7PHP.com has returned with a new addition to their series interviewing members of the PHP community. In their latest interview they talk with Giorgio Sironi, a well-known developer in the PHP community.

This is the #40th set of PHP Interviews to help aspiring PHP developers & PHP fans alike to get inspired by listening from those PHP guys who are already highly involved into the PHP Ocean and being ‘there’ taming the waves, surfing better than ever to make themselves an awesome PHP Expert both in their own eyes (for self-accomplishment) and for the PHP Community.

On the other side, this is an opportunity for new PHPers to get to know their “PHP Elders“. I hope you will derive as much fun to read my interviews as I’m having by interviewing those #PHPantastic guys.

In the interview Giorgio answers questions about:

• how he got started with PHP
• what his common stack looks like
• opinions on the good/bad parts of PHP
• the best PHP book he's read
• the best way for people to get started with PHP
• recommended tools and frameworks

...and many others. Be sure to check out the full interview for answers to these and other questions!

On the 7PHP.com site Khayrattee Wasseem has posted an interview he recently had with a member of the PHP community and lead on the Zend Framework/Zend Expressive projects: Matthew Weier O'Phinney.

This is the #39th set of PHP Interview to help aspiring PHP developers & PHP fans alike to get inspired by listening from those PHP guys who are already highly involved into the PHP Ocean and being ‘there’ taming the waves, surfing better than ever to make themselves an awesome PHP Expert both in their own eyes (for self-accomplishment) and for the PHP Community.

On the other side, this is an opportunity for new PHPers to get to know their “PHP Elders“. I hope you will derive as much fun to read my interviews as I’m having by interviewing those #PHPantastic guys.

He starts in with a brief introduction of Matthew before getting into the Q&A. Matthew answers questions about:

• his own background
• the "components" that make up Zend Framework
• their PHP 7.2 compatibility goals
• the volunteers that work with Zend on maintaining the framework
• the release process for the framework
• monolithic frameworks
• Zend Expressive v3

You can check out all of Matthew's answers to these and more questions in the full post.

On the 7PHP.com site there's a new interview posted in their "It's the Tools Talking" series , this time with Chris Hartjes a.k.a. the "Grumpy Programmer". In the interview Khayrattee Wasseem asks Chris about some of his "tools of the trade" he uses in his everyday work.

In this #2nd edition, I’m overwhelmed but also quite ‘on my guard‘ as I talk with The Grumpy PHP Programmer aka Chris Hartjes – the #unitTesting rockstar of our beloved PHP Community. If you don’t know Chris, I’ll tell you in one line: “He’s The Eric Cantona of Manchester United” (full stop). Never heard of Cantona as well? Tough luck you’ve been too much focused on Go Pokémon GO (huh?), have a read about The Rockstar Unit Testing Evangelist Chris in this interview which I did with him back on the 19th Jan 2012 – yup that long time ago, but equally evergreen in everything! ????

In the interview Chris answers questions about:

• himself and his involvement in the PHP community
• what his workstation is like
• what OS/VM software he uses
• tools he uses for documentation, code beautification and time management

He ends the interview talking about two "community tools" he sees as the most important in the PHP ecosystem right now: Composer and Twitter (well, the community of PHP developers there).

The 7PHP.com site is back with their first interview with a member of the PHP community in 2016. In this latest article Phil Sturgeon answers some questions from Khayrattee about his background, how is 2015 was and what he sees coming for the PHP community in 2016.

A little more than over 2 years ago (in June 2013), I did my 34th 7PHP interview with a young dynamic (can very much say as explosive as a dynamite as well – explosive in the good sense) named as Phil Sturgeon. I still remember at that time while I hit the “publish” button and tweeted above that interview, I unconsciously wrote Phil Surgeon instead of Sturgeon. We had a good twitter moment. Time flies and in Feb 2015, I was even able to meet Phil in person at SunshinePHP Conference in Miami.

Phil answers questions about his previous year (2015) and how the PHP community helped him through some issues he had between 2014 and early 2015. He also shares his thoughts on the current state of the PHP community and language. He mentions the difficulties happening around the PHP-FIG group and some of his predictions and advice for the PHP community in the coming year.

The 7PHP.com site has posted another in its series of spotlights on people and happenings in the PHP community. In this latest edition he talks with Cal Evans about the latest Day Camp 4 Developers evening happening Friday, September 18th: "Debugging Beyond var_dump()".

