Sustainable PHP: When the World Shifts

Last month, we used Herbert O. Yardley’s “The Education of a Poker Player” to learn about testing business rules. This month we’ll explore what happened when the world shifted, and Yardley lost not just his job but his career. The lesson here will be “don’t be like Yardley”—yet Yardley’s story is, by all accounts, fascinating. Agnes (Meyer) Driscoll, like Yardley, was breaking codes on behalf of the USA. The world, too, passed her by. She failed to make the transition from pencil-and-paper to digital computing. Yet she’s fondly remembered as “the neglected giant.” We’ll begin with my own story of how my world shifted at the turn of the Millennium, bringing me to PHP.