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The Debate on Remote Work for Web Developers - Lately in PHP podcast episode 18

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The recently published article on attracting talented Web developers by offering remote job positions raised an interesting debate on the challenges, advantages and disadvantages of this way of working.

This debate was the main topic of discussion of the episode 18 of the Lately in PHP podcast with Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert, who were joined by César Rodas. César is a top PHPClasses contributor that has been working remotely for several years for companies around the world.

They also comment briefly on the PHP 5.3.9 and PHP 5.4 release candidate versions announced earlier in November.




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Introduction music: Harbour by Danilo Ercole, Curitiba, Brazil

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Show notes

Introduction (0:20)

PHP 5.3.9 and PHP 5.4 RC 1 and RC 2 (2:10)

The Debate about Remote Work for Web Developers (3:58)

Importing packages into PHPClasses from Git repositories (44:18)

PHP Programming Innovation Award nominees of September 2011 (45:25)

Latest Objects published in the JSClasses (50:49)

Conclusion (55:23)

Introduction (0:20)

Manuel Lemos: Hello, welcome to the Lately in PHP Podcast. This is episode number 18. I'm Manuel Lemos, always the regular host of the podcast

And also as always I have here with me Ernani Joppert to comment about all the latest happenings in the PHP world and also give his insights about several interesting topics that we're going to comment about. Hello, Ernani, how are you doing?

Ernani Joppert: Hello, Manuel, glad to be here again and I'm doing great.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, it's always good to know that you are doing great when you come to record the podcast.

But also with us here we have a guest that has come to also comment on the several topics that we are going to talk about, Cesar Rodas, a regular contributor of the PHPClasses.org site since many years ago.

He actually won the yearly Innovation Award a few years ago due to many innovative contributions. Hello, Cesar, how are you doing?

Cesar Rodas: Hello, I am doing fine, thank you.

Manuel Lemos: Well, it's great to have you here finally. Actually we have talked to have you here before and finally you made it this time.

And we have a specific topic to talk about with you because it's pretty much related to what you do, but first we are going to move on and talk a bit about the latest happenings in the PHP world.

PHP 5.3.9 and PHP 5.4 RC 1 and RC 2 (2:10)

Manuel Lemos: Well, I don't think there are many happenings in PHP development. Basically there were two release candidate versions that were released to either PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.3.9.

Well, there is really not much to say about these releases, they are mainly bug fixes, they fix bugs that were reported by people that are helping to test these new versions.

And the only thing that is relevant to mention is that an eventual final release is expected to happen in the next weeks. So those of you that are waiting for the features of these new versions will probably be happy very soon.

Cesar, have you been trying, well, at least PHP 5.4 that has more new things to try?

Cesar Rodas: I was just compiling it and running some tests, I mean like just a couple minor tests, not that much. I didn't have time lately so I couldn't.

Manuel Lemos: Well, okay, personally I have mentioned before that I also do not see many new features that interest me in particular, but there are certainly a good set of features that may interest others like the built in Web server and some type hinting support that will somehow enhance it.

The Debate about Remote Work for Web Developers (3:58)

Manuel Lemos: And given that we are going to move on to another topic of this podcast which is basically to comment a bit about an article that by the time we are recording it was not yet published but will be in the next days.

So when people will be listening to this recording they will already have access to the actual article which is basically an article about the interest from the Web developers, PHP developers specifically but Web developers in general, in getting opportunities to be working on jobs that can be done remotely, eventually from their homes.

Basically what the article tries to be is just a call for employers that are looking for talented web developers, that I always hear many of them complaining that it's hard to find talented web developers because most of them are hired.

And the basic hint for them is that many web developers value jobs that provide them the opportunity to work remotely eventually from their homes, as I said. And given that benefit I'm sure that those companies that are trying to find talented developers, if they also offer that privilege to the candidates I'm sure they will find very easily candidates that can work remotely, could be either in their countries or in foreign countries.

Cesar, you have been working remotely I think for a number of years to several companies. You are basically based in Paraguay, your country, but from what I understood you've been working for companies of different countries.

Can you tell us a bit more about your experience in working remotely for those companies?

Cesar Rodas: Yes, I started to work remotely like two or three years ago. I started with small projects like a part-time job or a small job of one or two weeks. Then I realized that I was making even more money in that way and also getting fun.

