/dev/hell

EPISODE DOS EQUIS! Our 20th show goes out to all the haters. IN YOUR FACE HATERS. This week we talk about how Chris sucks at cooking food, which segues nicely into a discussion of the True North PHP conference that he’s co-organizing in Toronto in November. Thankfully he will not be catering the event himself. We also talk about Ed’s move from doing PHP to Python for day-to-day work, and the plusses and minuses he’s encountered during the transition. If you’re a Superfriend, you’ll do these things: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 35.4MB, 1:21:40) Links and Notes True North PHP php2python Hyperpolyglot Cobra Language Argparse Python lib

After some downtime spent taking mental reps, Chris and Ed are back with a vengeance for one of our best shows. Joining us is Chris Shiflett, PHP fellow and security expert. They talk about how we interact with non-techie members of dev teams, what they’re doing with Node, the state of the Canadian soccer program, heavy vs lightweight frameworks, tribalism in programming communities, and the importance of balancing work with life. We also talk to Chris Shiflett about his role as co-founder of Brooklyn Beta, and what they’re trying to accomplish with the conference. If you’re more animal than man, you’ll do these things: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 42.1MB, 1:37:04) Links and Notes “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the d

This week on /dev/hell is “let’s talk about arguments Chris got into on Twitter” week. Most of the discussion revolves around how we interact with users, both developer-types and average joes. If you value humanity, you’ll do these things: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 25.3MB, 57:49) Links Ed forgot to save the notes. Welp.

This week on /dev/hell we talk about mentoring. Chris discusses his experiences taking a young up-and-comer under his wing, and we talk about the PHP Mentoring project. Then we babble about Aspen, an interesting, non-traditional Python web framework. Good and bad stuff in PHP gets knocked around again. Finally, Ed talks about fixing his dryer and yells at the audience. If you love freedom, you’ll do these things: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 31.9MB, 1:16) Links PHP Mentoring Aspen.io PHP: The Good Parts Maytag Dryer Disassembly

After a couple weeks off, we get back into the profane swing of things. We kick off with alittle followup on the previous episode on mental illness, but decide to quit bumming everybody out by moving on to cool tech stuff. Ed talks a little about Reaper, a new digital audio workstation he’s using to do production on the podcast. Then we chat about remote pair programming with browser-based editors like Cloud9. Finally we cover Chris' experiences at Lonestar PHP, and what each of us gets out of speaking at conferences. If you care about us, you’ll do these things: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 26.6MB, 58:17) Links Reaper Cloud9 Ares SubEthaEdit Lonestar PHP

On today’s Very Special Episode of /dev/hell, we talk about Ed’s struggles with depression and anxiety, and how it’s impacted him as a member of the open source community. Yeah, we know, total buzzkill, but this is important stuff. We hope that by talking about it, folks with similar issues will be more likely to seek help. We’d really like to hear from you about this topic. You can leave us a comment, or send us a link & we’ll collect the responses. Here’s your homework for this week, suckas: Check out our sponsors, Engine Yard and WonderNetwork Follow us on Twitter here. Rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 40.5MB, 1:31) Links Generalized Anxiety Disorder Major depression Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors Dave Duerson Junior Seau Seasonal Affective Disorder Light therapy Impostor Syndrome

This week we’re joined by Justin Searls, JavaScript developer and JS testing EXPERT. We talk lots about building and testing “fat” browser apps, particularly about best practices and different testing approaches. After a while Chris felt bad and told us to shut up. This was the first podcast we broadcast live while recording. Big ups to WonderNetwork for providing the streaming bandwidth, and Engine Yard for sponsoring the podcast. Keep an eye on the @dev_hell Twitter account for info on our next live stream. If you love us, you will do these things: You should follow us on Twitter here. You should rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 33.1MB, 1:16) Notes TestDouble training.gaslightsoftware.com Backbone Idiomatic JS Require.js Jasmine Cucumber Behat Michael Feathers book on working with legacy code Rails asset pipeline Dieter for Clojure Kohana Assets Assetic Webassets for Python Drumkit.js by Chris Powers QUnit Searls on GitHub https://github.com/searls/jasmine

