Tribus Digital attend this year's PHP UK conference.
Gathering amongst a bustling congregation of developers in London, our software development team at Tribus attended this year's PHP UK conference. Reflecting on the event we asked Tribus' Lead Developer Nick Docherty to share his experience.
What were your learning highlights?
There were two topics that were mentioned more than anything else at the Conference and those were, Test Driven Development and Pair Programming. Having never worked in an 'in house' development team and only working in agencies these methodologies and the popularity of them were quite new to me.
Expand on the meaning of 'in house' vs 'agency'?
The pace of agency work is completely different to that of an in house team (which is what I like about agencies) but that doesn't mean that the standards to which we develop systems has to be any different. In my experience whilst always trying to maintain high standards of code, the deadline and budget constraints of the projects and features we work on require us to prioritise what it is that delivers most value directly to the client. From what I learnt from experts of the respective methodologies, even the smallest changes to our day to day work can have a huge impact in code quality and user experience even if our priorities do change.
Can you explain what 'test driven development' means?
As an agency we already use pair programming where we can, which helps to flesh out an idea, it helps with system knowledge across the team and reduces bugs being reported by the end users, the thing I didn't know were that there are many different versions of this. It's all about thinking about how the process of pair programming can run smoother depending on who you're paired with, be that a junior developer or a more senior developer.
Test driven development is something that we are trying to introduce to our new systems more and more but having not developed any systems by writing the tests first, there were numerous tips and tricks that I picked up that I will be hoping to put into practice on my next system build.
About Tribus
At Tribus, our dedication to growth and advancement is ingrained in our ethos. Beyond experiences of conferences like PHP UK, we foster a culture of continuous learning through internal workshops and agency-wide hackathons.
These collaborative initiatives empower our teams to stay at the forefront of the digital transformation landscape, embodying our commitment to innovation and excellence.
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