users

By Eric Van Johnson

I started my IT career in system operations. I spent many days in a cold data center, racking and stacking servers, installing operating systems, and configuring routers. That’s when I started using Vim. It was nice to sit in my cubicle outside the data center and access my servers to do everything I needed in a terminal, including editing files. I didn’t put any real thought into why Vim. It was just an option available on the command line to allow me to edit files. There were others—Nano, Emacs—and today, I couldn’t honestly tell you why I didn’t opt for one of them instead of Vim. But Vim did the job well, so I stuck with it. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in PHP Reflections, May 2024

Artisan Way: Laracon Online 2022

By Eric Van Johnson

During this time of the virtual lifestyle, Laracon Online has been one of the better and most engaging online conferences out. I mean, in my opinion, it doesn’t even come close to a good in-person conference, like hmm, I don’t know, maybe php[tek] 2023 in Chicago. But as for virtual, Laracon Online is really well organized, and last month’s broadcast was no exception. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in The State of PHP, October 2022

Community Corner: Interview with PHP 8.1 Release Manager Ben Ramsey

By Eric Van Johnson

Last month we talked with Patrick Allaert, the release manager for PHP 8.1, but Patrick is only one member of the dynamic duo known as the first-time release managers. The core team had been pairing one veteran release manager with one new release manager, but for PHP 8.1, they decided to have two new release managers. Although it may be Ben Ramsey’s first time being a release manager, he is not new to PHP Internals. As long as I’ve been lurking on the PHP Internal Mailing List, I’ve seen Ben contributing to the discussions and voting on RFCs. This month we learn a little more about Ben and his journey into the PHP coding life. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in Parallelize Your Code, February 2022

Community Corner: Interview with PHP 8.1 Release Manager Patrick Allaert

By Eric Van Johnson

PHP 8.1 is now the current version of PHP, and there is a new team behind managing the releases of PHP 8.1. For this release of PHP, the Internals groups decide to do something different. There is still a veteran release manager for PHP 8.1, namely, Joe Watkins (@krakjoe). But instead of only having one new release manager, “rookie,” they elected two additional people to manage the release. This month we speak to one of those rookie release managers, Patrick Allaert. When Patrick isn’t coding PHP or C, you might find him dancing Forró/Salsa/Bachata or kitesurfing on the ocean. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in Domain-Driven Resolutions, January 2022

Community Corner: The PHP Foundation

By Eric Van Johnson

When I was young, I remember hearing the saying, “A house is only as good as its foundation.” That same philosophy can be applied to many other things. A good foundation with your code, company, family, and communities makes success easier to achieve. I’ve always felt the PHP internal community had a pretty solid foundation. It has seen many vital people come and go, and it continues to evolve and innovate. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in The Zen of Mindful Programming, December 2021

Community Corner: Interview with Wasseem Khayrattee

By Eric Van Johnson

Off the coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean, lays an Island named Mauritius between latitudes 19°58.8’S and 20°31.7’S and longitudes 57°18.0’E and 57°46.5’E. It is 65 km (40 mi) long and 45 km (30 mi) wide. The country spans 2,040 square kilometers (790 sq mi). It is the only known habitat of the extinct dodo, and it is where this month’s interviewee Wasseem Khayrattee, or maybe better known as 7PHP, calls home. 7PHP is the new voice on Voices of the elePHPant, and this month we sit down and talk with him, how he got started, his journey, and what he’s up to now. Grab yourself an Alouda or a Phoenix beer, queue up “Top 100 Mauritius” on Spotify and let’s see what makes up the universe known as 7PHP. by Eric Van Johnson

Published in The Art of Data, November 2021

Community Corner: PHPUnit Creator Sebastian Bergmann, Part Two

By Eric Van Johnson

Welcome to part two of our interview with Sebastian Bergmann. Last month we heard about Sebastian’s beginnings, how he got started with development and what led him to write the de facto testing suite for the PHP programming language. This month, Sebastian dives into what it’s like managing such a widely used and crucial piece of the PHP ecosystem.

Published in Decrypting Cryptography, October 2021

Community Corner: PHPUnit Creator Sebastian Bergmann, Part One

By Eric Van Johnson

When Sebastian Bergmann was in university, his professor pulled him to the side and said, “Open Source is great, PHP is great, but I see that you’re interested in these testing concepts, unit testing in particular. That does not exist for PHP. Can I finally convince you now to continue what you do, but with a different language? Do that with Java, and do it at the university and do cool stuff with that?”. Most students would take that sort of advice from their professor as solid words of wisdom and do exactly what had been suggested. Fortunately for all of us, Sebastian wasn’t like most students, and he took it as a challenge and replied, “Well, just because it has not been implemented for PHP yet does not mean that it cannot be done.”

