Kalen Johnson

Kalen got started in web development in San Diego all the way back in 2012. Back then he attended PHP meetups regularly to learn web development. He eventually started working with the two people that ran the meetup, originally with a company called Diego Dev, but eventually becoming PHP Architect. Without that PHP Meetup and PHP Architect, Kalen would have either learned Ruby or ended up homeless.Kalen has lived up and down the west coast of all of North America, and now currently resides in Taiwan.

Articles

Modernize Legacy Endpoints with htmx

By Kalen Johnson

The application I work in every day started life as a ColdFusion app. It has been a PHP application for the last fifteen or sixteen years, and the Git history only goes back to 2010 because that is when someone got around to putting it in version control. It was older than that. If you have spent time in a codebase like this, you know the feeling – every file is a small archaeological dig. by Kalen Johnson

Published in Modernize with htmx, September 2026

PHP 8.5 – Small Release, Handy New Helpers

By Kalen Johnson

We’re more than halfway through 2025, which means another PHP release is right around the corner. PHP 8.5 isn’t a huge release, but it brings a handful of additions that make writing modern, efficient code just a bit nicer. by Kalen Johnson

Published in PHP Secrets, September 2025