Longhorn PHP 2025
23 - 25 Oct 2025 at Holiday Inn Austin Midtown

The first Law of Ecology: you can never merely do one thing. Actions have side-effects. In this session, we'll explore how changes in software design can have unexpected, profound impacts. In this story-based session, I'll reference both popular and little-known "laws" of computing and life. I'll show how to use these laws to write better software. This session will give you new mental models for thinking about the tradeoffs we make in software...and life.

Developers entering the industry often start by learning frameworks instead of languages. Similarly, senior developers are becoming increasingly reliant on these abstraction layers. And it is true, these layers enable us to build impressive software quickly (most of the time, though sometimes we end up fighting the framework). However, this increased speed comes at a cost: additional complexity and a shrinking pool of deep expertise. By not understanding the layer beneath, we risk implementing it poorly at the layer above, wasting valuable CPU cycles. The maintenance of these abstractions is often left to a few individuals, creating potential bottlenecks and increasing the risk to the ecosystem's resilience and continuity. Let's become Software Developers again!

What if we approached software development the way classical musicians approach learning a piece of music? This talk draws from my thousands of hours in the practice room and applies it to how we work in a codebase, breaking down how intention, structure, and self-awareness can help developers work more effectively, avoid burnout, and build confidence. Whether you're learning a new language or just tired of the grind, you can gain wisdom from the musicians' approach.

Open source software is ubiquitous. We fought for its acceptance, and we won. So, why doesn't it feel that way? Why does the win feel so hollow? With many projects foregoing traditional open source licenses for "source-available" licenses, is open source dead? Are we in a post-open source era? To find out how we got here, let's look back to the beginnings of the free software movement to discover what made it a movement and not a corporate strategy. We'll consider whether open source has exchanged its jeans and t-shirt in favor of khakis and blue, button-up shirt. More importantly, we'll examine whether this is a greater cultural phenomenon, what it means for the future of software development, and how we can save open source.