Yelling at Clouds With Chris Hartjes ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/g9qso8ECu0E/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[PHP Architect]] - Full Title: Yelling at Clouds With Chris Hartjes - Category: #articles - Summary: In this episode, we talk with Chris Hartjes about his column in PHP[Architect] Magazine, where he gets to "Yell at Clouds" (as the old Simpson's joke goes) about whatever is on his mind at the time. We also discuss his thoughts on a new testing patterns book and his love-hate relationship with the Blue Jays. Links: Chris' Site - https://grumpy-learning.com/ HoneyBadger.io - https://HoneyBadger.io Our Discord - https://discord.gg/aMTxunVx Chris' Social Media: Mastadon - @[email protected] Scott's Social Media: Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/scottkeckwarren.bsky.social LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-keck-warren-91689810/ Mastodon - https://phpc.social/@scottkeckwarrenIn this video, Scott - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9qso8ECu0E Hello developers and welcome to the PHP Architect community corner podcast where we have conversations with members of the web development community. I'm your host Scott Kekorn and today we're talking with Chris about his articles in PHP architect including the yelling at clouds column that he's currently writing. Chris Hart Jess is currently building shopper loyalty program infrastructure for Ze Davis shopping. He used to write books and go to PHP conferences to shout out people to write tests for their PHP code, but he's still a legend in the eyes of some, including this person. So, thank you, Chris, for finding some time to talk to us today. Hi, Scott. Uh, great to be here and uh, great to talk to you again. Yes, absolutely. So, you're you recently have started up a new column on the PHP Architect um, magazine called the yelling at the clouds column. Can you kind of talk about what where that came from and um, like what you're going to be talking about in it? Sure. So, like for a number of years, Eric and John had been, you know, and Oscar uh before that been asking me if I was like interested in writing a column for the magazine. Um cuz, you know, for for those who are a little bit familiar with me, I don't want to assume cuz it's like super egotistical, but like for many many years, I was literally the only person going to PHP conferences and shouting at people from from the stage about testing. So I always got asked if I wanted to do a testing column and so sometimes I was like I'm kind of working on other things and um and then you know the testing topic I don't know if boring's the right way to describe it but just like I got kind of sick about talking about it. So when I was at um uh Cascadia PHP last year um Eric and John were there and I said to them, "Hey, you know, I know you guys keep asking me about doing a column. I'll tell you what, I'll write a column for you folks, but but it has to be about anything that I feel like talking about. And of course, like within reason, right? Because I just, you know, so many years as the testing person, it's like there's there's a lot more I want to do and a lot more I want to talk about uh rather than just testing. So Eric was like, "Sure." Um I said, "Don't worry, I'll like sort of run everything by you folks before I write the column." because, you know, they are a magazine about a programming language. Um, and topics that I find interesting, Eric and John and the magazine readers might not find interesting. So, I wanted to make sure I was like sticking to topics that are relevant when it comes to programmers. Um, cuz, you know, I've been doing this for like a super long time, 28 years now. I've been getting paid to do programming, most of it PHP. So, you know, I've seen a lot of things and watched a lot of topics come and go. And I was like, always feel like for those who are familiar with the with the TV show The Simpsons, the old man old man yelling at clouds, shaking your fist, and yelling at the sky. And that's sort of like the image a lot of uh my friends and peers seem to have of me. So, I thought, ah, let's lean in uh lean in on the idea of of just an old man yelling at clouds. And that became the idea of a column where uh every time I go to write it um I don't think about it too much before I sit down and then I sit down in front of my computer and um I start writing until I've cranked out a column and I go back and edit a little bit. But most of the time it's it's what I what I want to talk about at that particular point um in time. and and I I do try to keep it somewhat um topical, but really I just sit down and like usually in about 90 minutes I've banged out the first version of the column. So, writing the column is usually not the not the problem. It's finding something that I think won't bore bore readers to death um to write about. I I always find your writing really interesting because it's it's one of you have one of those writing styles where you're you're the like I can read your column and be like, "Oh, I could just see you saying these things." like it's very very um not necessarily conversational, but it's very much your tone and your style of like speaking even um just coming coming out out of like the um the pages to to to me when I read your your columns. Um I don't know if that's intentional, but that's that's kind of how No, that is that is Yeah, that is 100% um intentional. It was with the writing was always like that. Um with my books was always like that and with my um conference talks. I always wanted to be up there and speaking to people like the way I would speak uh with them if I was like sitting at the table or were having uh a drink or having food. I mean, probably in person, there's more profanity and stuff, but you know, generally speaking, when when I'm delivering tech content, what you're reading or and what you hear me say, that's that's how I that's how I normally talk. So, um so thank you for the compliment. I do I I know I know that some of uh some of my friends have said you know I make some of this