Day Camp 4 Developers is a virtual ‘mini’ PHP conference. Meaning you can watch in realtime 5 awesome speakers, talking about some cool quality stuffs, while you are comfortably seated on your sofa with your snacks and beverages. [...] It’s a new week on our PHP Calendar, specially in our Virtual PHP calendar – it’s THE week for DC4D which will be held on this upcoming Friday 18th Sept 2015 – see it all here, click! One very important thing to know, DC4D is heartily brought forward by our PHP Icon – the one and only Mr Cal Evans, together with his wife, The Lovely & Talented Kathy.

Cal answers questions about the event including:

• How it all started
• How he finds the speakers for the theme for each event
• Some of the things he's learned from putting on the event

The interview also includes a bonus Q&A with one of the speakers, Joshua Thijssen. They talk about Joshua's motivation behind the talk, one things that people will learn from it and what he sees as the benefit of a live presentation vs recorded.

In another in their series of interviews about people and things happening in the PHP community, the 7php.com site has posted a sneak peak of the Pacific Northwest PHP Conference and interviews one of the organizers, Jeremy Lindblom.

Khayrattee Wasseem talks with Jeremy about some of his work with the Seattle PHP User Group and where he'll be working in the near future (the Engrade team at McGraw-Hill Education). He also answers questions about:

• What the conference is about and when it was first launched
• Where the idea came from and what some of the objectives are
• How the feedback has been so far
• Who else has been on the team helping organize the event (and provided advice)
• How they're handing sponsors and what challenges came around that

Jeremy also shares a message to thinking about attending the conference:

I honestly believe that everyone who attends, both in person and online is going to have a good experience, learn new things, and make new friends. My hope is that you will feel the strength of the PHP community and have a desire to contribute back to it afterwards.

On the 7PHP.com site Khayrettee Wasseem has posted a new interview with Ben Ramsey about the recent anniversary of the PHP language - "20 Years of PHP".

This is the 2nd serie of our #20YearsOfPHP ! YES $this->year[‘2015′] needs to be over-brimmed with lots and lots of love and happiness to celebrate this amazing unique moment. All that PHP has achieved today, is the hard work of myriads of PHP rockstar from all over the world. It’s also because of a super-fantastic group (they know who they are!) of dedicated people who are doing their utmost best to keep shaping, giving consistence to and above all safeguarding the magical community that is The PHP Community! [...] Here over 7PHP, I’m taking this a step further by interviewing some of the PHP rockstars about what they have to say about #20YearsOfPHP

In the interview Ben answers questions about some of his own experience in the PHP community, lessons he's learned over the years, why he thinks PHP has survived so long and his advice to new PHPers just starting out.

The 7PHP.com site has posted their latest PHP community interview. This time it's with a group from the Las Vegas PHP User Group about their community and group. The interview talks to Adam Englander, one of the organizers of the group.

This is the #4th set of ‘Know Thy PHP Usergroup‘ in an attempt to create more awareness of: what is $this PHP UG about + get to know the leaders/Founders/Community behind it and what is a PHP User Group in general to personally know all the PHP user groups Around The World – that excites me and I hope you too! This concept is also a good opportunity for new #elePHPants to know about PHP UGs. [...] The Las Vegas PHP Users Group is a group dedicated to PHP developers learning from and teaching each other. [...] All skill levels are sought after. If you are looking to teach, learn, network, or just mingle, join the group and participate on the adventure.

They cover a lot of topics about the group including things like:

• How the group started
• How often they meet
• What was their largest meeting attendance
• Challenges in finding sponsors
• How it's different than other user groups

Check out the full interview for the answers to these and other interesting questions.

The 7PHP.com site has a new community spotlight posted today, focusing in on Michelangelo van Dam and providing his "VIP profile" (links to information about him).

Links for Michelangolo include:

• His own 7PHP interview
• His thoughts on PHPWomen
• His comments about unconferences
• His blog, Twitter and business links.

There's also several quotes included in the post about Michelangelo from other members of the community.

On the 7PHP.com site today Khayrattee Wassem has posted the latest in his PHP community interview series. This time it's with Josh Lockhart, creator of the Slim framework, talking about his experiences as a developer and in working on the open source project. This time the focus is more on the framework than Josh himself, though.

Last time, I’ve introduced the Captain America of The PHP Ecosystem to you, aka Josh Lockhart, via a 7PHP ‘PHP Interview series to help drive thy PHP aspirations‘. This time we go a little bit further with Josh to find out ‘as much as we can‘ about his little masterpiece, I named Slim Framework – the PHP micro framework. Let’s get started..

Josh answers questions about:

• How the framework got started and what was the motivation behind it
• What need the project tries to solve
• Why someone might choose Slim over other frameworks
• How many developers are involved in the project
• What's coming in Slim v3

There's lots more too, so be sure to check out the full post for the answers to these and other interesting (and enlightening) questions.