PHP TEK 2025
20 - 22 May 2025 at Sheraton O'Hare Suites

It made a strong argument for using value objects

I was sitting in the back (looking for an outlet, not your fault) but the font size was a little small in many of the slides. Good content though. I hadn't considered the some of the techniques late in the slide, I took away some new ideas. I can't wait for us to upgrade to 8.4 for property hooks 👍🏻

Still a great talk after 2 years

I use enums heavily for rest API validation (and API doc generation)

Great job!

Great concept to take a coding challenge to show off how fast you can make PHP, not relying on frameworks but just using the core language itself. The profiler screenshots were helpful too in demonstrating how small function calls and code flows could make a huge difference.

Value objects took me a long time to understand, mostly because I originally learned PHP using associative arrays for passing ALL data at all times. Understanding how to create my own types and leverage typed wrappers over primitive values changed the way I wrote code and opened the door to both other languages (i.e. Scala and Go) with stronger typing systems and to strictly-typed PHP. Steve's presentation of the concept helps make value objects incredibly approachable for all levels of engineers and is the talk I wish I'd seen years ago when I was first learning (and failing to understand) object-oriented programming.

Taking the time to cover testing also helps anyone just now embarking on this journey to avoid the ever-present footguns that make OOP difficult even for tenured/experienced engineers.

I love the stewardship mental model, it's one I've tried to maintain at work for a long time now after an early mentor in my career exposed me to it. It's one I wish was more commonly advocated for in the industry, and Tim did so superbly!

A very zen view but one that resonates with me