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The PHP Podcast 2026.04.16 with Sara, Joe, and Sami

The PHP Podcast streams live, typically every Thursday at 3 PM PT. Come join us and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Another fun episode of the PHP Podcast! Here’s what we covered:

  • 🎙️ Sammy Powers Returns! – After 4 years away from the PHP community, Sammy joins us from Germany where he’s working on immigration and building quantum trade schools
  • ⚛️ Quantum Computing & PHP – Deep dive into quantum technology, post-quantum cryptography, and why PHP developers should care about SHA-3 and quantum-safe algorithms
  • 🎉 Joe Ferguson Named PHP 8.6 Release Manager – Congratulations to Joe on being selected alongside Mateo Botticelli and Daniel Szmida for the 8.6 release team
  • 🏛️ PHP Foundation Updates – Elizabeth Nacin’s new blog post summarizing community outreach and the Foundation’s direction
  • 🎪 PHP Tek 2026 – Coming up in Chicago at the Sheraton O’Hare – Eric shares stories about the signed baseball tradition
  • 🇮🇹 PHP Day Verona – May 14-16 in Italy, organized by release manager Mateo Botticelli
  • 📻 PHP Roundtable Memories – Nostalgia about the show’s history and vision for community-driven episodes
  • 🤖 CodeRabbit Sponsorship – AI-powered code reviews for your pull requests

Links from the show:

X: https://x.com/phparch
Mastodon: https://phparch.social/@phparch
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/phparch.com
Discord: https://discord.phparch.com

Subscribe to our magazine: https://www.phparch.com/subscribe/

Host:

Eric Van Johnson

John Congdon

Streams:

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Transcript

Transcript

[04:32] Welcome to the official podcast of PHP Architect. Join us to listen to the latest news and tech talk from our conferences, the magazine, and wider PHP community.
[04:58] Thank you.
[05:28] Thank you. Thank you.
[06:02] Thank you.
[06:08] Sorry super sorry,
[06:12] you’re not what’s up,
[06:18] I don’t know fashionism uh welcome to our podcast php,
[06:28] Nein, nein, nein, Sarah, herzlich willkommen von Deutschland beim PHP Podcast.
[06:38] Ciao. Howdy y’all from Nashville. It’s PHP Podcasting time.
[06:47] I’ve been to Nashville. That’s not how they speak. I know. I have known Ben many years. That is exactly how he speaks.
[06:59] Oh no, we can’t hear Ben? Can you not hear me? I hope I’m fine yet.
[07:05] Maybe it’s just me. Jesus said. Don’t worry, you’re not going to miss anything. It’s probably better that way. It probably is. What kind of takeover script did Claude run for you? I mean, honestly. Earlier, I couldn’t see Sammy, and now he can’t hear me. What is up with this? I don’t know. Is it just Ben you can’t hear Sammy? Yeah. That’s so weird. Well, it’s a good thing people trust us to tell them about technology.
[07:38] Holy smokes can the audience hear me I would like to welcome Sammy Powers back to the land of PHP podcasting many of you will remember him from such luminaries as the PHP round table podcast, the I’m contractually obliged to say her best podcast because probably this one and then Alive and Kicking. No, Alive and Kicking, then this one.
[08:11] Oh, y’all are different high tech. Yeah, yeah. Some of you may notice John Cogman is still not here. My sources say that he has had to leave town quite unexpectedly. The authorities may, in fact, be on to him. It’s possible. And thinking about it, he’s a very polite man. It’s possible he’s secretly Canadian and immigration is coming after him. So wish you luck, John. Fight the power. But we are here for the PHP podcast nonetheless. So all welcome, even if you are having to interpret this through PHP 6 to deal with the language nonsense going on here. And why is that language going on? Sammy, what are you doing lately? Sammy.
[09:00] Believe it or not, I’m in Deutschland, which is German for Germany, and I’m trying to move here. So that’s a process that involves lots of paperwork and visas and all this kind of fun stuff that’s been juggling around. But yeah, that’s where I’m at. And ich muss mein Deutsch für Besschen. I have to improve my German. I do want to integrate and do things the way that Germans do. They eat lots of bread, so I’m trying to eat a lot of bread to stay healthy the German way. And yeah, it’s been great.
[09:33] I’m going to apologize for that same change because I hit the wrong button. I was going to say, that wasn’t me. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s the wrong button.
[09:42] But yeah, yeah. I feel your pain going through the immigration process to Portugal myself. That’s the Bain Vindu podcast. Having to throw a shh into everything I say is kind of fun and exciting. Uh but um yeah i thought we’d i thought we’d start actually by asking you what kind of stuff have you been working on lately uh surely uh all kinds of php stuff that are keeping you active right yes believe it or not yeah i mean so oh man i miss you all it’s been like this past four years has been unfortunately i haven’t been able to connect with the php community as much as i would to but i think you know after this four-year period i’ll be entering a new phase where hopefully i will get to some more in-person interactions and get to like hang out some more it’s just i just missed the good times miss all my peeps um but uh yeah this is a huge um shift of my focus has been actually shifting into quantum tech like i i kind of i i retired
[10:44] from digital tech in 2022, uh and i just kind of was following this calling on my heart that’s kind of led me into quantum technologies. And now it’s just become this main focus of mine. Fingers crossed, I’m hoping that this year I can get boots on the ground, my own boots on the ground in Guatemala, because that’s where it’s kind of like the soil for what I’m hoping to build, design and build quantum trade schools. So basically, just like you can have a trade school to learn how to like work on a car and to like, you can learn at a young age, all these basic things that can just be a mechanic and you’ll be amazing at it because you learned it at such a young age. We need quantum engineers like 10 years ago. And we should totally hit the ground running by teaching even as young as kindergartners like the basic constituents of whatever theories are coming down the pipe toward quantum technologies. Because…
[11:38] We need engineers to be on top of this right away. And I think the sooner that we get started, the better. So that’s what I’m focused on right now.
