As conferences go OSCON is pretty good. There is usually something going on, officially or unofficially.

Unofficially, or at least quasi-officially, there’s OSCAMP. I stopped by a couple of times today and shot pictures. There never was a room full of people and that was sad because the sessions were interesting. Here is a picture of Brandon Sanders. (middle) He is the facilitator of OSCAMP this year and provided the cool shirts. (Everybody say THANK YOU Brandon)

From a PHP perspective today was light. Today and tomorrow are tutorial days. There was only 1 PHP related tutorial on the schedule for today, Power PHP Testing By Geffory Young and Chris Schiflett. An interesting session, at least what I saw of it, in which Chris and Geoffrey tag team the audience while explaining the different testing tools for PHP. The two make an interesting pair as their approach to testing are no where near the same. This led to some interesting dialogs that were at times more like Hannity and Colmes than a technical tutorial. This brings me to #1 of the 2 things I learned today.

”#1 Chris and Geoffrey do not like PHPUnit”.

However, they did like other options for testing and the overriding theme of their presentation can be summed up “Test Early, Test Often”.

I’m sure one of them will post their numerous slides from their talk so I won’t list all the options they covered. When they do post their slides, take the time to review them. While I don’t agree with all their points, (I never do) they do make some good ones.

For those wondering what #2 is,

#2 Conference Hotel != Conference in the Hotel.

The convention center is about three blocks away from the hotel. The current weather has the daily high at 96. Three blocks, even at 8:00 AM is a sweltering walk. Thank goodness the Convention center has GREAT air conditioning.

That is all for Day 1.

=C=