stuff I mean make some of the stuff look not effortless but like kind of easy and for a long time it wasn't but you know over time with practice I kind of feel like I'm able to like express who I really am and the things I want to talk about in a way that um other people continue to find um entertaining and engaging. And that's kind of the whole point. When this stuff is no longer fun for me then I'm just going to stop doing it. Yeah. And like I I'm I'm somewhat earlier in my like content creation like phase of of my career and like that like the thing I always have trouble with is like I can spit out a bunch of stuff and then I end up like revising it to death and then I'm like well this doesn't have my voice anymore like I lose like my voice and so it's really nice to like go oh this is your voice and your thoughts coming very clearly um in like everything that I kind of read from from you. So it's very it's a very easy read in in the magazine every month. It's not something I'm That's that's good to hear. Yeah, absolutely. So, what are what are some of the topics that you've talked about so far that that people can read about in the magazine? Well, I mean, I spoke a bit about my thoughts on um AI um and large language models. Uh spoiler alert, not a big fan um for a bunch of reasons. Not not related to just hating new stuff. Um uh you know, it's kind of weird. Like, you'd think I'd remember the columns more, but in many ways it's kind of like my talks and other stuff. was like, "Well, I was there and I delivered it and I don't go back and read old articles or go back and watch my old um talks." So, I know it sounds weird, but sometimes I forget about the stuff that I've written about. I know that I know the one that I that I thought about um the most that I've wanted to write um was the article that I did for the May issue um about the the golden age of of PHP conferences because I've I've been on both sides of that whole experience of attending a incredibly large number of events and then running my own event and you know while they are sort of like two separate skill sets I mean you can't really have one without the other. So that was like going back and and explaining to people like if you look at the way things are now, here's how they used to be and here's how we got to where we are now. And like are there any lessons we can learn? Should we have done anything different? Could we have done anything differently? Um you know, sometimes random stuff just happens and and things run their course. And um when it came to the conference thing, I've been going to conferences for like 20 years. In 20 in 2025, it's 20 years basically. So that's a long time to have been going to um programming centric uh conferences with the vast majority of them having been PHP ones. So I've I've gotten to see a lot of got to see a lot of change. I've gotten to see like how a lot of things have stayed the same. But I felt I felt like, you know, it was important to like sort of give people who may have only been to one conference or have never been and maybe like kind of don't like understand like what's the point of going to one of these things. I thought I wanted to share, you know, one little slice of of my thoughts on that cuz I mean I could probably write a book on this whole thing if I wanted to. But for the column, you know, I I I I chose a couple of topics that that I thought were uh ideas that I thought were worth expanding on and and then um and then cranked that out and and for you know, I don't go back and read it often, but I did go back and read this one because I was more concerned about like am I do I feel what I'm talking about is accurate and you know um didn't want to be too self- congratulatory while I was writing it as well cuz there's a lot of survivorship bias and a lot of like what's old hat to me is like completely new and what's impressive to me is uh not necessarily impressive to others and and vice versa, you know. Um I have a lot of friends thankfully who don't work in the tech industry and I've gotten to hear some very interesting perspectives from them on all the stuff that I've done and the things that I feel are like mundane or not important they continue to be like super impressed by. So, um, I wanted to capture some of that feeling with that article to like let people know this whole conference thing has been going on for a super long time and I was there for what I would consider the golden age of PHP conferences. And so, so what would you consider the golden age to to be? Like what was what is the kind of the you know the the feeling or the or the the um characteristics of that? Oh, like that time frame or like what do I feel made it the golden age? What do you Yeah, I guess what do you feel like made it the golden age? Well, so like we started off with like one or two kind of small ones and then as more attendees started going the speakers themselves started looking at these events and going you know what I think I I want to do one of these things. Um most of the speakers are super highly motivated people who do who you know I don't know is leadership quality is the right phrase I don't know maybe it's the wrong thing but most of the speakers are like they want to do uh organizing type things as well. So, you know, because to to deliver a talk, I mean, you you've been to a lot of conferences, Scott, you can always tell when someone's put in the effort as opposed to mailed it in, right? And so, most of the speakers, um, they want to do a really good job and then they're like, "This is kind of cool. the networking side of it really uh appeals to to the that segment of the audience that wants to go from programming as a as a job and a really good paying job despite everything that they're trying these days to like a good paying career and you know and when I made that transition when I decided I wanted programming the career not just programming the job well that like required a whole different commitment basically and so to me the golden age started when we went from one or two large tentpole conferences and this predates um