Modern PHP

A lot of time was spent on personal history and the history of the language. It's interesting but not that helpful. That focus robbed time from a better explanation of the modern techniques. It was quite rushed at the end, where you had the opportunity to make the most difference. Waxing nostalgic about the past also risks making folks wistful rather than exciting them to embrace the change, especially when you don't point out many big flaws or problems with how things were done.

Also, while you did lay out the changes from one version to another and assert how certain changes led to others, you didn't really explain how. Without that background, is there any insight really gained from the journey? Just scrap it all and extoll the virtues of-- and better explain-- the modern tools and approaches.

My perspective is that of a relative newcomer (to PHP), so perhaps this was aimed as a walk down memory lane for more seasoned PHP professionals.

The service <a >Evalbox</a> sticks to PHP 5.3 because it is more than enough to cover web functionnalities.
the rest of php features are dev toys, they do not improve functionnalities of a web site.
The only thing required now is true native multilangues/utf8 support.

I was talking about http://www.evalbox.com/

This talk took a little while to get interesting. It was a nice review of past history, the present, and where things are going. I definitely will rethink what I will be doing going forward.