PHP Extensions, why and what?

Excellent talk, very informative and very funny! Glad to see Derick also admitted that error handling when using Xdebug and SOAP extensions at the same time can be “problematic” :-)

As I've been struggling with writing an extension recently, and had been planning to do more in the future (preferably with a lot less struggling), Derick's talk gave a few good pointers on where to look for gauidance, and on just what is and isn't possible. It's still not going to be an easy task, given the lack of documentation on how to actually set about it... but at least I have a few ideas on how to overcome some of the problems that I've encountered (or at least how to look for solutions) but extension writing will remain something of a "black art" until there's more useful documentation available.

Useful introduction to PHP internals even for someone who might not have any plans or skills to develop an extension but would like to have an idea what's under the hood!

As always, Dericks' delivery was informative, educational and entertaining. Loved it!

It's always worth making space in your conference to see what Derek has to say; so many interesting insights from someone very much on the inside of the PHP ecosystem.

I found this talk the most insightful of all that I went to. I enjoyed learning about the execution path of php and having a basic overview of how extensions such as apc improve the technology.

As always an interesting and informative talk excellently delivered.

While the talk mainly covered extensions I really enjoyed how Derick used this as a gateway into some of the internals of PHP itself. I believe there were probably two decent talk's worth of material in what he covered - one on the internals of PHP and one going into more detail about how to actually write an extension with c code, examples, pointers to the most useful macros etc. I suspect he could even cover a third talk purely on the politics of PHP!

A good primer on the topic. Was hoping for some code samples, or some more explicit hints towards how to write extensions (e.g. a more in-depth explanation of macros) - perhaps would make a good session for the tutorial day in future? The speaker was great as usual, the talk was paced well.

A highly interesting presentation and has I known more about extensions a few years back I could have used them to improve a couple of the system I have worked on 10 fold.

Good talk, although as always I wanted it to be more technical. Unfortunately the topic is very difficult and lacks of official resources/documentation. Didn't really learn anything new, but it was a good overview of "php extensions" world for the people that never had a chance to dig into it. Well delivered, engaging and overall interesting.

Not that now I'm eager to write my own extension for PHP but for sure a very well presented and organised talk. I agree with Robert Goldsmith, Derick could have covered easily up to three different talks elaborating a bit further the material proposed.
Anyway I liked the way he left the code itself alone in the dark focusing instead more about the "what and why" or maybe "when and why" I would say, exposing especially what you should pay attention to when writing an extension rather than how to write them.
Also, the 200 and count presence as speaker for Derick helped to crown this talk as one of my favourite along my three days of attendance.

Amazing talk. If only I had my environment set up so I can play along (Im in windows so I had other steps that I had to take) Really dug down into what it takes to build PHP extensions. I hope next year it can be an all day so we can get down into more internals.