[11:48] And the best part is, if you put the word quantum in front of anything, it’s immediately more awesome. I think PhD9 should be quantum PHP.
[11:57] I’m so happy you mentioned that, because I actually do have a vision for a quantum runtime of the PHP engine, and I genuinely believe that it is closer than we think. Quantum is going to be here way before it’s just going to show up and be like, whoa, where did this come from? Like, it’s going to show up out of nowhere. i mean how many people think of php as non-deterministic all right honestly that’s true that’s how i live my life i just wander around randomly, so it’s perfect for ai because nobody knows how it works or if it does.
[12:33] So sammy anybody who’s listened to the show long enough knows i am absolutely fascinated by quantum computing. Oh, you’re really cool. Oh, 100%. It’s my new obsession. I so gladly want to go to the IBM Center where they have their little quantum computer they’re running or visit Microsoft’s quantum labs. Oh my gosh. I’m absolutely just floored by it. For listeners, because I have a very hard time trying to explain what quantum computing is. Do you have a good definition for this no no actually in fact i i have no idea actually what’s going on really in in the quantum world there’s like ion traps and then we have these qubits which are like bits but in super position you know like my my my sort of stance about where we are here is that like it’s such a new technology that we don’t actually really know what it is and we’re trying to step into quantum so we’re taking our our information theory and making the quantum version
[13:34] of that We’re taking our digital computers and making the quantum version of that. We’re taking our internet and making the quantum version of that. The infrastructure of the internet requires a repeater. So we’re trying to build a quantum repeater despite the fact that. I think isn’t cloning strictly forbidden in like in quantum mechanics or something it just feels like an anti-gravity machine are we are we is this dead on arrival are we doing this right way I don’t know I don’t know enough about it to even know but it just feels like hey I think there’s still a lot that we can bring to the table even as php programmers and this is why I’m going to put it out there from like the software perspective what is being toted as like quantum software like shore’s algorithm and like grover’s algorithm these things that came out like a long time ago 20th century models of quantum computation that are, yeah, 20, I know,
[14:22] we’re That level of violence is not required, dude. It’s a long time. 20th century. In the 1900s. Back in the 1994, Tor’s Algorithm came out, and we’re still using that as quantum software to dictate where we’re going in the 22nd century. To me, we’re missing something. And the bottleneck, it seems to be with both software and our general theories. Everything is just a quantum analog of a digital technology. So I can’t tell you about ion traps and all this stuff. Eric, I’m sure I could learn a lot more from you on that front. You absolutely cannot. I can promise you.
[15:06] I always find it so fascinating because I feel like we’re brushing up against a time where like… Fewer fewer people are are have enough of an understanding of a futuristic vision that we can build to so like i think quantum computing is one of those where like on the surface level like dorks like me like this is going to be awesome like and you know it’s an entirely different way of thinking of information and how things are determined and how things are figured out whereas everything’s happening at once it’s it’s no longer procedural it’s no longer parallel it’s all just happening at the same time that’s you know it’s my very like caveman understanding of quantum computing and and i think you’re absolutely right like we’re to a point where like it’s it’s a struggle for for us to even come up with the with how to teach it much less how younger people are to learn it so that we can keep building it and moving it forward.
[16:12] And I just, I am all enamored by quantum computing. Like, I wish I was about 20 years younger because I feel like I’m just going to miss out on anything big in quantum computing. But yeah, very exciting time for all of us. I mean, it’s just amazing what can potentially, the fact that, just the idea, And this may sound absolutely crazy, but remember, in 1970, in the 1900s, it was futuristic, the idea of we’d be walking around with a phone in our pocket, or a phone on our wrist, right? A phone on our wrist. Mm-hmm. We are very quickly approaching where we’re going to be walking around with quantum computing in our pocket and things like these, these, these, um, AI agents, it’s taking it to a whole different level. Like it’s just going to be absolutely insane. Well, you touched on something more there. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say, Dick Tracy, I just ruined it because I stumbled on the word.
[17:18] Dick Tracy predicted the phone watch. Yeah. All right. There we go. Well, that’s like Star Trek. I don’t know what I was going to say in the 1970s Star Trek. Star Trek. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Predicted all of them. Star Trek saw it as the inevitable future. Yeah. We’ve lost Sammy, but he’ll come back. I think he’s coming back because he still can’t hear me. Oh, it’s him. He can’t hear you. Okay, good. Yeah. I thought it was you that couldn’t hear him. Let’s add him back in here real quick. He’s coming back in now, yeah. There he goes. But what I wanted to say there was that…
[17:51] Can you hear me now? I can hear Ben. It’s so good. Yay! Yay! We’re all together.
[18:02] But the thing is to keep it connected to PHP, one of the things that makes PHP such an easy language to learn and get into is that you have all of the hardware you need readily available. I mean, I’m not going to say it’s perfect access, but I think most people who want to get into the field, at least in the first world, don’t have a problem getting a hold of a computer, a classical computer that they can put software on. Linux is free. PHP is free. The software is just there. You’re on it. And you can learn this thing very easily. Quantum feels like something that still has a barrier to entry on it i don’t i can’t go down to the local best buy and just say like hey do you got the new 2026 model you know quantum dell like that’s not a point that we’re at and so can we see at this point when we’re going to be at that point yes dude you’re getting a quantum dell well you might or might not be getting a quantum dell We haven’t
[19:01] actually resolved a state of that. You both are and you aren’t. Yes.
[19:07] So I want to kind of pose maybe like a thought, just a perspective from kind of banking on that idea of like there seems to be like this bottleneck, this like barrier to entry.