I was learning a lot of things, so I decided to move into a full time job but remotely. So this is my third job now that I'm having and I'm working full time, let me think, for three years now, yeah, for three years, and I can't complain.

It is great because I can manage my time, I am working from my home so I don't have to take a bus or drive, and there are many, many other benefits. I'm sure that you have a lot of questions so feel free to ask me anything about it.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, actually, thank you for also contributing for the actual article giving your testimony because people that are wondering whether it's something that can really a work in practice they have questions, they have doubts that it may work well.

And with this article the intention was mainly to tell them that there are certain things that they may be worried about that they should not be worried. And there are things that I wanted to talk about because basically you are working for companies that are already open-minded and do not have a problem to hire people remotely.

And some people that have certain objections they complain about things like meeting should be in the physical presence of the employees and employers that are involved in the projects. What is your experience with the meetings? Do you have regular meetings? Are they over Skype or over the phone or some other means of communication? How does that work in your case?

Cesar Rodas: Well, the first thing is that communication is very, very important. So if there is no communication chances are that you are going to fail because it is a different model and you have to communicate.

In my case in this company that I'm working for which is PlumWillow Inc., we do have regular phone calls like one hour a week probably, and sometimes we are just having a group chat or mailing lists. There are different methods, but yes we do spend like 20% of our time just doing communication because that is very important.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, but do you think the fact that you are not present in the same office as your boss, whoever is in charge of your work, is affecting? Is there anything that you miss for the fact that you are in the physical presence or your boss somehow complains of something that could be missing?

Cesar Rodas: Actually no. I mean I'm working for this last company like a year and a half and I've never been there, I've never been in the office. So in my personal case it doesn't effect because I don't need to be face-to-face to actually say something or to understand, but it might be different from person to person. So I would say that it does not matter but it is my personal case.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, and another concern is about some employers wonder if the time that you should be working you probably are not distracting yourself on maybe social networks or doing something else that you should not be doing at your work time. How does that work for you? Does your boss somehow control whether you are working or not or is it more relaxed?

Cesar Rodas: No, it is very relaxed in my case because I can be doing anything, but at the end of my time which is usually that we are doing a release at every week or at every two weeks depending on our workload, I have to face things.

So I might take a vacation of three days and be working like 48 hours without pausing it and that works fine. So they want results. They don't care if you are working like five hours or ten minutes. You have to finish something and that has to be done so that's all that matters.

Manuel Lemos: But do they have any sort of evaluation of your work and your progress? I don't know if you can comment because it may be somewhat private to the projects you are working on, but do you use some kind of version control system to commit your work to your company repository or...? I don't know if you can comment on that.

Cesar Rodas: Yes, we are using a couple of projects manager sites. I don't know how to say that in a proper way, but we are using, I don't recall its name, I think it's Trac, and the other one I don't remember to handle tickets. And we are using Subversion and Git, so they can see that we are working, see.

Manuel Lemos: That's actually one of the things I mention in the article that when a person is working it's actually committing code to the repository. So in the case of a web developer, which is always changing files of the projects, the employer can see.

What I was wondering is that if your boss actually checks those files that you are adding, I don't know how technical he is, if he's concerned or interested on that.

Cesar Rodas: I asked him about it once and he told me if I am checking that, that is because you are in big trouble. So I believe that as long as I'm doing my things they just don't mind as long as I'm finishing all my duties.

Manuel Lemos: So basically he trusts that you are doing the right thing because somewhat he feels that you are trustworthy, right?

Cesar Rodas: Yeah.

Manuel Lemos: One other question that I had regarding trust is about the company's sensitive data. Some employers think that if you are working in their office you have more difficulty to take out company's sensitive data, although I don't know, but in practice a person that is inside a company can always take data, sensitive information out without the company knowing. But I wonder if your boss has any concerns about that or it's just the same matter of trust.

Cesar Rodas: It is the same matter of trust. I think I signed... I'm trying to think, I think I signed a NDA which is a Non-Disclosure Agreement when I started, but yes, it is always... in this company because everyone working there has a lot of reputation, except me, I am the only one there that doesn't have a great name, so it is very, very... I mean they can trust us, we don't have those issues.

