I wore my “Microsoft Freedom to Innovate” t-shirt today. I consider it the most ironic $10 I’ve ever spent, and I guess most folks get the joke. I did get my picture taken with someone with a “NO SOFTWARE PATENTS” shirt a lunch, so I consider that a small victory. His shirt was black, and mine was white. Nested ironies, I think. While I’m on the subject of attire, I’ll say that it’s been shorts and t-shirts for most everyone here, including the presenters. The “Schroedinger’s Cat is Dead” t-shirt I spied on a certain lass made me chuckle. The real “thinking outside the nerd attire box” award has got to go to Marcus Baker. I sat in on two of his sessions on two separate days, “Is Agile Development Right for You?” and “Breaking the OO Sound Barrier”. Both days he was wearing the same pair of pants. Big deal, right? I often wear the same pair of khakis a few days in a row at work. But Marcus doesn’t prefer the inconspicuousness of khaki – he prefers leather. Leather pants. Marcus, you have won the con. Congrats.

All kidding aside, I will say that Marcus’ sessions have been the most enlightening of all that I have attended. He is a natural and fluid speaker who doesn’t bombard the audience with a lot of code or pedantic knowledge. Granted, his topics haven’t been “Migrating from version X to version Y” or “The New Features of Some Code Gadget”, but instead have focused on analysis and design topics that lead to programming strategies. He does a very good job of it and and while their topics may differ, I think most of the folks I sat in with here at php|tek could take a cue from Marcus.

A certain level of knowledge about PHP is assumed if you are coming to this conference, yes, but I think that level should be fairly low. Many of the speakers here are actual developers *for* PHP. This obviously grants them wonderful insight on the depths of the language, but I would rather see more general and real-world applications of PHP. This is something that Rasmus Lerdorf did very well in his keynote. Oh – and before I forget the one session I sat in with Christian Wenz was also very good.

Dan and I took the free Zend Certification Exam this afternoon. I don’t know how well I did, and honestly I’m not that concerned having taken it. Many of the questions dealt with detailed specifics of the language and it’s constructs, which is something that I normally let the webserver worry about. I have bigger things to consider and remember when I use PHP. A certification is only a nice thing to put on your wall, I think. Programming’s name belies it’s complexity – a complexity that supercedes the language itself.

“PHP Pool Party” later tonight with an open bar! More later?

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