Dave Liddament

Me after one of my talks

Montreal at night

A bird flying with snow an mountains in the background

Poutine from McDonalds!

I'm back from an excellent few days at Confoo, where I gave two talks. One on testing, the other on custom PHPStan rules.
There were many amazing talks and I had lots of interesting hallway chats.
And the added bonus of Mount Royal at night. A lovely walk in the snow. And Canada's best Poutine.

Yesterday we had PHP Thames Valley in Reading. Thanks to @daveliddament.bsky.social
and @mintopia.net for bringing us not one, but two magnificent talks!

Follow us for future events: meetup.com/php-thames-v...

PHP Performance Demystified: Internals, Profiling, and the Road to PHP 9 with Volker Dusch Is PHP actually slow, or are we just measuring it wrong? We caught up with Volker, PHP 8.5 Release Manager and performance expert at Tideways, to preview his session, "PHP Performance Demystified,"…

I had a great conversation with edorian.bsky.social. We talked about his upcoming PHP-UK talk about performance and also what it is like to be the PHP release manager.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYhu...

PHPUK Tickets (20th Feb): www.phpconference.co.uk/tickets

Use code DAVEPHPUK for 10% discount.

January 2026 Meetup, Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup 🚀 Let's kick off 2026 with a Symfony meetup on January 27th! With the special participation of a member of the Symfony Core Team: **Nicolas Grekas**. Details of the talk

Symfony are kicking off 2026 with a meetup in London on Tuesday 27th Jan with two great talks.

Sign up here if you're interested in popping along: www.meetup.com/symfony/even...

Saving Time using Xdebug with Derick Rethans How much time could you save by switching from var_dump to a step debugger? We sat down with Derick Rethans (creator of Xdebug) to preview his upcoming talk at PHP UK Conference. We explore the…

Recently Derick Rethans and I had a chat about his upcoming PHP UK Conference talk about XDebug, the PHP Foundation and supporting OSS.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oCc...

Tickets phpconference.co.uk/tickets?utm_source=dave&utm_medium=interviews&utm_id=PHPUK+community

Use DAVEPHPUK for 10% discount!

Mastering PHPStan Custom Rules with Ondřej Mirtes Why write a test for a single bug when you can write a rule that prevents that bug forever? We caught up with Ondřej Mirtes, the creator of PHPStan, to preview his upcoming talk at PHP UK Conference…

I had the pleasure of chatting with Ondrej Mirtes about PHPStan and his upcoming PHP Conference talk "Creating Custom PHPStan rules".

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmGf...

Tickets for this and many other great talks: www.phpconference.co.uk/tickets?utm_...

Use code DAVEPHPUK for a 10% discount!

Mastering Event-Driven Testing & The Legacy of PHPUnit with Sebastian Bergmann How do you effectively test software that relies on events rather than standard CRUD layers? We sat down with the creator of PHPUnit, Sebastian Bergmann, to discuss his talk at PHP UK Conference…

I recently interviewed Sebastian Bergmann, the creator of PHPUnit, to talk about his brand new talk that he'll be giving at PHP UK Conference this February.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bru2...

PHPUK tickets: www.phpconference.co.uk/tickets?utm_...

Use code DAVEPHPUK for a 10% discount!

GitHub - DaveLiddament/miniature-heroes: Stats from 10 years of the contents of miniature heroes Stats from 10 years of the contents of miniature heroes - GitHub - DaveLiddament/miniature-heroes: Stats from 10 years of the contents of miniature heroes

If I have behaved myself Santa gives me a tub of miniature heroes for Christmas.

I've been collecting the stats on the contents since 2016. Should you wish to see them (I can't see why anyone would), I've shared them here: github.com/DaveLiddamen...

Git tips and tricks. Day 25. Vanity SHAs This one surprised me. It's true, you can have vanity git SHAs! Checkout this repo if you want to find out more: https://github.com/mattbaker/git-vanity-sha

Merry Christmas everyone.

I have a special bonus git tips and tricks video. Yes you can have vanity SHAs for all your git commits!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFQf...

Thanks to everyone who's watched the videos. I hope you found them useful.

Git tips and tricks. Day 24: git push --force-with-lease Force-pushing is one of the most dangerous things you can do in Git. It is, sometimes, necessary. In this video, we break down git push --force-with-lease. What it actually does, why it exists, and…

A force push in git is always a risk , especially if other team members are working on the same branch. It's possible to reduce the risk with git push --force-with-lease

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgR_...

Git tips and tricks. Day 23: git bisect Was a feature working last week and has been reported as broken today? Are there lots of commits to look at to find the issue? If so git bisect to the rescue! This video shows you how to use git…

A bug appeared.
Nobody knows when.
There are 300 commits in between.

This is exactly what git bisect is for.

