Escaping the Code Maze

Winter is almost upon us which means it’s time to cue up the final PHP Sussex session of 2025!

In ‘Escaping the Code Maze’, back end consultant and PHP Sussex Host Yannick Chenot encourages us to be more liberal with our privates as he guides us through the benefits of being ‘closed by default’ in the context of Bertrand Meyer’s famous SOLID programming tenets.

Yannick is a back end consultant at Yellow Raincoat.

The in-person event will take place at Runway East in Brighton from 6:30 pm (talk at 7 pm). There will be pizza and drinks courtesy of Tillo – come have a chat before the talk! Afterwards we’ll head to Unbarred Taproom, 2 minutes walk from our venue, to wind up the evening over a craft beer 🍺.

Exceptionally there won't be a live stream for this event, so be sure to join us at Runway East!

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Escaping the Code Maze

Exploring a code base is like navigating a maze with a partial map. While some paths are correctly indicated, some are mislabelled or turn out to be dead ends. Take a childless class not marked as final, for instance – the keyword’s absence is like a sign pointing to a dark tunnel leading nowhere.

How many such paths do we accidentally – or deliberately – leave open? This presentation introduces the Closed-by-Default Principle, a reframing of existing principles focussed on keeping those paths shut, relieving the developer’s cognitive load in the process.

It is also an exploration of PHP’s evolution over time, each version introducing features to keep the maze as navigable as possible. We’ll also see how to leverage static analysis tools to automate the corresponding rules, giving developers the assurance that all paths lead somewhere.