[19:20] Digital computers, before they were computers, computers were people, right? And before that, we had these like little wooden things with beads on them. The abacus, is that what they were called? I’m saying abiscus, but I know that’s not right. It’s abacus, right? Abacus. I love the scent of abiscus and honey, yeah. Abiscus is so good with masks. But if we were to grow up in that time where we had the abacus and human computers and we were thinking about automatic computation, I think we might think of this robotic arm coming out and moving the beads around, and that’s what we thought of as digital technology. But here we have twitter or whatever twitter is now i mean how how do we go from the abacus to what we know as modern digital technology is just like a total paradigm shift is required and i think right now where we are with quantum we haven’t done that paradigm shift we’re just taking digital making that quantum analog or
[20:16] quantum a quantum analog of a digital tech and when i think of tech i think of like a flower or a blade of grass because all around us is the world of quantum And until we shift into that world of like, hey, let’s look through the natural world for inspiration. Do we start, Kimmy, maybe we break free of our digital box and into something a little bit more accessible? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that was the first thing that blew my mind when I started diving into quantum computing. I forget what book it was, but it’s like, yeah, quantum computing already exists. It’s already in nature. We already have it. We just as humans can’t get our head around it. It’s like, holy crap. We’re living on it. I feel like Hitchhiker’s Guide. We’re living on a computer. Like, this is a freaking computer.
[21:06] It’s amazing.
[21:10] Okay, but in practical terms, when do I get to start cracking your RSA key is what I want to know. Oh, yeah. That’s the other thing. Security is out the window. Our security as we know it today is history. Well, we are working on that. There are a number of post-quantum algorithms that are in development that will…
[21:34] Be more robust against those kinds of attacks. We can’t guarantee they’re going to cover every kind of attack because we don’t fully understand the technology yet. But the ones that we can see coming, we’re starting to implement those. And my understanding is some of these are actually already in your browser and in your web server, in your TLS stack. Not a lot of them, but some of them are starting to appear. And when both ends of the TLS connection support them, they’re like, yeah, bro, we’re going to do this. We’re going to post on that stuff because it shows up. Yeah, I noticed that some of the SSH key stuff is, I got a message the other day when I tried to SSH into something, and it was like, update your SSH key because this is not quantum safe or something. Yeah, because those old SSH keys, which used to be like the brick wall that protected intruders, has quickly turned into a chain link fence.
[22:29] And it’s just not what it was. Yeah it’s absolutely mind-blowing i’m so excited about it so most people when they’re doing hashes these days what do they pick they pick us at sha2 right it’s the bigger version of sha1 it’s nice and secure for modern problems there’s a sha3 and by the way it’s been available in php since 5.3 just fyi um uh it’s a it was it was the ketchak uh i believe is how you pronounce that algorithm that was adopted by NIST into Shafri. And it is an early post-quantum algorithm that will hopefully be more robust against these kinds of attacks. But there’s a gigantic other host of them. I do have an extension, php-lang slash phq. I think it’s what it, no. No, that’s not it.
[23:24] Ppq no that can’t be right well i don’t know it’s on there somewhere um i’ll find it uh shot three in this economy says joe.
[23:35] My point is the technologies some of these technologies specifically the post-quantum the anti you know quantum cracking your data technologies are out there and it’s not too soon to be adopting them because it’s not just catching data in transit it’s oh we see some data here. We’re just going to store that. It’s going to be a hard drive. And we’re going to come back in 20 to 30 years when we do have the technology to break it. And we’re going to see what was in there. And that information is going to be important and relevant. And too late to redact. I’m not going to make that reference beyond that. Yeah, listen up, PHP community. Sarah’s talking about something important I think we’re all going to need all hands on deck to help with. Just all of us working together to work on this issue. So just heads up coming down the pipe. Something to think about. Something to think about. Let’s take a quick minute. Let’s take a quick QuantoNano I don’t know what you call it.
[24:37] I don’t know what that is but it sounds high tech. It’s already gone. It’s already gone Eric. It was gone the moment you said it. To our partners over at CodeRabbit for making this podcast a little better.
[24:55] Thank you to our partners over at CodeRabbit for sponsoring this episode. Code reviews are critical but time-consuming. CodeRabbit acts as your AI co-pilot, providing instant code review comments and potential impacts of every pull request. Beyond just flagging issues, CodeRabbit provides one-click, fixed suggestions. It lets you define custom code quality rules using AST grep patterns, catching subtle issues that traditional static analysis tools might miss. CodeRabbit reviews 1 million PRs every week across 3 million repositories and is used by 100,000 open source projects. CodeRabbit is free for all open source repos. Get started today by visiting phpa.me forward slash CodeRabbit. Again, that is phpa.me forward slash CodeRabbit.
[25:54] Can we just listen to John’s voice again talk about CodeRabbit? It’s very relaxing, isn’t it? Yeah. Well, from wherever he’s hiding, he’s still able to read the ad copies. I know we want to move on a little bit, but I can’t get my head around the fact that I’m looking at Sam here right now. So it’s so bizarre. because a couple years back I’m at Lyricon in Dallas and I look up and Sammy’s there. I’m like, holy cow, dude, where you been? It’s been great to see you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I’m going to start getting back involved and things and stuff. And then silence. Like, you left the country. I had no idea where you were. And then here you are again. And every couple years you just pop up. I’m loving it.
[26:44] To peel back the curtain a little bit, the way this ended up happening is that like what was it about five six hours ago i get messages from joe and eric saying like yeah joe’s under the weather he’s not feeling so good he’s a strategy dog can’t be talking all day do we want to do this or not and eric’s like just find somebody else find something else i’m like who am i gonna do this with well okay if i get ben then that’s just automatic eric trolling and there’s so much opportunity especially this time of year right yes and this economy me um but then sammy we haven’t seen sammy in so long man like we need some sammy in our lives and i would like to commend sammy because we started past midnight for him because that is the time zone yes um yeah. It’s almost midnight for me. It’s worth it to hang out with y’all. I’ll hang out at three in the morning if I get to hang out with my PHP peeps. So good to see you.