Published in It’s Really an Upgrade, September 2021

Community Corner: An Interview with Taylor Otwell

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, we talk with the person behind the Laravel Framework, Taylor Otwell, who he is, and where he is taking Laravel moving forward. Laravel recently turned ten years old, and what a remarkable ten years it has been. Laravel has inspired its own industry with business, training, services, blogs, and podcasts built around and for the Laravel Framework.

Published in Trimming One’s Sails, August 2021

Community Corner: Interview with Joe Watkins

By Eric Van Johnson

In this month’s Community Corner, we speak with Joe Watkins. Sure we get to know Joe a little better, but we also discuss a very impactful blog post he made called “Avoiding Busses.” If you’ve been reading my Community Corner contributions over the past year and a half, you may notice that this isn’t my typical profile piece.

Published in Deep Dive Into Search, July 2021

Community Corner: Longhorn PHP 2021

By Eric Van Johnson

2020 was a year of uncertainty, fear, and adjustments. We limited our physical contact with others, created bubbles of safe spaces and people, and tried not to wander too far from those established bubbles. As a result, a lot changed that year. One of the year’s casualties was in-person conferences, a staple in our tech industry and something some would try to attend at least once a year.

Published in Debug, Rinse, Repeat, June 2021

Community Corner: Interview with Ryan Weaver

By Eric Van Johnson

Fun fact, no matter where you stand in the state of Michigan, you are never further than 85 miles from a Great Lake. It’s the only state that touches four of the five Great Lakes, has its own regional dialect, which includes phrases like “a Michigan left” and “Bumpy Cake,” and happens to be the birthplace of this month’s Community Corner spotlight Symfony core member Ryan Weaver.

Published in Testing Assumptions, May 2021

Community Corner: A Bref of Fresh Air

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, we sit down and have a conversation with Matthieu Napoli. About four years ago, Matthieu saw a gap in the emerging serverless architectures and PHP. When Amazon added custom runtime support in late 2018, he decided to address it, creating the bref project. Bref lowers the bar on complexity to allow you to take advantage of a serverless environment.

Published in Busy Worker Bees, April 2021

Community Corner: Interview with Matthew Weier O’Phinney

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, I sat down with Matthew Weier O’Phinney, a long-time member of the PHP Community and one of the leading contributors to the Laminas (formerly Zend Framework) project.

Published in Lambda PHP, March 2021

Community Corner: Interview with Angie Byron, Part Two

By Eric Van Johnson

Now on Drupal 9, the community isn’t slowing down. This month, we continue our interview with Angie Byron, a.k.a Webchick, a Drupal Core committer and product manager, Drupal Association Board Member, author, speaker, mentor, and Mom, and so much more. Currently, she works at Aquia for the Drupal acceleration team, where her primary role is to “Make Drupal awesome.” We talk about Drupal, coding, family, and her journey throughout the years.

Published in Dealing with Data, February 2021 —Available for Free

Community Corner: Interview with Angie Byron, Part One

By Eric Van Johnson

Now on Drupal 9, the community isn’t slowing down. This month, we sit down and talk with Angie Byron, a.k.a Webchick, a Drupal Core committer and product manager, Drupal Association Board Member, author, speaker, mentor, and Mom, and so much more. Currently, she works at Aquia for the Drupal acceleration team, where her primary role is to “Make Drupal awesome.” We talk about Drupal, coding, family, and her journey throughout the years.

Published in Newfangled Views, January 2021

Community Corner: An Interview with Andreas Heigl

By Eric Van Johnson

It started off simple enough, a friend in school ask Andreas if he could help him write a piece of software. Andreas himself wasn’t an aspiring programmer; he has was an avid district forester. However, he had done some small projects in the past for the Apple platform using FileMaker. This project needed to be different, and it needed to be cross-platform. Andres remembers reading about a web technology called PHP paired with MySQL and thought, “It can’t be that complicated. Can it?”

Published in PHP 8 Bits and Git, December 2020

Community Corner: Podcast—Mic Check

By Eric Van Johnson

With it being so difficult to hang out with friends or go to a meetup, podcasts are a great solution to stay plugged in and current on what is going on in the development world. There is a wide range of subject matters for podcasts, but I focused on PHP podcasts and some other general Development podcasts for this article.

