Workshop : Build a REST API with Symfony

Very hard to hear. For love of all that's holy please use the microphone provided! Organization was disappointing--this was a code walk-through disguised as a workshop.

I remember you were in front of me, you should have told me… Next time, ask the speaker to use the microphone, and I'm sure he/she will access your request.

About the walkthrough: the agenda was really hard to keep up with, and you forgot to mention that more than half of the attendees didn't know Symfony (which is ok).

So I preferred to adapt the workshop to take time to explain the concepts, the code and answer questions, instead of coding quickly and take the risk to not make sure that the audience understand all of the concepts I was presenting to you guys.

Please acknowledge that 3 hours for such a topic is not easy, I worked hard to give the best content I could.

I hope that you learnt something at least.

Tutorial was good.
I could hear it fine from 2 rows back.
Lots of good examples.
Finally I understand HATEOAS.
Too much information for the time alloted but there were great slides.

Good talk, i think Sarah handled the 3 hour time slot okay.

My recommendations would be (for doing this talk again):
1) forget about telling people to install / set up Symfony on their machines. There's no point in helping us install it. Half of the room have never used Symfony framework, so cannot exactly "jump right in" to coding with it. Maybe the better approach would be to allow two different viewers: one who knows Symfony, already has it installed and running correctly, and can play whilst listening. The second type of viewer are the ones who don't know Symfony, but came to watch and understand whether Symfony is the right direction for them.

2) In regards to the Symfony app you wanted us to install - it was cumbersome. Please test the package from a clean install. The install notes did not make sense, there was multiple steps missing, there were files missing, and you had to run a SQL script and then append a data fixture to get a user working. Too much went wrong.

3) I think you can simply explain SOAP / CRUD / old methods of implementing an API, rather then giving us time to play with the older methods. Your explanation of the old methods was good, i believe we should move straight into the better / correct ways. This was evident with people being confused and asking why we're controlling the request in our file, rather than letting the router handle the request in the better method. In summary, "This is the wrong way, this is the better way. Now let's play with the better way".


In regards to Roger's comments: I agree this was a code walk-through disguised as a workshop. I was hoping we were going to have more of a hands-on tutorial. I was expecting more time with HATEOAS / authentication. However, i also understand that API (even though it's not exactly "new") is still complicated for some people to jump right in.

If people have issues hearing a speaker, they can always move closer - There was plenty of room up the front. In the room was full, then i would have agreed to the microphone request.


Your explanations were good, thanks for the talk :)