PHPBenelux Meetup February
24 Feb 2015 at MCS

It love to give this talk a 4-star rating, but honestly I cannot.

I love the idea behind this talk: comparing composer to other package managing tools.

In reality the comparison ended after 5 minutes and turned into a "tricks & tips in Composer" talk. Don't get me wrong: I liked the tricks & tips. But this wasn't really the way I expected this talk to go.

The tips & tricks focus primarily on 2 items. Agreed, they're important, but I felt they dominated the talk and kept being repeated over and over again. Repetition can also be a good thing, so in that respect, the message definitely came across.

So content wise it wasn't bad at all, but deviated from the initial scope. To improve this talk, you should compare more or just make another talk out of it.

Another issue that stops me from giving this one a 4-star rating is the delivery: I was under the impression that you didn't practice the talk very well. The fact that you hesitated and got lost for words numerous times made it difficult to focus on the underlying message. You also seemed to struggle with some English expressions.

However: I'd love to see an improved version of this talk. This means: more comparisons, better preparation, a smoother presentation style, more variety in the tips & tricks. And most importantly: meet audience expectations based on the talk outline/abstract/title.

Great talk about a not-so-sexy subject. This presentation proves that long-lived codebases can remain manageable and interesting if you approach it with the require precautions.

I also loved the presentation style. One tiny remark: you sometimes start giggling just before you're about to tell a clever joke. Try to avoid that and laugh after you made the joke.

Apart from that, this is definitely conference material. Well done!

Not always as clear as I hoped for, but nevertheless provided a solid heads-up on composer

Nice topic Hannes,

However I felt it was more of a "composer best practices for reusable packages" kind of talk than a comparison of package managers and their distinct features.

Which is an excellent topic in itself, but if best practices was the real topic of the talk (which I think it was), I would have liked to have seen a more coherent presentation on the subject. For example starting with the difference between using composer for dependency management of your project and using composer to define a package an its dependencies.

Subsequently focussing on the improvement of the package ecosystem making use of "Package Design Principles (MN)" and package versioning which make more sense in that context. Like for instance making your package depend on a virtual package instead of a concrete implementation.

To sum it up: If you are going to do this talk again at some point in time (which I hope you do because there are a lot of not widely known hidden gems in composer, the correct use of which could vastly improve the whole ecosystem), make it a more coherent presentation on best practices for using composer in package management and design, that way i think this talk could be more appealing and more understandable for a larger audience and not just those who already kind of know what composer is really capable of.

Excellent talk, delivered very clear. You should submit for #phpbnl16 ;)

Good talk Joeri,

Very interesting to see how you coped with long term codebase and the lessons learned while struggling to modernise and extend it.

Thanks for sharing your insights

Good talk. Nice overview during presentation with clear milestone !!!