This episode was recorded at the tek12 uncon in front of a live studio audience. We talk about pair programming, what we’d recommend to folks who want to start programming, the PHP-FIG & PSRs, and our favorite events from tek12. Also Chris punched Ed a couple times. It hurt. Video hosting for this episode is provided by WonderNetwork, who generate some really cool ping data. This was lots of fun, and we want to thank all the folks who came out and participated. Extra special big thanks to Michelangelo Van Dam for lending us his audio recording hardware, and Cal Evans for recording the video! Please do this so we don’t have to burn you alive: You should follow us on Twitter here. You should rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 42.4MB, 1:07) Watch Watch now (MP4 Video, 1.1GB, 1:07) Notes tek12 Remote Pair Programming blog PHP-FIG discussion group PHP-FIG standards repo WonderNetwork

Through a haze of jägerbombs and extreme fatigue, we were able to shovel out another pile of podcast for your listening enjoyment. Chris says it’s episode 11 when it’s actually episode 12, but hey! This week we talk about: Apple’s magical devices, and what’s holding back Android from being comparable How Rackspace completely and repeatedly dropped the ball Fun times with Python, and the value of defining guiding principles in an open source project Here’s your homework for this week: You should follow us on Twitter here. You should rate us on iTunes here Listen Download now (MP3, 45.8MB, 1:31) Links Our buddy Brian Deshong tek12 Getting Started with Python on Heroku/Cedar pip virtualenv If it’s gonna be that kinda party… Apps Chris uses on his iPad for code reviews: Join.me, Teamspeak Chris' Flask app on github (lies I told my kid)

This time out we are blessed by the presence of Joël Perras, PHP developer extraordinaire and Fictive Kin brosef of Ed. We explore Joël’s rags-to-riches story: a young academic schlepping coffee and 44oz soft drinks at a gas station, where he’s discovered by a grizzled dev team manager in need of Java skills. From there it’s been a whirlwind of web sites, programming languages, and more ops than you can shake a stick at. Actually I was sleepy and wasn’t really listening for the first half-hour. I bet it’s good though. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 42.9MB, 1:31) Links Joël on Twitter Vim Adventures MATLAB Flask Photos from OINK-PUG Meetup on April 19, 2012 VirtualBox Vagrant Engine Yard blog post on Vagrant Puppet Sublime Text 2 CakePHP Lithium

No guest would permit themselves to be shamed in the typical /dev/hell manner this week, so this time around you’re stuck with the gruesome twosome. We hit on a few topical topics in this episode, including a dude scoring Internet Ego Points for saying PHP sucks (really?), the “technology preview” of Meteor (no, not that Meteor), and an Important Startup Guy who says that remote working is baaaaaaad. Plus we say “horseshit” a lot. Thanks again to our awesome sponsor for this episode Engine Yard. You’re the most specialist. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 43.2MB, 1:23) Links Engine Yard encourages you to drink a lot at web dev conferences I’m not linking to that ranty “PHP sucks” post. Google it. A couple decent response articles from Anthony Ferrara and Brandon Savage, though. OINK-PUG Meetup on April 19, 2012 WhiskyWeb Meteor Herp Derp Remote Working Is Bad

This episode had us diving into the real-time web with Nathan Fritz, the Chief Architect for &yet, and the man who has foolishly agreed to help Chris learn the finer points of Node.js. You can just hear the excitement in all our voices as we discuss Web 3.14159 aka the Real Time Web. Nathan is one smart motherfucker so be prepared to have lots of knowledge exploded into your brain. Nathan also discusses his previous life as a PHP guy, what XMPP is all about, and his book-in-progress on Lua scripting in Redis. Thanks again to our awesome sponsor for this episode Engine Yard. Don’t worry, we’ll spend your sponsorship money wisely. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 43.2MB, 1:23) Links Engine Yard is a most-delightful PaaS company and happy sponsor of this episode Lua is supported as a scripting language in Redis Thoonk Nathan learned to hate a certain subset of programmers via his work on an XMPP library he wrote in PHP

First off, we now have a sponsor for the podcast: Engine Yard. This is something they will surely regret after listening to this episode. We started off with the idea of talking about technologies we wish we had time to play with. Ed was talking about his attempts at exploring Clojure, and how it’s likely he’ll be using Python for work in the near future. This leads into a discussion of what attracts us to certain languages and technologies, and when to try to work a personal interest in to your day job. Then Chris talks about how he will likely mess around with evented stuff like Node.js or Twisted for his next book about HTTP APIs or whatever. We also go off on a discussion about HTPC stuff. I can’t really remember how we got there. In reality we mostly bullshitted through the whole thing, and made fun of Engine Yard a bunch. Hopefully they know that they have awesome products and don’t hate us now. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly.

