Developer Experience in the PHP World

We're sharing more, we're writing more blog posts and we're building libraries with increasingly clever names. So why does it sometimes *still* feel like rage-tossing my computer out of the window is part of solving development problems? I thought the future would let me composer install unicorns and rainbows directly into my app!? Shouldn't my experience as a developer be smoother? Having *only* great tools is just about as useful as locking me inside a Home Depot and asking me to build a house. So in this talk, we'll look at developer experience (DX) in the PHP world by going through some DX wins and some DX fails, um, "todos". I'll also share what some communities and libraries are doing specifically to make our lives easier and more productive. But ultimately, DX starts with *us*: developers who notice when things are too difficult and improve them. By the end of this talk, I hope the PHP world will have a few more DX heroes.

Transcript

1. by your friend: Ryan Weaver @weaverryan Developer Experience in the PHP World
2. KnpUniversity.com github.com/weaverryan Who is this Hipster? > Lead for the Symfony documentation
 > KnpLabs US - Symfony Consulting, training & general Kumbaya > Writer for KnpUniversity.com Tutorials
3. We <3 Cake Big plate of cake
4. Ephemeralization* @weaverryan
5. * shamelessly “borrowed” from David Zuelke http://bit.ly/dzuelke-ephem
6. R. Buckminster Fuller
8. do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing “
9. https://www.flickr.com/photos/chandramarsono/4324373384
10. https://www.flickr.com/photos/krawcowicz/4153762400
11. limited by site https://www.flickr.com/photos/40132991@N07/3715292940
12. https://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/4999120709
13. Easiest scaling ever Simplest Deployment Process @weaverryan
14. Do More, With Less
15. Less is not about size
16. Less …
 …effort
 …drain on my patience …drain on my energy …design on this slide
17. UX @weaverryan
18. Do more with less Ephemeralization for Development
19. Less is not (necessarily) about code written
20. Less… …Dev Time …Learning Curve …Complexity
21. DX
22. A Path to DX in 6 Steps
23. 1. Architecture First (Simple) @weaverryan
24. Complexity: Consisting of many different and connected parts
25. Simple vs. Easy @weaverryan
26. Architecture First: Don’t Sacrifice for DX @weaverryan
28. 1. mammoth class
 2. Expects a “signed request” on either $_REQUEST or $_COOKIE
 3. Sends a curl request to exchange the OAuth code for the access_token
 4. Send another curl request to fetch user data
29. Perceived Affordances @weaverryan
30. Nope! Possibilities are easily Perceivable
31. Yep! Possibilities are easily Perceivable
32. Nope!
33. Yep!
34. Design Principles @weaverryan
35. Use Private Methods Nope!
36. Use Private Methods Yep!
37. Limit Mutability Nope!
38. Limit Mutability Yep!
39. Callbacks instead of Interfaces Nope!
40. Yep! Callbacks instead of Interfaces
41. Expressive Naming Nope!
42. RUN! Expressive Naming
43. On My Side? or In My Way? @weaverryan
44. @weaverryan 2. Easy
45. @weaverryan Feature-Driven (personae) Think about the problems that need to be solved
46. @weaverryan Add Layers
47. @weaverryan Nope!
48. @weaverryan Yep!
49. @weaverryan Yep! Accessible to Beginners
50. @weaverryan Yep! … clear path for noob -> expert
51. @weaverryan 3. The 5 Minute Experience
52. @weaverryan Yep! Instant Gratification
53. Nope!
54. Nope!
55. Nope!
56. Nope!
57. A real app can evolve from this @weaverryan
58. @weaverryan 4. Big Giant Exception Messages with Links (because, why not?)
59. Users can avoid the docs before getting the first-use pay-off @weaverryan
60. @weaverryan Going that direction is unwise. Nope!
61. @weaverryan THERE ARE RAPTORS IN THE TALL GRASS! STAY OUT OF THE TALL GRASS! Yep!
62. @weaverryan Could not load type "enitity" Nope!
63. @weaverryan Unknown field type “enitity” when creating your form. Did you mean “entity”? Yep!
64. @weaverryan Credentials Error. Nope!
65. @weaverryan Error retrieving credentials from the instance profile metadata server. When you are not running inside of Amazon EC2, you must provide your AWS access key ID and secret access key in the "key" and "secret" options when creating a client or provide an instantiated Aws\Common \Credentials\CredentialsInterface object. Yep!
66. @weaverryan 5. Documentation
67. Quick Navigation: 2 Clicks @weaverryan Nope!
68. Quick Navigation: 2 Clicks @weaverryan Yep!
69. @weaverryan One Page per Topic OK
70. @weaverryan Yep! One Page per Topic
71. @weaverryan Tutorial-Style … with code examples Nope!
72. Tutorial-Style … with code examples Yep! + API Docs
73. @weaverryan Simple Homepage Yep!
74. @weaverryan Yep! Editable
75. Comments? Online Playground? Where can I get help? @weaverryan
76. @weaverryan 6. Backwards Compatibility
77. Thanks for Learning and Using my Library @weaverryan
78. @weaverryan Also, screw you!
79. A Call to DX @weaverryan
80. You say: “this kinda sucks” First @weaverryan
82. We (all) work to fix it Second @weaverryan
83. Hi! I can improve that for you!
84. Celebrate! Third
87. Repeat Finally @weaverryan
88. You drive DX… @weaverryan
89. …and move us towards Ephemeralization @weaverryan
90. … so we can accomplish so much more with less @weaverryan
91. @weaverryan PHP & Symfony Video Tutorials
    KnpUniversity.com Thank You! https://joind.in/13433
92. Thanks to… http://developerexperience.org/ http://softwareas.com/patterns-of-developer-experience/ http://blog.oshineye.com/2011/05/what-is-devexp.html http://blog.pamelafox.org/ @mtdowling @crell https://joind.in/13433
93. @weaverryan Open Symfony Training knplabs.com/training in Nashville, TN March 4, 5 & 6 https://joind.in/13433