What Is Larry Thinking? #65 => Me!

In this edition…

About This Newsletter

When I compose a newsletter, I look at my well of possible materials–questions, links, blog posts, etc., and try to come up with a theme, if at all possible. When looking at these this time around, the ones that seemed most worth sharing immediately all focus on, well, me. For example, there’s the presentation I gave to Boston PHP: you can view the slides and the raw video of it. Or there are some articles that I’ve published online that you might like. And there’s the status on “The Yii Book”.

So this newsletter is far more me-centric than most, but hopefully it’ll be of use to you still. Because, presumably, you subscribed to this newsletter in the first place because you were interested in what I’m doing, thinking, interested in, and so forth.

Also, if you do have something you’d like me to write about, address, or answer in future newsletters, now is a good time to send that in, as my well of topics is getting shallow. I think my next newsletter is going to be on goals, if you have any thoughts or questions along those lines (e.g., technologies to learn, ways to learn, etc.). I’ve also got an upcoming newsletter planned on public speaking.

And, as always, thanks for your interest in what I have to say and do!

On the Blog => Current “The Yii Book” Plans

Last week I posted my current “The Yii Book” plans on my blog, for those of you interested in its progress. If you’d rather not click the link, the short details are:

Hoping to do an update in the next 7-10 days
Hoping to do another update by the end of the month, which will complete Part 2 of the book
Hoping to complete Part 3 of the book in February
Hoping to complete Part 4 of the book in March
Will look at translations, print versions, and the status of Yii 2 after that

As you can tell, I’m full of hopes!

On the Blog => Processing Payments with Stripe

I’ve been continuing my work on a new series on my blog. This one is titled “Processing Payments with Stripe“. In the series, I explain everything you need to know to start accepting payments on your Web site via Stripe. The first six parts in the series are:

There will be at least one more post in the series, possibly more. My hope is that the series will be useful to all Web developers, whether or not you plan on doing any e-commerce in the near future.

On the Web => How to Become a Web Developer

As you probably heard (because I wrote about it a lot), I was invited to speak to the fantastic Boston PHP user group back in December. The group used my “PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide” for Season 4 of their PHP Percolate! program. And they’re using my “PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming” for Season 5. (And thanks to them for that!)

On Wednesday, December 12th, I presented “How To Become A Web Developer“. This was a new, 90-minute presentation on the progression of tools and technologies needed to be a Web developer today. The full capacity of 300 people signed up for the presentation, although there were some no-shows.

For those of you that weren’t able to make it, you can view the slides at SpeakerDeck. Boston PHP has also posted the unedited video online. An edited video will be forthcoming, too. And I’ve started assembling a page of useful “How to Become a Web Developer” resources, which I’ll continue to maintain.

I’ll write more about the experience later, but I believe it went well. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the presentation to under 90 minutes, but the attendees stayed with me throughout. There were lots of great questions, both during the presentation and in the hallway after, which is always a good sign.

You might be amused to hear how my day went:

Left for the Pittsburgh airport at 10am (it’s a 2.5-hour drive from my house)
Landed in Boston around 4pm
Checked into the hotel and had a quick bite to eat
Got to the event around 6pm
Spoke and answered questions from around 7:15 to 9:00
Answered more individual questions until 10:45
Went to a bar for drinks and more chatting until they threw us out at 12:30am (who knew bars in Cambridge closed so early?)
Talked to one individual until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore (around 2am)
Woke up Thursday morning, headed back to the Boston Logan airport at 9:30am
Arrived home around 6pm

It was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but it was a great one. I was in Boston for about 19 hours, spent 8 of those with Boston PHP people and slept 5. Pretty good numbers! I cannot thank Boston PHP enough for the hospitality, and I look forward to continuing the relationships established that night.

On the Web => Recently Published Articles

I’ve published four new articles online over the past couple of months. These all roughly correlate to my “PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming book, published in September. The articles are:

All are available to read for free, without registration or anything.

Larry Ullman’s Book News => “The Yii Book”

“The Yii Book” is (still) available for sale (or pre-sale, I guess) at yii.larryullman.com. Since my last newsletter, I posted my second update, which is version 0.3. It’s currently about 170 pages of material, including the Introduction plus Part 1 (four chapters) and Chapters 5–7 of Part 2. I’m currently working on Chapters 8–10 now, and will post another update once all those are ready. You can view the complete table of contents online.

The minimum price is $20 (USD). For this you get:

The right to download the current edition in as many formats as you’d like and as many times as you’d like.
The right to download updates to the book—for free—for the foreseeable future (until at least the end of 2014, I imagine). And, of course, as many times as you’d like in as many formats as you’d like.
No Digital Rights Management (DRM) imposition.

You can also pay whatever price you’d like above $20. Thus far, there have been around 515 orders, at an average of $23.75, in case you are curious. You can purchase the book using Mastercard, Visa, American Express, JCB, Discover, Diners Club, or Paypal. See the FAQ page for answers to most of the questions you may have.

Thanks to everyone for their interest in this book and to everyone that has already purchased a copy!