Manuel Lemos: Well, that's great. Actually I wonder are you the only employee working remotely for that company or there are more people working for that company either locally or remotely?

Cesar Rodas: Well, in the company people that are working from the office as far as I know, I might be wrong, there are like three or four people, and the entire development team it is distributed.

There is a guy in London and another guy in Spain, I'm working from South America, another friend of mine he's working from South America, then three developers from the United States, that's it, we are like seven developers.

Manuel Lemos: That's actually very interesting. Do you know anybody that is working remotely either for that company or other companies that also we know about it?

Cesar Rodas: Actually I think all know Derick Rethans, he is an important developer in the PHP community. He is working with the company, I'm trying to think, he started with the company after that. And then there is another guy, he is submitting patches and contributing with the Cake framework, and there are others that almost everyone there is having one or two or three Open Source projects.

Manuel Lemos: Oh, I see. You mean Derick Rethans, core developer of PHP?

Cesar Rodas: Yes, yes, the very same one.

Manuel Lemos: That's interesting. Is he your colleague or do you work on the same projects or somehow he is managing you or something else?

Cesar Rodas: We are all working all on the same project. He is doing another section of it. I'm working on the backend and he's doing another thing. And there was a time that I was a temporary project manager, so in theory I managed him for a couple of months, so that was really cool.

Manuel Lemos: Oh, that's interesting. I thought it could be the other way around because he has been a core developer like for many years, but it's interesting that you have been managing him because I suppose he would work in a more experienced position I think.

Cesar Rodas: The thing is that I am a full time employee and he is not. So he is working like a contractor.

Manuel Lemos: Oh, I see, okay, that explains it. But are you still managing?

Cesar Rodas: No, I came back to being just another developer there.

Manuel Lemos: So it was some sort of a temporary thing.

Cesar Rodas: Yeah, yeah.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, Ernani, I wonder if you have any questions, you have been quite quiet there.

Ernani Joppert: Yes, I was just hearing here, but actually I was trying to actually have some time to discuss this with Cesar because I've also been working in the remote work for some time, and actually my life became very, very better about it because then I can manage my work as well.

And aside from my work I guess it all comes about trust and commitment to the job, and it's also cultural behavior as well.

And I would like to ask Cesar about this, if he ever faced any cultural issues, and aside from this what would be the most difficult situation that he faced in this kind of work and if he has some challenges about balancing and explaining this situation to friends that sometimes calls him or by working in a different fuse time as well it's hard to sometimes balance this timeframe.

Cesar Rodas: Yes, I'm having like issues here at my home because people they think that I am doing nothing and they could start asking me favors like can you do this and things like that that are really annoying.

So I fixed that by just moving to a local office, that was the first issue that I have. In terms of the issues of the cultural issues, it depends. Thank goodness I never had some issues with people from other countries, although sometimes in the beginning it was a bit hard because my English wasn't good. I think it is better so all those problems are just gone.

But, no, I'm in with my experience which means that I work for three big companies, I never have any issues. So I might be lucky then.

Ernani Joppert: Yes, and I would like to ask if you agree with me, and one of those things that it comes to my reasoning here is that the biggest difficulties of working from home is to balance between your personal and your work life.

And if you have the flexibility and the trust to actually perform your personal errands and as well as you have the commitment to sometimes push it a little hard in a code camp to actually get the work done, I guess that then you have the benefit of having more free time to yourself as well as dedicate the most important time to the company.

And the other one would be to ask you if you consider this to be the future of working especially when you have to perform some intellectual work aside and then regroup to get your work mixed up with others between your team.

Cesar Rodas: So, for the first question the answer is yes. It is difficult to find limits between work and personal life. In my case it is easier because I am not married, I don't have a child or anything, and plus that my personal hobbies are like I work on Open Source projects.

So I don't have that problem but I know of some person that it is hard in the beginning, but after a couple of months you will get used to it, so it's just a matter of time.

And for the second question my answer is yes, I believe because it is better for some companies because you can find talented developers are basically anywhere. In some cases you can pay them even less money than local developers. And that is working fine for companies and for developers, so I think these will be going in the next year so, yes, I believe it.

Ernani Joppert: Oh, yeah, great.