[27:48] It’s good to see you, too, man. I don’t know if you’re up to speed on Ben Ramsey and mine bickering over the years. No. I tried to be a release manager a few versions ago, and I didn’t win it. Things ain’t wanting, yeah. Yeah, which didn’t bother me so much. The thing that bothered me the most about the whole thing was Ben Ramsey voted for me last. Like he said, he’s the last person I would want to be. Because I think, Ben, you were like the senior. No, not on that one. Not that one. I thought he was the last person. Absolutely last. Anybody but this guy. That just sparked the whole thing. here well joe had put his name in and i think it was like down to the last minute or something and i was just i like sent an email i was like i’ll volunteer too and then i’m not joe why did i say joe eric i meant eric eric put his name in and uh then i i threw my name in after him and then i voted for him last and oh yeah oh that’s what it was oh that’s what it was
[28:55] so it was the first year they were doing two two uh. First-time release managers and one veteran, right? And so basically, by that time, it was very clear that Ramsey was going to be one of the release managers. And basically, Ramsey said, I want to work with anybody but Eric. This is the last guy on the list. And it was years of back and forth after that. I don’t remember why I did that, but it may have been just to troll you. I don’t remember. I will never let you forget it. It’s because we want to make sure you have time and focus to, you know, keep the magazine going and the conference. Because let’s talk about HPPAC. We hadn’t taken over the magazine yet. So it turned out to be a good thing because, you know, later in the year we would take over the magazine. I was prescient. I knew what was coming. Yeah, that’s… We wanted to keep you free to take over the magazine. But you know who I voted first for? Joe Ferguson.
[30:03] Well, that guy could never do the job. That was a big mistake. And this is segueing to, because we’re still talking about release managers, though. But Joe has been voted in and selected as an 8.6 release manager. What? Yeah. Along with Mateo Bacotti, and I’m sorry if I said your name wrong, and Daniel Scherzer. Daniel’s the veteran. The other name sounds familiar. I don’t know why. I can’t think of what they look like. But, yeah, that’s very cool. Daniel’s officially the only one who stood for the – we’re not calling it senior and junior or veteran or rookie anymore. We’re now calling it hands-on. I’m not using those terms. I’m sorry. Yeah, my lawyer told me I had to stop using that term. Well, I can’t. All right, so we’ll say rookie and veteran then. So Daniel’s the only one who stood for veteran. I was gonna, but then I said, you know what? Maybe between immigration and all the other crap I have going on, maybe something.
[31:11] Congratulations, Joe Ferguson. I am very- Yes, congratulations. I’m proud to have you on the team. Yeah. We’re all very happy for Joe.
[31:22] Joe’s not going to be able to sit in on your podcast anymore. You’re going to have to do your job. Oh, yes, he will. Yes, he will. That job is extremely tough and time-consuming. Time-consuming, yeah. Is it really? You’re basically just releasing all of that. You have to be on the ball. You can’t miss the deadline. You can’t be over by a few hours. Yeah. You would think it would be simple, right? It’s like tarballing and some like SHA signatures and stuff, but like you all have to be like in watching all the GitHub issues, making sure they’re in right before the certain tags are happening, right? Is that? Well, so before the first general availability release, yes, you are on top of a lot of the tickets. There is a bit of like triage going on there. you are packaging up the RCs and the alphas, the betas, the RCs. So the first year leading up to the general availability release is actually
[32:22] like the more busy part of it. A lot. Yeah. And then after that, it’s being able to be available every month, every couple of weeks for a release. The the the catch is when the security issues come up because sometimes they’re pretty minor security issues we just put them straight in the public repo and they come out when they come out it’s fine uh but sometimes they’re serious enough they go in a completely different um uh repo that we actually do the release from and then we sort of like merge it back into the main one after the releases happen because we don’t want to oh yeah uh announce zero days before they’ve been released basically. You call me crazy. So there is more process involved when there are serious vulnerabilities up. Knock wood, they’re not too often.
[33:17] Is there a link to that? Is there an announcement made yet? There is an announcement link. Let me find that real quick. I should have had that. I was just going to make sure that gets added to the show notes for sure. I imagine if you go to externals.io, it should be pretty high on the list. I have the old externals thread open for the release manager. It might be a new thread. I have it here. Okay. We did not prepare this. Where do I post it? Just put it in the document. I’ll grab it from there. Okay.
[33:52] Or there’s the one that you just put on the chat. So there’s your link, everyone.
[34:00] Very cool, man. Very cool. Well, I’m sure Joe is very excited. He has just said he’s minted a brand new GP key. Joe’s just fighting out for it and everything. He’s listening to the show. Yeah. What? Really? Cool. Wait, what? This is awesome, man. All right. This is wonderful news I’m just receiving for the first time. Let me share this real fast. Yep. Is that going to share? Nope. Didn’t share. Oh, there it is. There we go. this takes a while I am actually very very happy for Joe, I know I think this was like his third third time he he put his name into the ring and yeah we were talking about that last week yeah there you go um see see kids persistence pays off.
