PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 26 Elizabeth Barron

   In this episode of PHP Alive and Kicking, hosted by Mike and Chris (from PHP Architect), featuring their guest Elizabeth Barron, the newly appointed Executive Director of the PHP Foundation. The conversation covers Elizabeth’s origin story in PHP (self-teaching in the late 1990s), her vision for the Foundation beyond just funding core developers — including community engagement, evangelising PHP in emerging regions like Africa, and improving documentation. They also discuss the challenge of attracting younger developers to PHP, the lack of PHP-focused educational content and boot-camps, the impact of AI on development (including a wild story about an autonomous AI agent submitting PRs and blogging about being “discriminated against”), the importance of mentoring, and the potential revival of local PHP user groups.   Links: The PHP Foundation https://thephp.foundation Elizabeth Barron announcement https://thephp.foundation/blog/2026/02/27/welcoming-elizabeth-barron-new-executive-director/ An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/ PHP Architect Magazine https://www.phparch.com/magazine/ PHP Tek Conference https://tek.phparch.com PHP Architect Swag Store https://store.phparch.com PHP Architect Discord https://discord.phparch.com PHP.tv https://php.tv Laracasts https://laracasts.com SymfonyCasts https://symfonycasts.com Displace Technologies https://displace.te certificates.dev https://certificates.dev   Partner This podcast is made a little better thanks to our partners Displace   Infrastructure Management, Simplified Automate Kubernetes deployments across any cloud provider or bare metal with a single command. Deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure with ease. https://displace.tech/     PHPScore   Put Your Technical Debt on Autopay with PHPScore   CodeRabbit   Cut code review time & bugs in half instantly with CodeRabbit.   Music Provided by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/ The post PHP Alive And Kicking: Episode 26 Elizabeth Barron appeared first on PHP Architect.