Manuel Lemos: Ernani, while you are also commenting about also your case, I wonder if you can talk about a couple of things regarding the same things that you asked to Cesar. Do you also have problems, difficulties, to deal with matters of personal life and the work life?

And in your case do you work from home or did you also take the route of Cesar of getting a separate office to do his work and be away from distractions, family and other stuff?

Ernani Joppert: Yes, I've been doing this for some time now and, yes, the most hard part is to balance between personal life and work life, but sometimes a door in-between is enough, but then if you have a phone, a home phone, you have to have this phone dedicated to your personal life and you have to have a work phone, that helps a lot as well to separate.

Manuel Lemos: Oh, yeah.

Ernani Joppert: And sometimes moving to another location is what it takes, but the benefits are enormous.

Manuel Lemos: But in your case you work actually from home and you have also to deal with family issues and stuff, right?

Ernani Joppert: Yes, I am currently working from home. Sometimes I've had to because I am in a mobile situation I can go to the company. Actually currently I live close to one of the sites, so if I have any situations I can try to find a place where I can set up pretty quickly.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, so it's a bit different from Cesar in the sense that if necessary you can have a presential meeting.

Ernani Joppert: Yeah. But as my team is mostly located in the U.S. it's easier to manage this. And in my company they provide some special facilities to remote work such as the VPN and a toll-free number where we can connect between meetings, so that makes it lots easier.

But, yeah, setting up a nice work environment is a must-have and try to separate what is work from personal life as well as sometimes it's hard to balance between your routine because you have different fuse times and you have different seasons.

So actually in my situation I have four different work times in a year. Sometimes it's daylight savings here and it's there as well, sometimes it's here it's not there, sometimes it's there it's not here.

So those differences can become between one to three hours in a year, and sometimes I actually leave at 9:00 pm so it's a little bit late in order to do extra tasks, but I believe that the benefit of it it's way greater than those frustrations.

Manuel Lemos: You mean for you, right?

Ernani Joppert: And if you communicate well there is always the time where you can do your work alone. And actually you can speed up those tasks by yourself, and when you have to be presential it's easier to actually do what you have to do within the team and regroup with the team, have a conference call, discuss all the major items.

And if you have a personal appointment to work on it's totally comprehensible to have that time dedicated for you because sometimes you can't do things later, and sometimes you have to go to the bank or you have to go to the post office or such kinds of errands.

And one of the other situations is when you don't have connection. Sometimes your ISP is broken, so having a backup is always helpful.

Manuel Lemos: What kind of backup do you use? Do you use some 3G connect?

Ernani Joppert: Yes. In the past I had a 3G connection, but as my ISP is currently very stable, actually I've had only once a problem and it was quickly solved.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, for a person that works remotely, well, and needs Internet access not necessarily if you have to work remotely, if you work in an office you also need Internet access and if your connection goes down it's a good point to have a backup solution.

In my case I do also use a 3G connection that I can use for just a short period of time and not have to hire a full 3G plan, that would probably a bit more expensive, not a big deal but it's an expense that is not really necessary.

But, well, other than that, one thing that I want to ask you both it's more regarding the benefits to the employer. Do you think that the fact that you work remotely is so beneficial to the employers? For instance, do you end up working more or produce more because you are working remotely or not?

Ernani Joppert: Yes, please Cesar, go ahead.

Cesar Rodas: Yes, in my particular case yes because I am working like I don't have to wake up 8:00 in the morning, I can wake up like 10:00 in the morning or 11:00 in the morning, I can take my time and when I am prepared I could start working. So I'm feeling better in this way, I am feeling happy, and a happy developer is a much more productive one.

So, yes, I completely forgot the next question, can you repeat it please?

Manuel Lemos: No, actually it was just that, what I also was wondering is about your perspective, Ernani.

Ernani Joppert: Oh, yes. Yes, I totally agree, you kind of work more productively, so you can bring back to the employer lots more because you are not concerned about waking up at the proper time and be there in the right time.

And some kind of micromanagement situations is also sometimes not that much beneficial because the human behavior is a big factor here.

Manuel Lemos: People do not want to get so stressed.