[34:51] Excellent Eric yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so that was like the craziest time so. So I think the first thing that happened was Sammy said, hey, I’m going to step away from PHP Roundtable. Are you interested in doing PHP Roundtable? I’m like, yeah, absolutely. That would be wonderful. So he gives me PHP Roundtable. And then I put my name in for the running to become a release manager. And something else was going on at Diego Dev at the time, which was the company we had before PHP Architect. That was, like, taking a lot of my time. And then the opportunity came up to take over PHP Architect and, And then after that, like for the next two years, I don’t know what happened. Like I really have very little recognition. Like, well, we had COVID going on as well. But, man, it was like after we took over PHP Architect, even before we decided to bring PHP Tech back, it was just like such a crazy
[35:55] time because we’re trying to figure out how to run this magazine, how to do the columns and everything. And then once we finally start to get that, we’re sitting there one day. It’s like, hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if we brought tech back? Why? Why would we do that now? But yeah, that was a bonkers turn. But this is your excuse, one little global pandemic. That’s your excuse for disappointing Pujita. I know, man. I’m very sad. I haven’t seen an episode of PHP Architects. That’s your fault. God damn it. So do be clear. To be clear, Sammy, you know, these two guys over on this, wait, where is it? This guy? No, this way. Yeah, those two guys over there, they said, oh, yeah, we’ll help you do PHP Roundtable any time. When I need you, let us know. Hey, you know what? I’m happy that it’s gotten, the episodes it’s gotten, it would have had zero episodes if y’all hadn’t stepped in. So I thank you all
[36:51] for the episodes you have done. It’s just, it’s one of those things. It’s been to die, but if it keeps going, it keeps going, you know, like, it’s all good. And I think, Eric, with this nomination of all these things that came out once, it feels like the community has almost officially nominated you as the official PHP producer. All these responsibilities that you have, you’re like, PHP producer over here. You know what? If there’s nobody running PHP Architect in your neighborhood, it’s you. Hey, there you go. I don’t want Eric’s head to get too big, but I think you guys have been doing a great job. I think it’s, and I’m really, really happy to see how you’ve taken it and made it grown PHP architect and grown tech and carried it on. You’re carrying the torch. And if you haven’t bought your ticket to PHP tech yet, there’s still time and probably a promo code. I’m not sure. Where is that coming this year? Chicago, baby. We’ve been in Chicago since we’ve been in Chicago.
[37:58] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100%. It’s been in Chicago for a while, dude. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I’m so out of the loop. Yeah, the same venue, the Sheraton O’Hara. Yeah. Oh, man, that’s awesome. Good times. Same staff is there. It’s like, wow. Yeah, it’s crazy. Really? They knew. Obviously, they didn’t know us because it was the first time they met us. But they remember PHP Architect. They remember Tech. Oh, that’s cool. There’s a sign up in the employee room that says, do you not allow people to throw elephants off of the railing?
[38:33] Erotic crew. Every sign has a reason, dude. Yeah.
[38:40] It’s been great man i i tell people all the time like leading up especially this time of year like we’re about a month out now right tech is next month and i i’m always like i hate this why are we doing this this is such a big mistake we need to we i don’t know why we put this pressure on us then we get tech it like it’s such a battery recharge and i have such a great time it was It’s just wonderful catching up with everybody and just remembering what in-person conferences are like again and the benefits of it. Because, again, much like before, so much happens at lunch, sitting around after the talks. Just so much goes on that’s outside of the talks. I just, yeah, I love it.
[39:37] Oh hey you know i think i’m in this picture ben oh you’re in one of you’re in one of them well it said photo i thought it said look at the photon and i’m like there’s tons of photons coming in this tab so this is uh what year is this been, oh that year i don’t know i don’t actually remember, Honestly. Well, I mean, the date on the article is May 22nd, 2016. So I’m going to take a wild guess. Oh, that picture at the top is from probably 2014. Sammy’s laying down there on the ground. Yeah. Yeah, right here. Yeah. With Sammy right there. Eli took that picture. So I remember when he did that. And I’m like, who’s this guy laying on the ground? Like, what’s he doing on right now? Holy smokes. I think this was the first conference I’d gone to and I knew nobody. I knew nobody in the community. And I, I know where Eric’s in this photo somewhere. Right here. Right, right here. Oh, you don’t see my mouse. I’m right.
[40:38] I don’t see the shared screen. Yeah, I don’t either. Which is weird. Oh, I’m looking at the picture from the website.
[40:47] So I was, I was actually wanting you to scroll down the page. To like step number four and scroll out a little bit here number four okay all right so so the first thing is there’s kiss right yes yeah yeah but if you go down there’s the picture of the the uh sign that um uh sarah was talking about oh the forbidden blue elephants in the lobby, hey they’re not all blue anymore okay we can do it now that’s true,
[41:25] that was awesome by the way if you haven’t seen the franken php elephant oh my god i want one dude i’m so pissed off i’m so pissed off i didn’t know those were on sale i didn’t either purchased one, You’re just not plugged into the community enough, Eric. You need to be doing work. Nobody cares about me.
[41:47] I care about you. I have your signature on this baseball somewhere from last year’s PHP Tech. If you go to PHP Tech, you walk away with cool stuff like this. And if you ask people to sign your baseball, they’ll sign your baseball, especially if you’re emigrating.
[42:06] That was one of those surprises where it’s like, We didn’t even think about doing that. We got the baseballs, and the whole idea was that you would go to vendors, and vendors would sign. That’s how you got into it. And then people started going around asking other people to sign their baseball. And I’m like, oh, my God, that’s brilliant. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I wish I had done that. It was fantastic. I love sponsors and everything, but if I have a baseball filled with sponsor names in one hand and a baseball filled with my peeps’ names in the other hand, I know which one I’m keeping. That’s right, the sponsors, because they make the conference up. Because they make the conference up, but exactly. You hear that, sponsors?
[42:48] We love you, sponsors. No, no, I was… There would be no sponsors, no peeps. I was a great one.
[42:56] Hey, Ben, in the picture of everybody in the lobby at the very top… Yes. Yes. All the way to the left. Is that Joe Ferguson? I believe Joe is in that picture. That looks like Joe. Dude, he was a baby. Let me see which one you’re talking about, because I’ve already left that screen for some reason. Where on the page are you talking about? That’s totally Joe. Right over here. Over in the far left. I think that’s Joe Ferguson. It is Joe. Yeah, I think that might be Joe. Jason McCreary is right behind him. Jason McQuarrie is behind him? Where? I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah, that’s Jason McQuarrie, isn’t it? No. Right behind Joe? It’s too small. In the hoodie? In the gray hoodie? No, no, no. Oh, I’m sorry. I think you guys look at different people. Click on the untitled link at the bottom, and I’ll take you to Flickr, and you’ll see the full photo. Yeah, there we go. Oh, okay. Oh, my goodness. Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah, he’s cropped in the other
[43:56] picture. Oh, yeah! Okay, there you go. Yeah.
