Hands on PHP memory usage

I found this workshop very informative; I now have a much clearer grasp of how PHP allocates memory, and of the overall role of the Zend Memory Manager.

The only hiccup was with an attendee who brought a 32-bit system and could not install the 64-bit VM. However, Julien walked us through completing each exercise on the display, so I don't think anyone was unable to follow along and learn something.

Although always a very interesting topic, most of the stuff was the same as at the PHPBenelux conference talk. My hopes were on a more hands-on tutorial. Finding a memory leak, KCacheGrind best practices, pittfalls with using foreach, etc. So for me it was a bit disappointing.

The tutorial could also could have been better prepared. Thijs did a very good job with that on his Varnish tutorial. Just put the stuff online and let the conference guys email the instructions to get it all up and running before attending the tutorial.

Pro: good topic, lots of information, good as an introduction
Cons: not a very good preparation, I expected more hands-on

Having a 32-bit machine I was unable to install the VM.
But it had no negative effect on the talk.
Julien was very clear and informative about virtual memory, tools to monitor it, etc.
I have learned a lot about memory usage by PHP from this talk.

Learned a lot. Julien proves he knows everything about the topic. All tough it was more some form of an extented talk instead of a tutorial, I found it very interesting.

A word of advice: make sure the attendees have the VM box on forehand. The wifi network is something you can't rely on.

And thanks for the tip of the leak in the new relic stuff. That explains why my server every now and then needs a reboot because of no free mem.

Although having a 64 bit pc, I also had problems with running the VM. Trying to cure these cost my quite some time, during which I was not really able to focus on Juliens explanation - untill I finally gave up. My recommendation would be to make this VM available some days before the talk, so everybody can already see if it works on their pc and if not take some time to cure this.

The talk did learn me a lot more about memory usage in general and especially PHP. It was good to see the internal workings of ZendMemory. However for my feeling the most interesting stuff came at the end of the talk, which we had to go through very quickly. I would suggest making the general memory part a bit shorter and diving faster into the PHP parts.