Ernani Joppert: Yes, since everything is based on trust there is a common agreement. So there isn't much of those peculiarities that in regular work sometimes it's of concern. So this is a great big factor especially for developers which tends to be very different in culture, and sometimes some of them behave differently, sometimes they don't, so they can feel comfortable in their own situation and just bring back what is asked to bring back.

Manuel Lemos: Right. Well, about this topic we could go on for hours because it's very interesting and relevant to every one of us that works specifically on Web development which is the kind of work that can be done remotely and over the Internet because it's totally related with that.

Ernani Joppert: Yes, I just wanted to make an observation here. Lots of companies could benefit also to employ a person with disabilities because this is very, very concerning of me because if someday I had the benefit to found a company myself I will always care about doing this because sometimes disabled people they can be as much productive as regular people, and the ability for them to provide a very comfortable way to work is very, very nice.

Manuel Lemos: Well, anyway, as I was saying basically we could go on for hours but we need to wrap up on this topic to move on with the rest of the topics of the podcast as we're getting close to the end.

But one final question to you both, for those employers that are reluctant to consider hiring people remotely, eventually to capture more potential candidates that actually have great talent and are very skilled, what would you say to encourage them to actually be more open and take this kind of work setup of having people to work remotely, eventually even from different countries which is the case of Cesar. Cesar, what would you say?

Cesar Rodas: Well, I would say that they should try. I mean they won't regret it depending on the person they are hiring, right, but if they don't trust it because it is new or anything, name it any way, there are a lot of products out there that could help like billing hours or controlling work, there are many products out there, and also there are a lot of developers out there just looking for jobs.

So I think it's worth a try, They would have the benefit of having a lot of working hands, so they could do a fine selection, and that is what I can say from my perspective, I can't say more because I never hired a developer, but if I may give a couple of hints for those developers, can I?

Manuel Lemos: Sure.

Cesar Rodas: Sure. The first one is people don't want to resumes. They are boring and they are lying most of the time. 

Manuel Lemos: Good point.

Cesar Rodas: Do any Open Source contribution, I mean I started like having a small project and then I moved to two or three bigger projects, I'm sending patches, and they are more important than any resume.

In fact, this last job I wasn't asked about my CV. I was just asked for my public repositories, and after a couple of days they say welcome, so that was fantastic.

Manuel Lemos: Did you also mention your contributions to the PHP Classes site and actually the awards?

Cesar Rodas: Yes, yes.

Manuel Lemos: And did that help to persuade them to hire you?

Cesar Rodas: Yes. In fact, my first, my very, very first job was a recruiter from the PHP Classes site, I mean he sent me an email twice saying I saw you're a very good developer. Do you want to join us? And that was how it started. That was, I'm trying to think, that was June of 2007 or 2008, so yes, definitely it helps a lot.

Manuel Lemos: That's good to know. And the other hint you were mentioning?

Cesar Rodas: And the second one is the language, English, it's very, very important, learn it, practice it, talk it as much as you can, that is also important, so those are my tips, my hints.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, what about you, Ernani, what would be your recommendations to the employers, I mean the companies that could be considering to hire remote workers but they are not sure about it, what do you tell them to go ahead?

Ernani Joppert: Oh, yes, I would indeed take the tip from Cesar to look for good developers over the Web. There are a lot of people there especially on PHP Classes and those kinds of platforms that are targeting good developers and contributors, as well as GitHub which does as they mentioned social coding and also Facebook also helps, LinkedIn is another very nice tool.

And when actually finding the appropriate candidate giving tests also helps but answers are everywhere. Actually I would recommend checking somebody's ability to solve a problem other than knowledge because knowledge is something that you can acquire, but the ability and flexibility to solve problems is also something that is very beneficial.

And recently I've been reading an article about this on I guess it was IGN which is a game development portal that had some weird tasks for selected candidates which is focused on meritocracy.

If they were willing to flip 20,000 burgers for some special dedicated amount of hours just to be hired, this brings a lot into the table which it bring personality, character, willing to be there, this also although it sounds very, very weird, most of the Silicon Valley companies are doing this right now.

And a special recommendation to Brazil and I guess most of Latin America, this culture it's more wide and spread in the U.S. and/or British cultures, but in Europe you can find companies also willing to hire over the Internet.