Laravel's rise in the PHP community. So we kind of only had tech and maybe one other one out there, a couple European ones where we had this big explosion of smaller regional events. We had events in in Miami and in the southeast and we had more PHP representation at East Coast conferences and then there was a companion conference for um PHP tech. Then I did my event. Then we had events on the west coast. And then PHP Tech started moving around. So it was like this golden age where we we wrote we went from one small event to like an explosion of all these other events and lots of cross-pollination and lots of the same people going to these events. Um and then you could sort of feel like it was running out of steam and then CO hit and that was it. and we've had a reset, but it'll never be the it'll never be the same again for a variety of reasons. Some of them are just that, you know, to use the cliche, the world has changed. And um and in many cases, the people who were doing all the speaking and all the organizing, they've moved on and they're doing other things. Even with me making the commitment to no longer go to so many events and and find different things to do with my time outside of the day job, it just happens. change change is is inevitable but like from 2012 until 2019 absolutely golden age of PHP conferences. You could for almost uh you could pick for every quarter there was a PHP conference to go to and for like 3 years in a row I basically went to every PHP event that I could figure out um how to get to. once a month I was getting on a plane to go somewhere either for um work at the time or go to a conference and that that was like 2014 2015 2016 that was really if you want to condense into those three years that was the height of uh PHP conferences for me anyway there were so many events and I had so many good friends I met through my speaking efforts and then running my own conference like what could be cooler than having a bunch of friends you could ask uh that you could pay to fly to come and see you and deliver talks that you find interesting and that lots of people um got a lot out of. So, so yeah, I would say that absolute peak yeah 16 15 16 17 and then I moved and then I made some choices about what I wanted to do with my spare time and and that was kind of it for me being super involved with with conferences. But yeah, like that peak it was awesome. all all my friends were talking, my friends were running events. Um, it had a big-time community feel and then, you know, one event drops out, one organizer moves on, people choose not to speak, people switch jobs and don't work with with PHP anymore. Um, and then like I said, then COVID hit us and just decimated a ton of ton of events and really kind of um rewrote the rules for conferences and attendees. And you know, here in here in the early part of well, I guess we're almost at mid 2025. Circumstances in a specific country have made things super difficult for a lot of people who want to do conference stuff again. So again, the rules are being um rewritten and change is the one constant. So, yep. Absolutely. So, and I I'm lucky enough I have access to like the articles before they're published, but this this is going to come out after it should be published theoretically. So, it is a good read. It was an enjoyable read. So, I highly recommend it for everybody. And we'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. Did you know that downtime costs $427 per minute on average for small businesses and up to $9,000 per minute for medium-sized businesses? And that's every single minute. Honeybadger helps you avoid costly downtime and saves you money by combining error tracking, performance monitoring, uptime monitoring, and more into one easytouse platform, helping you fix outages faster than ever. Best of all, Honeybadger is free to get started. Setup takes as little as 5 minutes. Be sure to bookmark honeybadger.io. That's honeybadger.io. And we're back with Chris. Um, is there anything else you want to direct our listeners to before we let you go for today? I don't know. I mean like I mean for many years like I said I joke about it the guy shouting at people about testing. I mean it's an exaggeration of what I did. Um but you know uh I'm kind of at a crossroads for figuring what I want to do with content. I have a book that's a third written um right now about like testing patterns and um you know with all the changes going on I'm like do I like is it worth it to even um to even finish the book? The tech industry is in such a is in such a weird spot and in an incred and it is increasingly difficult for I hate using the phrase content creator but for people who want to write stuff and make stuff and sell it. It's a very it's a super challenging environment right now. And I'm old in computer terms. I'm I'm 54 years old, which is like a thousand years old when it comes to being a a programmer, right? Not too there's not many people my age who still are getting paid to write uh to do programming. Most of them have have moved on to management or if they managed to be at the front end of bubbles one and two, um they cashed out and and no longer have to work. So, I still have to work and I still got to crank out stuff, but um but you know, I'm tired and I'm like I'm wondering like as long as long as we have these sort of this situation where like a lot of what people do in the education and training space right now cuz again I don't want to rant is like being severely devalued and it makes me question like do I want to continue making stuff uh knowing that the job is now um twice as hard, three times as hard used to be. I never had a problem with my old books, writing them and marketing them, marketing them and doing all that work. It was, you know, my favorite topic is me, as I like to joke, so that made it pretty easy, but like the the struggle is really hard and and uh you know, I feel for other people who are going through the same thing. I'm sure the magazine's no different. Um you know, so um I'm deciding what I want to do. I I probably should just finish that book, but