PHP UK Conference 2016
This week I attended the 11th Annual PHP UK Conference. 2 days jammed packed with loads of talks about a whole variety of things. As usual, I left with pages of notes and thought I would sum up 11 things that I took away from the conference.
1) Development involves humans and having a manifesto and best practices for developers interacting with each other is just as important as PHP-FIG or Agile Manifesto, for example. So I support the Code Manifesto.
2) MySQL 5.7 has a new JSON data type which is really awesome.
3) MySQL 5.7 also has the ability to make 'virtual columns' that could contain calculations but take up no space.
4) There is a tool called DSSIM which lets you compare two images so you can be a lot more 'aggressive' when compressing your images for websites.
5)
curl_setopt($cHandler, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false); and
curl_setopt($cHandler, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); are not solutions to ceritifcate issues. I knew this, but I have still shamefully used it and recommended others to use it. Also, from PHP 5.6, you shouldn't encounter such a problem any more.
6) I learnt just how you can use XDebug to make your life a lot easier when debugging large amounts of code.
7) HTTP/2 is not as scary as it sounds and that 22% of Internet traffic was already using it by the end of 2015!
8) Also, HTTP/2 has some really awesome features that will really help speed up site loading times with things like multiplexed connections and pre-loading assets.
9)
It is also super easy to start using HTTP/2. You just load the module and add h2c to the header.
10) Automating everything using something like Slack actually has a name: 'chatops'.
11) It only takes 15 minutes a day to contribute to the community and it is not so scary.
All in all, this was a great conference (again) and I leave feeling inspired and with new knowledge. See you next year!
I just wanted to mention whilst here that I am really proud to have had an article published by net magazine this month. It is the first time that I have made such a contribution and I hope to do so again in the future. It is a beginners guide of how to make integration in Slack ('chatops' as I now know it is called) so check it out!