This week the gruesome twosome talk about working remotely: the tools you need to make it work the problems of being the Remote Guy when everyone else is local techniques for staying focused being a goddamn adult and GTTFD why a company should invest the time in being remote-friendly Chris also talks a bit about his new gig at Kaplan, where he’ll surely make grown men cry. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @dev_hell or harass Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 37.5MB, 1:13) Links Kaplan Professional Schools Self Control for Ubuntu and OS X

Suffragettes rejoice because we have our first female guest. Selena Deckelmann bullied her way onto the show to talk with us about Postgres, her lack of real Perl skills, Open Source Bridge and women in open source and technology in general. She also proved that cheap laughs are always possible by picking on Canadians. Also, how awesome it is that she shares a birthday with a famous NFL player. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter or harass Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 65MB, 1:45) Links Selena’s company is working on Checkmarkable Postgres Jifty Catalyst Batman.js Open Source Bridge Where meritocracy fails Ickey Woods “What’s up with the mounties”

In our fifth episode we speak to our first ever guest Brian Moon, ancient PHP elder of dealnews and someone who has probably forgotten more about PHP than our two hosts will ever know. Chris admires his stamina for staying with the same employer for 14 years and counting. In this episode we talk about dealnews, how they use PHP (and how they also use it in some interesting ways), and his thoughts on issues like concurrency and evented systems. We also cover features of PHP that allowed for some major changes and approaches they used in the code base for the site. Feel free to hit us up on Twitter or harras Ed and Chris directly. Download now (MP3, 41MB, 1:14:37) Links Node.js Evented programming in PHP Gearman Brian’s customized native Gearman library Brian’s Gearman Manager Squid Varnish Building PHP extension

Update: Our first posting of this episode had a glitch in it around 14:50. It should be fixed now. If you already have the episode, you should re-download it. Our fourth episode is all ready for your listening pleasure. In this exciting episode we focus on “The Conference Experience” and discuss why programming conferences are so important to developers. Chris talks about why CodeMash was so awesome and the awesome talks full of awesomeness that he attended. Ed talks about his own experiences with speaking and attending conferences, complete with a total derail by Chris on why a certain conference rubbed him the wrong way. Oh yeah, you also find out our opinions on what constitutes a “well-written PHP application”. I’m sure you will be surprised by our answers. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can always hit us up on Twitter where we love to read what you say and promptly ignore it or privately mock it. Download now (MP3, 51MB, 1:20:18) Links Capistrano Phing Wh

Fresh off our holiday break, we’re back with our longest show yet. We talk about Chris' new book The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications, including his experiences self-publishing with Leanpub. Chris also explains how he fears no precipitation on his excursions to the Codemash conference in Ohio. Then Ed talks about the thought process that lead to his latest shit-stirring blog post “The MicroPHP Manifesto.” Ed may or may not begin crying openly. Finally, we discuss when it might be necessary to trash your existing application and rewrite it. Download now (MP3, 60MB, 1:40:33) Links The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications Refactoring Legacy Applications Using CakePHP The Codemash Conference Wisconsin Dells The MicroPHP Manifesto – web site Slim Moontoast FictiveKin

Doing something the second time is always the toughest, but we somehow managed to get our act together for a second episode of “Development Hell”. Our hosts Chris and Ed got together and discussed whatever was on their minds that night. Thanks to Ed for doing a masterful job of editing the results of using my crappy headset for the conversation. Summary of the show: Git and git workflows Node.js vs. Twisted/Tornado How being opinionated and objective about a topic is impossible Building your online brand Download now (MP3, 40MB, 1:12:50) Links The Git branching workflow that Chris uses at work Before the rise of Github you could host your own Git repos Some thoughts on Node.js vs. Twister/Tornado

Listen to a couple old dudes complain that they don’t like PHP anymore. Yes, I know, this sounds pretty compelling. Feel free to hit either of us up on Twitter Download now (MP3, 43MB, 01:26:19) Links Intro/outro music is Entombed’s “Out of Hand” from Wolverine Blues PUT Method Support