it's baseball season, so I prefer to watch the Blue Jays um frustrate me greatly. And then when the season's over, I'll probably go back and and crank out the rest of the book and try to get that done. Um get that done by the end of the year and then see if uh if John and Eric want to publish that one like they published my previous book. Yeah, I'd be I'd be interested in seeing that too because like I'm I'm always I'm big on like the pattern like there was there's some unit testing book that you you suggested and it's Do I have it here? Oh, yeah, I do. It's like this this this xunit p test test. Oops, can't see it. And it's enormous. Yeah. And while and Yeah. And while that's a great resource, like it's great to read. It's great to flip through if you're trying to fall asleep. And uh and also uh also I think what's what to make a book and the concepts and I draw on a lot of those concepts in my latest book is like you need to like provide people with some examples and with examples that go beyond the traditional uh fsbuzz how do I write tests for fsbuzz or like how do I write a uh Roman numeral to uh you know base 10 number conversion thing. Those are like good practice things, but people the biggest obstacle of course with the test stuff is always how do I take what I've learned and get it working with my own stuff. So this was a different approach. I felt like saying I want how does X work in testing? like what's you know to not to spoil the book too much but stuff like like what's a mock and how do I build data providers and and other questions that are like super legit like how do I organize how should I organize my tests where should my test code um live what's a valuable test and what isn't a valuable test and those are like second and third order questions from the first question of like how do I write test cuz like I mean I've said this before It's never going to be any harder than it is today to write tests. All the tools are there. I remember when there was nothing and you had to figure out all this stuff on your own or rely on people giving you access to like extreme alpha or beta versions or having to dip into source code to figure out to do things. Now it's now in the PHP community, um it's so easy to write tests if you really want to do them. And I and I, you know, I get lots of lots of pressure on people to crank stuff out and testing is the first thing to be um thrown out the window if you don't have the ability if you don't have the ability to enforce having tests just as part of your workflow. So that that part I get. I'm not so ignorant that I'm like, "Oh, you're like unprofessional person for not doing the tests." But like we can do tests. It's way easier now than it's ever been. And um you know, I needed to switch from evangelizing about you should be writing tests to saying, "Well, if you want to write tests, I can help you um figure out the stuff that you might be getting stuck on." Cuz anytime I look at this stuff, it's always stunning to me how how much I've just internalized and taken for granted that that has to be taught to other people to allow them to like get down the same path. I mean, never as good as me, of course, but like to get down that path of like how do how do I make tests like a first class part of my development experience and how do I write tests that have value? Cuz that's really at the end of the day, that's always what I've been wanting to tell people. All this testing stuff helped me. It helped me build my career, which is like a nice secondary thing. But like it's it really does solve a bunch of problems that you're going to face on, you know, longunning projects um that require lots of changes and you want to be able to like make those changes. um knowing that you can go you can go home at the end of the day and not be there until like midnight um trying to figure out what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. So So people are looking for like updates on like when that if that when that comes out like should we send them to like your website or or Yeah. Once I Yeah, once I get a land I I feel like once I get maybe about halfway um done with it, I may uh because I'm going to initially I'm going to do the initial version through Lean Pub, which is like a self-publishing platform that I've dealt with for years now. my first all my books have come out through that and it sort of allows you to like work on the book in plain sight and people can which is always nice for me pay you ahead of time for the finished copy. So when I get about halfway done I'll probably open it up and people can um you know pay a reduced price early on so they can see what I'm doing and then get the finished copy when it's um when it's ready to go. Um but yeah, not not quite at the point where I can share stuff yet. not enough is done. And and like I said, it's it's baseball season, which means I'll be I'll be spending most of my evening shouting at the Blue Jays until until uh whenever they fall out of playoff contention, which they're not that great this year. So probably so probably by the beginning of September, the writing will be on the wall and then I can start concentrating on other stuff. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to like that's always looking for testing books. So, um and thank you for for finding time to talk to us. No, awesome. Always happy to talk with you, Scott. I had to say another heartfelt thank you to Chris for all all of his time and all of you as well for listening. If you're not already subscriber, make sure you subscribe with whatever your preferred method is so you can get the episodes when they're released. Maybe share this post with a co-orker so they can learn about what we're doing at the magazine. His podcast is available both in an audio version on the PHP Architect website as well as a video version on our YouTube channel. This is Scott Kick Warren for the PHP Architect Community Corner signing off and reminding you to keep listening, keep coding, and keep reading., Yelling at Clouds With Chris Hartjes, PHP Architect, 01jyz6h1tedw97pd9tqemtctsn.