Introduction
In this issue of Behind the Dev, we're going to be taking a look into the day-to-day of the developer Bosun Egberinde.
Bosun recently did a really cool talk at Laracon Online called "Kubernetes and Laravel". He is also working on a PHP sandbox environment, aptly named PHPSandbox, that allows developers to develop PHP projects without the need for a local development environment.
If you don't already follow him on Twitter, make sure to check out his profile at: @bosunski!
Behind the Dev
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I'm Bosun Egberinde. I'm a Nigerian currently living in Berlin and I work at Shopify at the moment.
How did you first get into web development?
Well, the journey started while I was in my last year at high school. I have a friend who seems to do things around "phone tech" like downloading games, using Google/Wikipedia to find information about some things we learn in school and many more. He basically knows his way around phones compared to the rest of us. I didn't even have a phone at that time, but I enjoyed the times I was able to hold and use one whenever I had the chance.
When I graduated from high school, my Dad gave me some money which I eventually added some more money to get myself a phone for the first time. It was through using this phone that I started having the desire to have a website myself. This led me to looking for how to make my own websites.
After some going around, I found WAP sites and how to make my own. Down the line, I discovered HTML as the thing used in writing Web Pages. I eventually started learning HTML from my mobile phone. That was how I landed myself into Web Development.
As a developer, what’s your typical day like?
Wake up, do some personal stuff, start work, eat lunch, continue work. After work, I watch weekly episodes of some series I follow and then jump on some PHPSandbox related work. I do that till I return to bed.
Are there any tools that you use on a daily basis?
RubyMine (at work), PHPStorm (personal and work).
Is there anything in particular related to development that you enjoy working on the most?
Developer Tools and Automation - Basically anything that helps other developers.
If you could go back in time and give younger Bosun some advice when you were first starting in development, what would it be?
"Don't pause coding at all, you're on the right track" - I paused coding for a significant amount of time while in the University as a result of self doubt. I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing for myself or otherwise. If I could go back, that's what I would tell myself.
Do you have any hobbies outside of web development?
I like watching movies and playing video games.
Can you tell us a bit about PHPSandbox?
PHPSandbox allows developers using PHP to develop projects faster without needing a local development environment. It's not fully there yet but that's the idea. I started writing PHPSandbox when I couldn't find a platform for PHP that can allow users of my package to try the package without ever installing it on their local development environment. It started basically with just execution of code snippets but grew to running Laravel projects as well.
There are now over 17k registered users on PHPSandbox with over 100k notebooks (projects). Personally, the future I imagine for PHPSandbox is to be able to develop and collaborate on PHP projects regardless of scale from a device like my tab without ever depending on my Macbook. Many parts of the PHP ecosystem lack playgrounds for things like packages hence why we introduced Play which uses PHPSandbox to build a playground where you can try almost any Composer package. I believe playgrounds generally lower the barrier of entry to trying things out and it's one thing I love about the JavaScript ecosystem. This is the same thing I hope to achieve with PHPSandbox - to make it easier for newcomers to get started with PHP in any part of its ecosystem.