Online Boot Camp for Modernizing PHP Legacy Applications

Contents

Introduction

The Book: Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP

The Online Bootcamp

When and How to Attend the Training Course

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Introduction

We have all had to deal with legacy code at some point, and we know what a burden it can be. You end up suffering with terrible stress and uncertainty each time you try to fix a bug, because global variables and deep include-file structures mean that changing a bit of code "over here" causes something else "over there" to break. Trying to add a feature always takes much longer than it should, and only seems to add more technical debt to the system.

It sure would be nice if there was some way to reduce all that technical debt, but every time you try, it ends up being an exercise in frustration. Everything seems to depend on everything else, and it feels impossible to tease apart the different layers. It's demoralizing. Every day you feel a little more ready to just give up.

The Book: Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP

The thing is, your work life with legacy code does not have to stay that way. I've had the opportunity to modernize lots of older applications, and have consolidated my processes and techniques into a book: Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP. The result is a step-by-step description of how to improve even the worst legacy PHP code, one little bit a time, and keep the system running all the while.

For some people, though, reading a book might not be enough. Sometimes it is a lot easier to when someone goes over the entire approach with you from beginning to end, so you can quickly understand the overarching goals and principles.

The Online Bootcamp

With that in mind, I have put together an online weekend "boot camp" that goes over the whole modernizing process from start to finish. During the camp, I will lead you through lecture and "live" coding examples, starting with how to implement an autoloader, through how to separate the concerns of the application and write unit tests, and finishing with how to implement a front controller and dependency injection container.

After that end-to-end study of all the steps involved, you should be able to jump-start your own modernizing project much more easily. After modernizing, it will be easier for you to fix bugs, and you will be able to add features more quickly. You'll even have unit tests so that you'll find out immediately if anything breaks! Modernizing your legacy application will make work life a lot more enjoyable and productive.

When and How to Attend the Training Course

The two-day boot camp will be on Sat 11 July and Sun 12 July. Each day runs from 12 noon to 4pm (US Central Daylight). With your ticket to attend the boot camp, you get:

• Two days of online boot camp, four hours each
• A review the entire modernization process from beginning to end
• With a bonus recording of the camp
• For $399

This might be the only time I lead this kind of boot camp, so get your ticket while there are still seats available!

Bio

Paul M. Jones is an internationally recognized PHP expert, working in that language since 1999, and programming in general since 1983. As the author of Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP and Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP, Paul takes a special interest in high-quality, high-maintainability coding practices. His leadership on the Aura for PHP and Radar projects reflects this interest, along with his white paper on the Action-Domain-Responder pattern.

Paul is a voting member of the PHP Framework Interoperability Group, and was the driving force behind the PSR-1 Coding Standard, PSR-2 Style Guide, and PSR-4 Autoloader recommendations. He was one of the first elected members of the PEAR Project. He was also a member of the Zend PHP 5.3 Certification education advisory board, and wrote some of the questions on that test.