But I've been seeing lots of resistance here in Brazil, and I guess that there is only success when you try. If you don't try you never know, so I guess that taking the risk and actually trying to get a good candidate and to provide them the ability to be honest and to actually avoid what Cesar mentioned about all humans lie, it's also Dr. House theory.

Just provide them the ability to be themselves and don't create difficulties, just give them the chance to give results, and I guess that this is what brings the success to the situation.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, well, we need to move on with our podcast, just one final remark regarding this topic of working remotely.

The PHP Classes site has a job board, a job posting section, and whenever there is a remote job that can actually allow for workers to do their job remotely that kind of job gets a lot more candidates, not just more in quantity but also I would say in quality because I can tell that many of the featured developers apply to those jobs.

And when I say feature developers are often developers that won nominations in the PHP Programming Innovation Award that PHP Classes site organizes, so that's one way to find more qualified candidates that are willing to work remotely.

Importing packages into PHPClasses from Git repositories (44:18)

Manuel Lemos: But, okay, moving on with our podcast, now we are reaching about the end of this podcast, we are just going to a final section on which we comment about the latest classes, objects, published in PHP Classes site.

But first I would just like to comment about the fact that this month it was implemented finally the support for developers to import packages to publish in PHP Classes site from Git repositories.

So if you are a developer that has a project that is hosted somewhere that runs Git, for instance GitHub or other sites that provide a Git project hosting, you can now very easily import your projects and publish them in PHP Classes site and so get much more exposure.

And doing so you will have much less effort in having to import one file at a time, which was the previous method of importing packages.

PHP Programming Innovation Award nominees of September 2011 (45:25)

Manuel Lemos: And now actually moving to the actual comments of this podcast on the latest packages, well, we are practically running out of time but we'll have some time to comment at least about one or another class from the PHP Classes site, and then also we will comment about the JS Classes site.

Cesar, from the latest classes that were announced as winners of the PHP Classes site Programming Innovation Award of September which were voted in October and November we had the results, which one would you like to highlight from all of these 13 that were nominated?

Cesar Rodas: Well, the first one is from Menno Bieringa, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, he is from Argentina, and he created a class which is Geo Tools which basically has a bunch of methods for measuring distance between two points. I find his approach very interesting, I gave it a try it and it works really, really fine. And about the JS class, I would talk a little bit about the...

Manuel Lemos: Well, we'll move on to the JS Classes ahead, we usually do it separately so we'll get back to you on that. Ernani, what would be the class that you found more interesting to comment about this month?

Ernani Joppert: Yes, the one that I find more attractive, at least to my idea, is the Mini HTML helper. Sometimes the simplest solutions are what makes me attracted to. It does just the CSS display like a tooltip functionality, so sometimes the user experience is what it takes, so this is my vote. Actually the class is from...

Manuel Lemos: It could be Soroush Khosravi because he's from Iran.

Ernani Joppert: Soroush Khosravi I'm sorry if I mentioned your name wrong. He's from Iran and congrats and this is very nice, and I've never seen such functionality in CSS, there goes my kudos to.

Manuel Lemos: On my part I would like to comment, well, we have many, many classes being nominated this month, fortunately many developers wanted to submit innovative classes and it's kind of hard just to pick one.

But since that's all we have time for this month I would like to mention Named Parameters from Stefan Jibrail Froelich. His name sounds a bit German but in reality he's from Ghana. And greetings to Ghana and other African countries, it's not... we don't have many...

Ernani Joppert: Contributors, right?

Manuel Lemos: ...contributors from African countries, and so it's always good to know that PHP is being used well there.

And in this case Name Parameters class is basically is sort of an attempt basically to emulate something that has been asked I think several times from what I could gather, which is basically the possibility to pass parameters to functions by any order just by specifying their names.

This is actually interesting because there are some PHP functions that do not have a consistent order in their parameters. Similar functions have a different order and this gets people confused. And they could call parameters by passing names and that would be something that would address these needs.

Well, unfortunately we do not have much time to comment on the other ten, but everybody that submitted their classes and they were nominated, congratulations to all and I hope they continue to send more innovative contributions.

Latest Objects published in the JSClasses (50:49)

Manuel Lemos: Now moving on with our comments on the latest JavaScript objects submitted to the JS Classes repository. Cesar, which one are you going to comment about that you think would be more worth noticing?