Published in SOLID Foundations, November 2020 —Available for Free

Community Corner: Larabelles

By Eric Van Johnson

“If you are looking for a development community and when you look around, if you don’t find one, congratulations, you are now the organizer of your new development community.” These were the (paraphrased) wise words spoken by one Cal Evans ( @calevans). This advice inspired John Congdon to reboot my local PHP User Group in San Diego. It’s also the action that was taken by this month’s interviewee, Zuzana Kunckova, when she looked around for a development community she wanted to belong to. Zuzana’s twitter announcement was straightforward and said it all.

Published in Running Parallel, October 2020

Community Corner: PHP 8 Release Managers: Interview with Sara Golemon and Gabriel Caruso, Part Three

By Eric Van Johnson

Part three concludes my interview with the PHP 8 Release Managers about PHP Internals. We touch on getting started contributing to internals via RFCs, becoming release managers, the commitment required by that role, and how the project’s release cycles have evolved.

Published in Under the Scope, September 2020 —Available for Free

Community Corner: PHP 8 Release Managers: Interview with Sara Golemon and Gabriel Caruso, Part Two

By Eric Van Johnson

In part two, I continue chatting with the PHP 8 Release Managers about PHP Internals, preparing a new release, the evolution of the language, and where it might go in the future.

Published in Data Discipline, August 2020

Community Corner: PHP 8 Release Managers: Interview with Sara Golemon and Gabriel Caruso, Part 1

By Eric Van Johnson

I’ve been contributing to Community Corner for a few months, so you would know by now that I am not a journalist and that I love PHP. I love coding with it, talking to people about it, and meeting new people involved with it. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a lot of fantastic people, from Community Organizers to Internals contributors, but this month is probably the highlight for me as I sat down to speak with Sara Golemon and Gabriel Caruso, the two Release Managers of PHP 8.0.

Published in Warp Driven Development, July 2020

Community Corner: Let’s Talk Xdebug

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, we take a moment to speak with—well technically email with—a member of the PHP community. We are very fortunate to have a community filled with people who care about making PHP stronger. Today we speak with Derick Rethans (@derickr), author, conference speaker, PHP 7.4 Release Manager, host of the PHP Internal News Podcast, and the creator/maintainer of Xdebug.

Published in Advanced Design & Development, June 2020

Community Corner: York-Region-PHP User Group

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, we revisit our Canadian friends, this time we travel north of Toronto, Canada, to the York Region of Canada and the You Region PHP User Group.

Published in Unsupervised Learning, May 2020

Community Corner: PHP Adelaide: PHP Down Under

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, we travel halfway around the world, well at least I do; this might be right around the corner for you. This month we find ourselves in the land down under, where women glow, and men plunder, well that’s how the song goes anyways, Adelaide, Australia.

Published in Machine Learning and OpenAPI, April 2020

Community Corner: AustinPHP

By Eric Van Johnson

Within Texas, is the beautiful city of Austin. One of the fastest-growing cities in the United States and the State Capital of Texas. Austin has caught the eye of more than cowboys and musicians. It’s caught the eye of tech with several Fortune 500 companies establishing a presence in Austin. Logan has taken the time to write up a profile for AustinPHP, and I would like to share that with you. Logan Lindquist wrote the following article.

Published in How Magento is Evolving, March 2020

Community Corner: Greater Toronto Area PHP

By Eric Van Johnson

This month, in our little community corner, we travel back to Canada, Toronto, more specifically. This city sports a population of over 5.6 million people who speak over 180 languages and offices of some of technology’s heaviest hitters such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Published in Cultivating the Developer Experience, February 2020

Community Corner: ArizonaPHP

By Eric Van Johnson

If you’ve never been to the deserts of Arizona here in the U.S., you may think it’s a desolate and harsh land. Perhaps you envision Mad Max-style cars driving around looking for fuel and water. Maybe you think of the old Spaghetti Western, dusty small and disconnected towns, where strangers are not welcome. Nothing could be further from the truth

Published in New Habits, January 2020

Community Corner: Vancouver PHP

By Eric Van Johnson

For our next stop on our tour of user groups, we travel to the Great White North of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver is often listed as a top city to live for quality of life, and it’s one of Canada’s densest and most ethnically diverse cities. Over recent years, Vancouver has gotten the tag of Hollywood North, becoming home to many top film productions.

Published in Expedition PHP, December 2019

Community Corner: San Diego PHP

By Eric Van Johnson

You might recognize me as one of the contributors to the php; if you’re not familiar, it’s a great companion to the magazine and the community of PHP podcasts! I’ve been a subscriber to the php[architect] magazine since 2003, so I was thrilled when Oscar Merida asked me if I would be interested in contributing to Community Corner. I am going to take a little different approach to the Community Corner and focus on the various user groups, who they are, and the awesome people running them.

Published in Object Orientation, November 2019