[44:01] Oh holy smokes what a good conference that is crazy regrettably I don’t think it was at this one so I can’t look for me.
[44:12] So yeah Joe’s a baby that yeah that that is bonkers yeah that’s J-Mac for sure Samantha Quinones,
[44:23] yeah that’s Grumpy right there in the middle right there’s Grumpy from there Chris Murchis,
[44:30] Jordy.
[44:33] Jordy’s right next to him and Michelle and Derek I feel like I’m on romper room now, I was literally going to make that exact reference I see Joe and Samantha and,
[44:52] I was also going to say, we just sound like a bunch of old people. Yeah, no one else knows what we’re talking about. Especially the listeners, the audio version. A freaking room reference.
[45:06] That is great. And for the record, this is still what that area looks like. The bar is still there. Oh, they’ve changed it a bit. But yeah, it’s still the same hotel. Yep. um move a couple things around yeah, makes a walk down memory lane i didn’t want to uh mention going back to talking about roundtable um so i’ve i’ve been doing a little project on the side it’s just my website uh but it had. Years ago i stopped being able to update it because someone removed some packages from the gym repo and it was a Jekyll site and then I could no longer build it anyway so it took forever it’s been 10 years almost I finally rebuilt it I was going through a whole bunch of stuff in there which kind of took me to the PHP roundtable site and I was looking at all the roundtable videos and I realized going back that roundtable’s history is a really interesting like if you just look at who’s in each episode it’s an interesting story because
[46:16] there’s a lot of episodes where like uh it’s different people hosting like just you know not even like not even the same regular people you see on podcasts there’s some that are and i was kind of curious about the story behind that i’m trying to remember which one it was that i saw but i saw some that i didn’t even know who they were i guess they did it at a at a conference and i wasn’t you know and I’m not saying that I know everybody, but. Um you’re there different hosts because i feel like sammy was the host until just a few years ago i don’t know that’s what i thought too but yeah but like we definitely do like uh like um the room 11 special was like basically doing like an invite to be like hey whoever’s in room 11 we’re doing a podcast just come on in and it was just sort of like a really informal just hang out um and it just and but i i think that the thing is that i tried to not voice too much of my opinion there
[47:08] was a couple where i just i couldn’t help myself and i had to voice my opinion but like I tried to keep out as much as possible and just let whoever was the brain at the table, like everybody’s got their brain, right? And so I’m the one learning from everybody else. And so whoever the brain is speaking is the one that I was hoping would host it from the brain. Maybe you didn’t put your little photo on the panelists. That’s right. Yeah, I didn’t put my own photo on there. I was seeing that and I just thought, wow, this is a different host each time. But nevertheless I kind of looked at it and was like wow this is something that you know maybe there’s a. Case for like other people kind of doing a video and then let’s reviewing it and being like that’s the next episode kind of thing i don’t know yeah that’d be cool yeah no this was the vision i have always had for for run table um especially since eric took over
[48:01] and he got me involved in that stuff like i really want to get um more examples of people who are not like in front to the community all the time um either big package maintainers or framework authors or internals people something like that i’d love to just have more of just like you know alice from. Such and such company who’s just working hard every single day writing algorithms and shipping code and what do you got going on what’s cool this week i would love to see that kind of thing really more of a round table of people talking about PG. You had some big panels too.
[48:43] Just clicking through some of these panels. It was a really cool trip down memory lane just to look through all these episodes. Yeah. That’s the other… Like I said, the first time I saw Sammy was at Tech and he’s laying down on the ground. The next time i saw him i i was actually fascinated uh it was in louisville for lara con and here’s sammy like i don’t know if it was impromptu or if this is what they planned to do but we we walked back to uh actually was it louisville, Yeah, are you talking about Laracon? Yeah. And you had them sitting around in the lobby, and you’d open up your little suitcase. You had all your mics and stuff in there, and you had people asking questions. And I was like, dude, this is fantastic. Yeah. Shout out to Cal Evans, by the way. He was the original, like, the Voices of the Elephant podcast. I remember him being at the conferences. Like when i think of like podcasts and conference i
[49:50] think of cal evans as one of the og it’s the booze talking yeah it was another that’s another one where like anyone could anyone could do it’s the booze talking you just pull out a microphone and do it and then like if you shared it with cal he’d post it or something i’m pretty sure that happened a couple of times or maybe maybe Maybe it didn’t, and I’m just misremembering.
[50:18] Works for me. This is awesome, man. Dude, you have got to stay plugged in with the community. I get asked so often, you know, have you heard from Sammy? I’m like, that guy doesn’t talk to me. I have no idea where he is. I love you guys. I really do. I can’t wait to get back in, like, when all the dust settles from what I’m working on to just, like, get to hang out with y’all again. We’re going to have some good times, I think. We’re going to have a home. We’re going to have some really good projects coming down for the PHP community that we’re all going to have all hands on deck. Like, there’s just so much exciting stuff, I think, just planetary-wise. Like, the whole planet’s moving in some crazy, cool directions. And I think tech plays a huge role. And I think PHP is going to be very relevant even into the next generation. So, looking forward to talking about these things with y’all. What you doing mid-May, Sammy? Because I’m going over to Verona for PHP Day.
[51:08] Where? Next door. Verona, Italy. Over just south from you. Sorry. Wait, this May in Italy? Yeah. PHP Day, they do it every year. Are you not coming to PHP Day? Bro. I want to say 15th, 16th, but don’t quote me on that. I’d be 14th, 16th. Okay, I’m going to state it in my calendar here. Sarah’s getting annoyed because I’m advertising a different conference. So speaking of PHP Day, we were talking about Mateo earlier, the other release manager that was selected for 8.6. I believe he’s one of the organizers of PHP Day. Oh, really? Yeah. You know what? Yes, he is. That’s right. That is true. Yes.