Cesar Rodas: Yes, I would talk about the jQuery Form Validate which is a very useful class because sometimes we want to validate forms in the front-end which is very nice, and this class is giving a very simple way and I find this is a very useful class, I would use it. It's from Emran Ahmed I believe, he's from Bangladesh, I don't know if I pronounced it correctly.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, well, there is a big community of PHP developers in Bangladesh. It's always great to see them actually submitting classes not only to the PHP Classes but also to the JS Classes site. And, Ernani, which one would you like to highlight this month?

Ernani Joppert: The one that I find most useful here is the Texpand which is also user interface behavioral class. Basically what it does it expands the text area based on some constraints. It's from Arturs Sosins from Latvia which has contributed a lot of components here, so kudos, he keeps doing it and we would like to encourage everybody to do so as well.

But it's a very nice class, it listens to events triggered when the user types or deletes text into a text area input, and it's very useful for some situations where space is a must, so there goes my vote too.

Manuel Lemos: On my part I would like to comment about Spatial Hash from Dino Gambone. Actually Dino participated in the Lately in JavaScript Podcast which is a podcast similar to this one that goes on on the JS Classes site. For those not familiar with that podcast and are interested in JavaScript topics, go ahead and listen to that podcast as well.

And Dino came to the podcast and he even talked a bit about this class, Spatial Hash, which is basically a class that is useful eventually for use in games that you would develop in JavaScript because what it does is to provide a structure on which two-dimension objects would be stored with their coordinates and sizes, so you can easily determine if an object moves to a different position in the two-dimension space it will collide or not with other objects, and this is quite interesting.

Well, unfortunately we do not have much time to talk about other objects in detail, but at least we could mention other objects that were published like the Light Source, also by Arturs Sosins, basically an object for providing a nice effect using CSS properties showing shadow.

Also Corners Detector from Michele Andreoli from Italy that deals with determining the accurate coordinates of an object in a page. Tmatrix also for Arturs Sosins that deals with CSS transformation matrix, and one of the remaining... I think, no actually I think we already mentioned all the latest that were published this month of November.

Conclusion (55:23)

Manuel Lemos: Well, basically this concludes our podcast this month. It was very interesting to talk about all the topics and in particular about this which of great interest, remote work.

I would like to thank you, Cesar, for coming and talking about your experience and the way that problems that are concerning employers are solved to address particular things of remote work.

Cesar, thank you for coming and also one thing that I also would like to comment because it's curious, although you live in Paraguay it's interesting because your accent sounds British, it is quite interesting.

Cesar Rodas: Well, that is because I am a huge fan of British TV series like Doctor Who and Monty Python, and I watch them I mean one hour at every single day so that's probably why.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, that explains it.

Cesar Rodas: Yes, basically that. And thank you for this invitation, it was fun and if you want to invite me once again I'll be here, thank you.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, that's great. I think it was also interesting to listen to your insights, your pronunciation made it quite clear despite you stout a bit, but I suppose you are doing simultaneous translation in your mind, that's probably why I guess.

Cesar Rodas: Probably, yes. I try to think in English as much as possible, but it doesn't work that well, I'm not forced to talk in English all the time, so I think I should move to another country.

Manuel Lemos: Yeah, maybe you should practice a day with other people talking natively in English that can help.

Cesar Rodas: Probably.

Manuel Lemos: Well, and thank you, Ernani, for coming, also your insights regarding your work that you also work remotely to your company.

Ernani Joppert: Yeah.

Manuel Lemos: And it's always good to have your opinion.

Ernani Joppert: Although it's not my company, I would like it to be but I'm just an employee there.

Manuel Lemos: It's just a way of saying that you work there.

Ernani Joppert: Yeah, I understand, I'm just joking about it.

Manuel Lemos: Okay, well, on my part that's all for now, bye.

Ernani Joppert: Bye.

Cesar Rodas: Bye, bye.




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1. Benefic association - Assontia Patient (2011-12-02 16:41)
I entirely agree on remote job... - 0 replies
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1. Podcast sobre PHP e trabalho remoto para desenvolvedores (2011-12-01 12:37)
Hoje no e-mail que recebo do PHP Classes, notei que o assunto do email me chamou mais atenção do que o normal...



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