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 SitePoint PHP blog has posted a book review of a book bundle from the "Grumpy Programmer" (aka Chris Hartjes) with content about testing - how to test, what to test and creating testable applications.

After having gotten some constructive feedback regarding my testing practices on the basic TDD in your new PHP package tutorial, I decided to read Chris Hartjes “Grumpy Testing Bundle”, a set of two books consisting of The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide To Building Testable PHP Applications and The Grumpy Programmer’s PHPUnit Cookbook. It was my hope that those books will prevent me from using the shoddy practices I displayed in that original post and which originally prompted Matthew Weier O’Phinney’s critique. In this post, I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned, and how much this helped me, if at all.

He breaks down the bundle and talks about each of the two books separately, pointing out places he thought were most useful and others where he felt it needed updates/more clarification. He includes examples of some of the code shared in the books as illustrations and what kind of overall rating he gives it (in elePHPants naturally).

NetTuts.com has posted an interview they've done with Chris Hartjes (aka "The Grumpy Programmer") about his stance on testing in PHP applications and some of his background as a developer.

Questions from Jeffery Way include:

• You recently self-published “The Grumpy Programmer’s Guide to Building Testable Applications.” What made you want to write this specific title?
• In your opinion, what is the single biggest advantage to testing your applications?
• Testing applications is a bit odd, in that, overall, the idea is a simple one. [...] Was there a specific article or video that suddenly made you “get” it all those years ago?
• What are your thoughts on the vitriol toward PHP lately - referring to various viral blog posts on the subject? Is it warranted?

You can find out more about Chris' book here or follow him on Twitter or his blog.