[51:56] Uh yeah 14th uh 14th and 15th sweet well not that i’m suggesting people should go to one and not the other but i don’t want to go to the u.s right now it’s not a bad i got somewhat of an ignorant question to ask uh how how does this work uh with the global community like what language, does everybody speak like a different language? Is there, are there translators? Oh, it’s mostly English. So yeah, I think there might be a couple that are Italian, but conferences in France are mostly in French, but I think they do a combination in some cases of talks, but if, yeah, I’ve been to A club and they’ve had a few English ones, but if the, well, I think the symphony live ones is what I’m thinking about, where I think they have some that are all French, but, um, Yeah. If there’s a conference, a PHP conference in Germany or one in Amsterdam or in Italy or, or even the ones that they had in, uh, they had one in, uh,
[53:02] didn’t they do one in the Ukraine once or no? Um, yeah.
[53:08] I don’t remember the name of where it was. It was in Bulgaria. There have been conferences in a lot of places. Oh, yeah, Bulgaria definitely had for a few years, yeah. They did Bulgaria, and all of those are in English. And, of course, you know, the one that’s in London is also in English. Oh, my God, really? No.
[53:30] That’s my OCD. This scrolling banner where the arrow is pointing to the right but it’s scrolling to the left is, I don’t know, I can’t even see what you’re talking about it’s triggering me there’s a banner here I get your feel bro.
[53:47] Why did you do that the arrows are going backwards alright stop sharing that before I lose it alright cool. Oh it is going the wrong way I see it now I have to that’s one of my goals, my next PHP goal is to attend a conference outside the U S ideally, like, like I said, the EU or, or one of the Luricons somewhere. I don’t know, but I, I definitely want, I want that feeling, especially that new feeling of, of seeing faces. You know, I don’t see at every conference and yeah, I, I, I would love to have that feeling. I just need to do it. I got to do it at some point. I’m not ready to move out of the country like some people on this panel, But, you know, dude, just get a passport, man. That’s a good start. I got a passport. I have a global pass. So I got I get the express line. Go global entry. Yeah. Global entry made a big difference 10 years ago. It’s not so much now. It’s kind of like kind of 50 50, but it is nice. I walk through that global entry lane.
[54:57] The camera sees me before I’ve reached the kiosk. It’s like cool. And I hear some dude over at the counter saying, Hey, Sarah, come over here. And I don’t even stop walking. Sometimes it’s great. I actually got that because I was working for a company where about once every couple months, I would go down to Guadalajara, Mexico.
[55:21] And so living in Southern California, it’s pretty ideal, right? Because I can fly in and out of Tijuana and then walk across the border, right? It’s a much cheaper thing. the problem with that is uh after 9 11 that walk across the border went from 15 minutes to three hours i used to walk across the border in the 90s and yeah right there’s no check going into mexico and then coming back i would carry my driver’s license like i would say you’re west and i would be like yes he’s like and that’s it that’s going in yeah yeah that was the thing like we when we first moved here the wife and i we would go down there for lunch we would go tj for lunch and then come back home it’s like you can’t do that anymore i mean you can’t but it’s like an all-day event so i assume you need a passport now yeah so yeah i i got the uh i initially got the century pass which is only for the mexico u.s border and then i eventually canada.
[56:25] I don’t think the Century Pass does. Maybe it does. Sorry, no, there’s a different one for Canada. Sorry. The Century is if you’re driving, is what you want Century for. No, it’s walking as well. Is it walking as well? From Mexico. Yep. There’s a passport card that lets you go into Canada and Mexico, but I don’t think you can take it on a flight. Right. You can only take it to where you can drive, basically. It works that way. But that global entry card, by the way, it’s not good for a lot of things, except when they started implementing real ID, I didn’t have to go back to the DMV and show a bunch more documents because a global entry card is sufficient for getting on a flight. So I will sometimes use that rather than carrying around a passport. When I went to get my Sentry Pass, you know, you have to go in for an interview, right? And I go in for the interview, and I’m an adult by this time.
[57:20] I’m like, I must have been in my early 30s, right? Because I worked at Sony already. I’d done all that. So I was probably in my early to late 30s. And I go in for this interview, and they’re like, hey, everything seems to check out. We have one problem. um we’re having trouble finding the work history of your father and i’m like okay well my father’s not applying for this pass but i’m like yeah i’m like uh you know he’s only worked at one place he goes okay but i don’t have any record of where that is is it where is it now understand as a child i was always taught i was not allowed to say it all i could say is my dad worked for the government that’s all i was not to say then about time i got to high school it became something that we could talk about with friends for the first time which but after after 18 years of being pounded in my head that you don’t tell anybody this this is a this is a family secret you don’t
[58:19] tell anybody this that to this day i i i struggle to actually say it yeah but for this interview i’m like well he works for the nsa and the guy was like okay that explains it just checks this.
[58:35] So did your dad disappear? John Condon is that very well could have if he was still alive. I’m sure he might have. Wait, if John was still alive, what? No, my dad was still alive. This is how rumors get started. Sarah.
[58:53] It’s not a rumor. If it could maybe be possibly true, maybe. Yeah.
