January and February
I started coding Zend_Form in earnest in January, and had a
preview ready for testing mid-month. The pace continued into February, as I
addressed user feedback and issues, and continued working feverishly towards
what would become Zend Framework's 1.5.0 release.
I also answered many questions for and had many discussions with
Cal Evans relating to his "Guide to
Programming Zend Framework".
March
I gave my first webinar of the year early in March, on the subject of
Zend_Form; it was very well attended, but unfortunately there
was an issue recording the sound, so the recording was never released. After
two more failed attempts at re-recording, we gave up. I apologize to all who
have wanted to view it.
While working towards the 1.5.0 release, Ralph Schindler
and I also finished up final touches on Zend_Layout and the
various "placeholder" view helper implementations.
On 17 March 2008, we released Zend Framework 1.5, our first minor release
following 1.0.0.
I started blogging tips and tricks for 1.5, and also writing articles for
DevZone during March, and had
tremendous amounts of feedback. In fact, one blog post, on "Login and
Authentication", is still one of the most trafficked on my blog after 9
months.
I also began what I envisioned as a series of Vim posts, but, alas, it has
resulted only in two.
April
Following the 1.5 release, I did weekly posts for a month or so covering
various features of Zend Framework, including Front Controller plugins,
Action Controller helpers, and View helpers. Towards the end of the month,
the entire team participated in a Q&A webinar to discuss the 1.5
release.
May
At the beginning of the month, I released the last in my series of 1.5
tutorials on DevZone, covering Form
decorators. This has saved me countless hours on IRC and in the mailing
lists explaining how this aspect of forms work.
During this month, we also finally announced that Zend Framework would be
partnering with Dojo to provide an
out-of-the-box RIA solution. I began work identifying the various
integration points and creating proposals for implementation. I also did a
Q&A webinar with the Dojo team outlining the proposed integration.
At the end of the month, the ZF team reorganized the subversion repository
to allow for an "Extras" repository, and also to ensure that projects
originating in the laboratory or extras and migrating to the standard
library retain all history. Even with the big notices we put on the ZF site,
articles on DevZone, and posts on various blogs, we still get questions on
this seven months later. Let this be a lesson to you: plan your repositories
for any contingency as early as you can!
June
I started June with a trip to Israel, to visit the Zend offices. I met up
with Andi in Newark, and we
flew from there to Israel several rows apart in coach. One of the best meals
I've ever had was after we landed and he invited me to his sister's place
for dinner, and we dined on chicken marinated in home-pressed olive oil and
fresh herbs, hummus, and pitas baked with fresh oregano. The rest of the
week was spent in the office, in endless meetings.
Four days after returning from Israel, I flew to Amsterdam for the
Dutch PHP Conference, to which I'd
been invited to speak. My good friend Remi
took the
train up to Amsterdam to meet me the day I flew in, and we walked and walked
and walked around the city, until dinnertime.
Stefan Koopmanschap then met us
for a lovely dinner, and I returned to the hotel to finish screenshots for
the six-hour workshop on Zend Framework I was presenting the next day. The
entire conference was wonderful, and I met many fantastic people, including
Stefan Priebsch,
Lorna Jane Mitchell,
Andries Seutens, and many, many
more -- plus many familiar faces, such as Sebastian Bergmann, Derek Rethans,
Mike Van Dam, Felix de Vliegher, and Marco Tabini.
On my blog, I started raising the question of how we will refer to Abstract
classes and Interfaces in PHP 5.3, but I think my arguments went largely
unheard and/or misunderstood.
The last half of the month was spent working on both Dojo integration with
Zend Framework (a task that turned out fairly easy, in large part due to
some wonderful guidance from Pete Higgins),
and preparing Zend_Test_PHPUnit for inclusion in Zend Framework
1.6.
July
I think I'll remember July as the month of the neverending release cycle.
August
On 8 August 2008, PHP 4 officially died. I thought about drinking a toast
for about 3 seconds, forgot about it, and finished my beer.
The following Monday, we released the second release candidate of Zend
Framework 1.6.0.
August, too, became part of the month of the neverending release cycle.
September
Finally, on 2 September 2008, we released 1.6.0 into the wild. My
contributions included, as noted earlier, Dojo integration, PHPUnit
integration, and code assistance on our Captcha solution and file upload
support.
The next day, I gave yet another webinar on Zend Framework and Dojo
integration, but finally actually had some code samples and working demos to
show off, soundly quieting the claims of vaporware. I also started
learning about Dojo release builds, under the tutelage of Pete Higgins.
Mid-month saw the fourth annual Zend/PHP Conference, this time in Santa
Clara. I was involved in a marathon of seven different sessions over three
days. I've rarely been so exhausted, and it's a wonder I remember anything
following -- but I had a wonderful time with the PHP community
following, including Jon
Whitcraft, Rob Allen, the ibuildings crew, and
more.
I also finally got to meet David Sklar, to
whom I owe the fact of my first public speaking engagement at the first
ZendCon.
