This week we are joined by Responsive Design thought leader Sam Richard. He introduces us to the concept of responsive web design, tells us a little bit about its history and talks about best-practice and the future of the web! Check out the video:

The brain is a muscle, and as all muscles, it needs regular exercise to keep sharp. Or at least that’s what the old adage says. This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time now, but never got around to (until now that is). Sparked by a twitter conversation with Mr Grumpy himself (Chris Hartjes), I decided that the time was right for it. So, here’s my method for staying sharp and exercising my brain…

This week’s Programming With Anthony video is up! In it, we discuss the foundations of Boolean Logic and introduce some very interesting tools for analyzing logical constructs (including Truth Tables and De Morgan’s Laws). So without any further ado:

I’ve got a few talks coming up in the near future, so if you can make one of these events, be sure to come say hi to me!

The third video to my Programming With Anthony series is up! In this video, I talk about variables in PHP and how they work under the hood. I explain the difference between variable references and object references, along with the semantics of each. Give it a watch!

Last weekend I was at the True North PHP conference in Toronto, Canada. Aside from being an incredible experience (really, it was an incredible conference, huge props to Chris Hartjes (@grmpyprogrammer) and Peter Meth (@mrpmeth)), it was an inspiration. I was particularly inspired by both of the keynote speakers. They both really took really unique spins on programming and how the culture of open source inspires, enables and empowers programmers to do cool and important things. The problem with all of this is that I hate the term programmer. I think it unfairly paints a picture of what we do. Let me elaborate.

This afternoon, I gave another talk at TrueNorth PHP. The talk is a version of a previous talk that I gave on Object Oriented Design. I’ve changed it significantly, so here are the slides.

This morning, I gave a talk at TrueNorth PHP. The talk was aimed at explaining the basics of Cryptography as needed for the average developer. It is intended to give a high level understanding of cryptography and cryptographic techniques. So, with no further adue, here’s the slides:

Or anyone else for that matter. Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of feedback about my posts that I’m suggesting things that are going to get less experienced developers into a lot of trouble. Or that people are going to use my posts as justification for bad practices. Or that people are going to cause major issues by putting experimental concepts into production. My initial response is “That’s their problem.”

“Don’t Reinvent The Wheel” is a phrase that we hear used all the time in software development. Usually it’s used in the context where a library exists to do what the user wants, but they are writing their own. While the sentiment is usually correct, I can’t stand the implication of the phrase. Therefore, I can’t stand it when people use that phrase without understanding what it really means. Let me explain: