Straylight Run

Here are my slides from my two talks at PHP 2011 tek conference in Chicago, IL.  Slide PDFs and any demo code are on GitHub.  Recap to follow!

Of (PHP) Sessions, Cookies, and Authentication

Do you know the difference between the PHP config directives session.gc_maxlifetime and session.cookie_lifetime? Have you wrestled with implementing a “Remember Me” button on your login page? Learn how popular sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, keep you logged in (apparently) forever and the security risks of such methods.

Who’s Using Your Software?

Software is only successful if someone can use it. Good developers need to do more than just follow specifications, they need to visualize the people who will use it and understand what they need. Get to know your users and the questions you need to ask to make your implementation a success on all fronts.

The Center of Innovation program at the College of Applied Science at UC aims to show seniors that their choices for employment upon graduation is not limited to Fifth Third, Kroger’s, and Great American Insurance (not that there’s anything wrong with those fine companies).  The program also aims to show them that, in a region full of marketing, design, and business talent, there is serious need for young technology talent with an entrepreneurial bent.  For those who might want to take the plunge, the program also outlines business skills and resources they’ll need to complement their technology skills.

This is a great thing, and kudos and support goes to Andy Erickson and Dr. Hazem Said for their work so far.

This past Tuesday I gave a short talk to students in the Innovation Seminar series in CAS at UC about what’ it’s like to work in a startup from a coder’s point of view.  I talked about transitioning from a cubicle farm job to a startup environment, the nature and pace of working in a startup, and the tons and tons of learning that is inevitable.

You won’t get a lot from these slides without the narrative, but I post all my talks here so I thought I’d post this one.

Cross-posted on my Cincinnati blog.

This past Thursday I gave a short talk at the monthly OINK-PUG meeting about how I discovered the Test-Driven Development Kool-Aid®.  I knew about TDD years before I actually started doing it.  I tried to start several times, and never kept it going.  About a year ago, while developing a web service with no screens, the light bulb went on and gave me the idea for this talk.

In which I give a short introduction to unit testing, and then outline the story that finally turned on the light bulb about real test-driven development and test first for me. The third part of the talk gives an introduction to Dependency Injection (DI), an integral part to unit testing.

Well, works was the first industry conference I ever attended other than Ohio Linuxfest, and the first conference of any kind since like ACM Sigmod 2000.  (Wow, that was 8  years ago.)  I had a blast and learned a lot.  I even learned about some things related to PHP.

Here are the talks I attended:

• The Future Is Not Yet Widely Distributed (Intro To Git)
• Map, Filter, Reduce – In The Small And In The Cloud
• You Look You Could Use Some REST
• Exploring Artificial Intelligence With Python
• Extending Existing Web Services With SMS And XMPP
• Get Soaked: Streams, an In-Depth Look
• Test Drive Your Development Process

The most interesting one for me, uh, emotionally was probably the AI talk.  Brings me back to my days in SB.  The most useful topic which I could probably put to use at work tomorrow was the SMS/XMPP talk.

I managed to make it downtown one night, and got to meet some new people.

The last highlight I’ll mention were the Pecha Kucha talks on Thursday night.  It was interesting and a ton of fun.  The open bar didn’t hurt either.

See a few more photos from php|works 2008.

Slides from php|works 2008 in Atlanta, GA.  If the Sliderocket version below is problematic, here is the more popular Slideshare version.