[59:00] All right. I’ve held you guys up for an hour. We can keep talking if you want. I’m not kicking guys out. I got one more topic I want to throw out. It’ll be a quick one. Let’s do it. Because I promised Elizabeth I was going to do this. She was going to delay the blog post until Monday. And I said, I can talk about it on the podcast. And she’s like, okay, fine. That’s worth it. She has just posted. Elizabeth Nairbor, Executive Director of Foundation, has just posted a blog post at thepfp.foundation.com. Slash blog you can find it there and this is the uh basically the results the summary of her um sort of outreach efforts of finding out uh what are uh people expecting the foundation to be to be doing um what is their visibility and what the foundation’s been doing what have we got coming up next um and it’s it’s it’s taking all of that feedback and kind of distilling it into a couple of buckets,
[59:55] well, four buckets of kind of categories, and then talking about how we’re going to address kind of each of those categories. So worth a read. Go check it out. ThePHP.Foundation.com will get you there, or you can go to the main site and just click News. We’ll also get you there. Why it’s called News on the Label and Blog in the URI, I’m not sure, but here we are. Well, we’ll also add it to the show notes. A little inside baseball for you and the the couple people listening to this podcast, as a rule of thumb since john and i have been doing php architect we don’t put people’s faces on the magazine cover because it just didn’t make sense well elizabeth is going to be, the cover of this month. What month are we in? April, right? Yeah. Yeah. She’s the cover of April. So I’m really excited about it. And it has a little thing about her new role as the PHP Foundation. So, yeah. She’s been crushing it, by the way. I just want to say that as a member of the
[01:01:04] board and somebody who helps like her, she’s crushing it. And I think this blog post is an example of the amount of detail work that she’s been putting in to really get at the core of what the foundation can do for PHP.
[01:01:20] Sammy, you’ve been out of Newport long enough. So the PHP Foundation is this.
[01:01:26] I do know about PHP Foundation. Okay. And I tell you what, I’ll say this to everybody listening right now, because I know not everybody’s subscribed to PHP Architect for whatever reasons. I can’t get my head around. They should be. I do have some pull there, and I will make Elizabeth’s interview on that release of PHP Architect. I’ll make that a free column for that month. So when that does come out, and we do remember how to make columns free, we’ll make it free, and I’ll add it. We’ll talk about it on an upcoming show when it actually happens, so you’ll check it out. Well if there’s if there’s if there’s a free article out there i i guess the foundation should probably link to it um promises but i don’t see why wouldn’t i don’t know yeah yeah we probably should okay is that it anybody else anything else it went by so fast y’all right like five seconds, Sammy, thank you so much for stepping up I know you had a really busy,
[01:02:29] crazy, hectic day Hall of Hearts, Ben, thank you also so much for just like I pinged Ben and I’m like, hey what’s up bro, you in? It’s like, cha bro I’m like, never available but today I was available.
[01:02:48] And I wasn’t even expecting to get Eric Oh, there we go Eric was the last minute You can’t figure this out, can you? All right, I’ll do it. Sorry, I didn’t do that.
[01:03:03] I forgot this is streaming. That’s fine. This is the Millennial Heart, though. You have to learn all the different versions. Or is this the Gen X Heart? I can’t remember. There’s this one. There’s another one that’s like this one. And then there’s another one that’s like this one. I think that’s the Gen X one. the one Sammy was doing I think that was Gen X. We do the very least amount needed this is the Zoomer heart we’re not taking the partner dancing one I have no idea what y’all are talking about I don’t know I don’t know anything about hearts there are different shit you at least know this heart come on how are you not going to know this heart man. You’re grayer than i am shit i’m totally out of the loop joe said you’re not grayer than i am never mind no i’m not um uh i didn’t mean that’s not weird i was like no i’m not i do have i do have quite a bit i can’t see it in this light but joe said
[01:04:09] ben’s busy when i ask but not when sarah asks exactly you’re not gonna say no to me that that was a rude awakening you’re talking about great gray like i when when i was like having ai draw cartoons of me and he kept giving me like all this gray hair i’m like what the fuck like what the what’s going on and my my my kids are like no dad that’s how that’s that’s how you look i see they made me check where’s that right there hold on i see old photos of myself i’m like why does my beard look so much darker they made me a custom pop oh god, I’m like is that me in the future and they’re like no that’s you that’s you today dad sorry, I’m like wait what. I’m not happy with this this all has gone horribly wrong for me oh embrace it you are somebody who lived long enough to survive for that oh I have just seen our title card for the first time. That is great. You did an amazing job. And wow, yeah, Ben, you look like you’ve got a lot of gray going on in this type of thing.
[01:05:22] Oh, the thumbnail? Yeah, yeah. The thumbnail, yeah. What have you called? The picture I submitted, actually, like I said, in this light, you can’t really tell my hair. My hair’s got a lot more gray in it than what the light shows. Oh, dude, I had him cartoonify Ben. He looked like he was getting ready to kick somebody’s ass. I’m like, can you make him smile a little? I just couldn’t wasn’t down for it,
[01:05:49] He comes out looking like the old man from Up. Just… Yeah, exactly.
[01:06:00] All right. There you go. All right. That’s it. Any last-minute words? Anybody? Thanks for having me. Thanks for stepping in. Sarah, thanks for the last three weeks of stepping in. I do appreciate it. hey i’m just in the middle of moving country it’s not like i’m busy i was very much on my deathbed those first couple of weeks so yeah i couldn’t can’t think enough of that sammy brother man any time man any time you just feel like talking to people that we don’t even have to stream it you just say hey you free you want to talk i’ll see i’ll see if ben’s available and i’ll even do it during a reasonable time of day. Yeah oh y’all seriously this has made my whole week like i just it’s i’m getting all filled up from this like i’m gonna hit tomorrow so hard with my productivity because of this so thank you so much it’s so good to see all y’all and everybody who keeps asking me what been up to or what’s been up to what’s sammy up to
[01:07:06] here this is what he’s been up to now you know leave me alone he’s both here and he’s not here ah nice all at the same time all right cool thanks everybody talk to you later bye this has been php podcast the official podcast of php architect the industry’s leading tech magazine and publisher focused on php and web development subscribe today at phparch.com to see what the leaders in the community and industry are talking about.
Air date April 16, 2026
Hosted by Sara, Joe, and Sami
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