It has never been easier to find free resources online to help you become a better developer, but the huge amount of content available makes hard to find content that really stands out from the rest. Because of that, I’ve taken the time to put together a small selection of conference talks that I consider to be relevant for a PHP developer in 2019.
I hope you’ll find some of the videos interesting, if there is anything you think I should add, please let me know on Twitter and I’ll happily consider including it!
On clean code, refactoring and simplifying complexity
Adam Wathan is a well known speaker in the Laravel community and most of his talks are super informative and great to watch if you care about how to write cleaner, more maintainable code. I’ve picked three of his talks because I like him so much.
Chasing “Perfect” by Adam Wathan
Cruddy by Design by Adam Wathan
Resisting Complexity by Adam Wathan
Sandi Metz gives a super in-depth theoretical explaination about code smells and refactoring and offer practical examples on how to overcome some common pitfalls.
Get a Whiff of This by Sandi Metz
On design patterns
Colin Decarlo offers a very practical overview of common design patterns (Adapter Pattern, Strategy Pattern and Factory Pattern) and how to use them.
Design patterns on Laravel by Colin Decarlo
On SOLID principles
There are many talks about SOLID principles (there is for example a great series of paid videos in Laracasts about this topic) but I’ve found this one by Katerina Trajchevska to be very digestable.
Becoming a better developer by using the SOLID design principles by Katerina Trajchevska
On the cost of building software
In this talk, Konstantin Kudryashov speaks about the different types of costs behind building a software project and how to optimize for all of them.
Min-maxing Software Costs by Konstantin Kudryashov
On career advice
Trisha Gee explains in a talk loaded with information how can you advance your career as developer, whether you’re tying to find your dream job or get a promotion or a raise), and what are the skills that help you get there.
Career Advice for Programmers by Trisha Gee
On becoming a tech lead
I feel so identified by this talk by Pascal de Vink. From his talk, it seems we have both went through a similar career path and it’s conforting to see that I’m not the only one making a lot of mistakes along the way :)
Things I Was Unprepared For As A Lead Developer by Pascal de Vink