Free the Geek appearance

I was delighted to spend an hour chatting with Matt Setter on episode 14 of Free the Geek. In this podcast, we talked about Slim 3 and development in general.

Matthew gives me a great introduction (thanks!) and then we delve into the chat.

We talk about the importance of semantic versioning as I think this is key to stability in a project. It’s not very glamorous to work on code where you have to maintain backwards compatibility, but it is vital to the success of a library such as Slim Framework. Developers who use your library depend on it and semantic versioning is the way to ensure that no-one is surprised. I hate it when a library I use has BC break between patch or minor version numbers that results in my software breaking, so I try not to break the contract in Slim. Of course, sometimes we’ve introduced a BC break by accident, but when we have, we’ve fixed it immediately.

We also spoke about software architecture and how important it is to make the right decisions for your project and the team building it. Projects have a lifecycle and it’s useful to build appropriately for the stage that your project is at. I’m a fan of architecting for the near term with an eye to the likely long term paths and ensuring that your design fits the project.

We talk about this and more, so have a listen.