I’ve given several talks to user groups over the last few months, around the topics of testing and performance. I hope that you find them interesting and useful.

When To Mock

Mocking has not only become a mainstream practice in recent years, it has also become the default practice for many developers. In this talk, I present three questions that you should ask yourself first whenever you’re deciding if a mock is the right way to test your code, and some insight into how over-mocking ends up making your tests no better than having no tests at all.

This talk was presented to PHP Dorset in November, 2014.

How Much Does Your ORM Cost?

Whenever you use an ORM, you’re trying to reduce the time it takes to ship your code. But what are you trading in return? This lightning talk introduces the idea that ORMs aren’t entirely “free”, and hopes to start you thinking about how you might go about measuring just how much that ORM is really costing you.

This talk was presented to PHP South West (where I was once the answer to a pub quiz question – my claim to fame!) in April 2015.

The Mad Science of Testing

I’m a firm believer that good testing is also good science, and in this talk, I hope to convince you too. And if we’re going to be scientists, we might as well be mad scientists, because they have all the fun

This talk was presented to PHP Berkshire in June 2015.

Source: Stuart Herbert