Programming fundamentals for accidental developers

This is a topic that was suggested by a few different people at the last meetup. Many PHP developers have backgrounds other than a traditional computer science education. For many basic website building challenges, practical knowledge is more important than theoretical anyway. But there are some situations where an understanding of source control, database design, refactoring code, and other things they teach the CSE kids would be helpful. We're embarking on a series of presentations designed to help "accidental developers" up their game by leveraging tools and techniques used by more experienced software engineers.

Our first event in this series will introduce you to the following concepts:

The Fundamentals of Source Control (Matthew Callahan, Rock River Star) Basics of Debugging (Owen Winkler, Critical Hit) Database Essentials (Eric Lucas, Dartmouth Technology Solutions) These presentations will be most appropriate for folks new to these concepts, but we're building in plenty of time for conversation and discussion, so even if some of these topics are review for you, we'd love to have you on-hand to help others with their questions.

Future sessions will move into successively more advanced topics, like test-driven development, behavior-driven development, continuous integration servers and more. If you've got something you'd like to see, or something you're willing to share, let us know!

Either way, we'll see you at Barnaby's on Tuesday night!