Check out today's git tips and tricks video to learn about git bisect...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsn7...

Git tips and tricks. Day 22: git reflog You know that moment when you’ve just nuked your Git repo… Good news: Git remembers everything. Today's video shows how git reflog is going to save you.

Today's video shows how git reflog can save you from all your git mistakes...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY2y...

Git tips and tricks. Day 21: git cherry-pick Learn how you can make cherry pick a commit from another branch, on to the branch you're currently work on.

Today's git tips and tricks looks at git cherry-pick www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOB6...

Git tips and tricks. Day 20. git config alias Save typing and your keyboard by using aliases to provide shortcuts for the common git commands you use.

Save typing and your keyboard by using aliases to provide shortcuts for the common git commands you use.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyua...

Git tips and tricks. Day 19: git branch Today we're learning about branches.

Today's tips and tricks are about branches in git.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcGT...

Git tips and tricks. Day 18: git rebase -i (part 3) Learn how we can use interactive rebase to change commits in the past. In this example we're splitting an existing commit into 2.

In today's git tips and tricks video we learn how to edit commits using interactive rebase.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a18j...

Thanks for sharing. I'm glad you're finding it useful.

Git tips and tricks. Day 17: git rebase -i --autosquash My favourite git find of 2025! The combination of git commit --fixup and git rebase -i --autosquash make it easy to retrospectively fix git commits. This one is really worth learning!

This is my favourite git feature that I found out about this year.
git commit --fixup
git rebase -i --autosquash

What's your favourite git feature you learnt this year?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOrW...

Git tips and tricks. Day 16: git rebase -i (part 2) Learn how you can reorder commits and combine 2 commits into one with interactive rebase.

More git rebase magic in today's video. It's possible to reorder commits and combine multiple commits into one....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11T...

Git tips and tricks. Day 15: git rebase -i (part 1) Git's rebase functionality is one of its most powerful features. Today we'll learn how to use interactive rebase to reword commit messages.

One of git's most powerful features is git rebase. Start learning about it in today's video...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZWv...

Git tips and tricks. Day 14. git reset Today we learn how to split the previous commit into 2 commits using git reset.

Have you just made a git commit that's too big? Learn how to split it into 2 with the help if git reset.... www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPXu...

Git tips and tricks. Day 13: git commit --amend Made a mistake with the commit you've just created? Don't panic! With git you can rewrite your git history. Today we take the first step using git commit --amend

Wish you could rewrite history?

When it comes to git, that wish can come true! In today's video I show you how to amend a git commit...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hn...

Git tips and tricks. Day 12: git commit -o --dry-run Have you spent ages carefully creating a set of changes in the staging area to be committed, only to realise that you want to commit a completely different set of files? If so the git commit -o…

Have you spent ages carefully creating a set of changes in the staging area for your next git commit, only to realise that you want to commit a completely different set of files?

If so the git commit -o option is for you?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=acQA...

Git tips and tricks. Day 9: git add -N See how you can move untracked files to the working tree using git add -N This allows you to use tools like git add -p on new files.

Do you know what git add -N does?

If not, checkout today's git tips and tricks video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=onqS...

Laravel Best Practices: Models, UUIDs by default, Actions, Type Safety, Generics in PHP 9? YouTube video by nunomaduro

NEW VIDEO: Laravel Best Practices.. Models, Actions, Type Safety, Generics in PHP 9.. 🛡️

20 minutes of pure gold with Brent Roose discussing best practices for building large, maintainable Laravel applications.. ✅

Video here: youtu.be/QFh21mFLH8I?...

Git tips and tricks. Day 8: git diff/git restore In this video we'll see how to use git diff to see what changes we'er about to commit. We'll also see how we can use git restore to unstage changes.

Git tips and tricks day 8; it's all about git diff and git restore...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBKf...

GitHub - DaveLiddament/php-language-extensions: Attributes to define new PHP language features (that are enforced by static analysis) Attributes to define new PHP language features (that are enforced by static analysis) - DaveLiddament/php-language-extensions

The PHP Language Extension library v0.10.0 is released. PHP 8.5 is now supported.

This library provides new language features (e.g. namespace visibility) that are enforced by static analysis.

github.com/DaveLiddamen...

Git Tips and Tricks. Day 7: git add Learn about the following git add flags: git add - A git add -u git add -n git add -p

Day 7 of git tips and tricks is all about git add. including the flags -A, -u, -n and -p

youtu.be/RDR35zepCgQ

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Day 6 of git tips and tricks... Toady we learn about git shortlog

youtu.be/Wh6oaQu3uwg

Git tips and tricks day 5: git show With git show we can look at any git commit, tag or branch. We can also you git show to see the contents of a file at any point in the git repo's history.

Git tips and tricks day 5 - we explore the git show command...

youtu.be/uOHnEgwRJMs