January 25th, 2011

Welcome to 2011 - and to New York PHP's 10th year! Not only does 2011 give us the opportunity to celebrate another trove of binary dates, it marks NYPHP turning 10 (that's decimal).

A lot has happened in the PHP world - not to mention the whole world - since NYPHP started a decade ago, and we thank everyone for their past, present and future support and involvement with this great community. One decade down, many more to go.

While in a decadal mood, we're also thinking about everyone's favorite subject - testing. Like your grade school teacher telling you to check your work, testing is vital for getting on the enlightened path of quality code. This January, we're pleased to have black-belt-unit-tester Bulat Shakirzyanov here to whoop us into unit testing shape and usher in our 10th year.

We're also pleased to broadcast the meeting online - in 3D!
Tune-in Tuesday at 6:30pm:

• http://www.ustream.tv/channel/new-york-php

Programmers, no matter what they tell you, don't test only because they don't know how to do it. Testability needs to be embedded in the code, and cannot be achieved if is not planned for. That is why I try to explain using simple examples how to achieve testable, well-written code, and then how to refactor it, to get rid of duplication and hardly testable code. The talk is built around the four main properties of the unit test, where I explain how to achieve each by applying some of the well and not-so-well known programming techniques.

Bulat Shakirzyanov a.k.a. avalanche123 is software alchemist at OpenSky, member of the Doctrine Project core team, holds a black belt in test-fu, Symfony2 fan and contributor, geek and talks about himself in third person.