Following ZendCon, there were announcements that two colleagues at Zend I
respect highly were leaving for new opportunities: Mark de Visser left to
join Sonatype as its CEO, and Cal Evans left to head ibuildings' new Center
for PHP Expertise. I wish them both luck in their new endeavors.
October
I helped Wade Arnold complete
testing of Zend_Amf as we prepared for the Zend Framework 1.7.0
release, and learned a fair deal about Flex in the process.
During this time, I also completed a technical review of
Zend Framework in Action.
Rob Allen and Nick Lo had contacted me earlier in the year, but I'd
been unable to commit to it. In July, I agreed, only to get sucked into the
neverending release cycle. Fortunately, in October I had time to complete
the review. The book is very well written and organized, and I can't
recommend it highly enough. I was able to give some constructive feedback
and have some dialog with Rob that, hopefully, helped clarify a few areas of
Zend Framework, and will hopefully help their readers.
For the 1.7 release of Zend Framework, I worked on performance benchmarking,
profiling, improvements, and a best practices guide.
Late in the month, I delivered a webinar with Lee Brimelow for Adobe to
showcase the upcoming AMF support in Zend Framework.
November
The last few days of October and first week of November, I organized a bug
hunt week for Zend Framework, culminating in a
Bug Hunt Day event held and organized
by PHP Belgium and
phpGG (The Netherlands). We closed out close
to 150 issues over the course of the week and a couple dozen during the Bug
Hunt Day, and got many contributors started on the path of professional bug
squashing enlightenment.
The second week of November, I flew down to Atlanta, GA, to attend
php|works.. err,
php|works/pyworks. First off, a huge thank you to
Elizabeth Naramore, who
helped me fairly last minute to make sure I had a room to stay in. While
there, I presented my Dojo and Zend Framework talk, but with some updated
content. Of course, every presenter's nightmare occurred, and I had to
reboot my laptop mid-stream. I surprised myself, and, I think, the attendees
by actually being able to continue speaking while we waited for my machine
to reboot.
I also presented a Pecha Kucha
talk -- I re-branded the phrase as "Pikachu" a couple weeks earlier (a
reference to the iconic character in Pokemon,
a game I play with my daughter), and that phrase has, for better or for
worse, stuck. My talk was on how to be banned from an open source project,
and I swore entirely too much. It was a nice release, however, as I try to
be politic in public usually, and sometimes just need to rant.
I got to see a ton of old and new friends alike while there -- former
Zenders Mike Naberezny and
Paul M. Jones,
Keith Casey,
Matthew Turland,
Ivo
and a bunch of the ibuildings crew, Pollita (sorry, I have to stop linking
everyone now...), Sebastian... basically, a ton of the usual suspects. I
also met a lot of new people, many of them introducing themselves as ZF
users; I appreciate all of you introducing yourselves, as you are
the reason I code.
The following Monday, 17 November 2008, we released Zend Framework 1.7.0,
timed to coincide with the the Adobe MAX conference, as AMF support was our
major story for the release. Zend_Amf has generated tremendous
buzz in both the PHP and Flash/Flex communities, due to the simplicity and
robustness of its design. This release also marked the first release to
include the extras repository -- which now ships with community-contributed
JQuery support.
December
Chris Shiflett and
Sean Coates organized this year's
PHP Advent Calendar,
and solicited entries from a select group of PHP community members a week in
advance. I didn't volunteer to contribute for the first week, but managed to
get mine in on the first day... only to see it appear the very next.
Hopefuly, my guide to responsible contributions will help those wondering
how to report and/or fix bugs in open source projects.
I started blogging more, in part due to more free time in the evenings (it's
nice when the kids go to bed at a reasonable hour!), and in part due to
finally putting a number of ideas into a blogging "backlog" so that I could
pick up and post when I had time. From this, I added an entry on
mumbles/irssi integration, autocompletion with ZF and Dojo, created a simple
pubsub implementation for PHP, and started a series of posts on how to
architect models (and some concrete tips for doing so). I have more posts in
December than I have in several other months combined.
Reflection
This past year, I became much more involved with both the Zend Framework and
greater PHP communities, and feel I have enriched my life with many
wonderful new friends -- some local, some global. I feel truly fortunate to
be working in a job I love, contributing to a project that helps others do
the jobs they love, and part of such an accepting and vibrant group of
people.
Looking back, I travelled less, though because most of it was in a five
month period, it felt like more. On that note, I vow never to do back to
back trips across the big pond, as it was incredibly exhausting.
Looking ahead to 2009
I have several things to look forward to already in 2009. I'll be
continuing my series of posts on models. In February, I will have an article
published in a print magazine for the first tiem. I'll be speaking at PHP
Quebec in March, presenting two sessions and sitting in on a panel. I hope
to speak at several other conferences, and potentially write more articles
and tutorials. Overall, I want to contribute more to the ecosystem of best
practices in PHP, particularly in the areas of testing and deployment
strategies.
I hope this post finds you in good health and spirits, and that you
have a fantastic start to the new year!
