I have been programming professionally in one capacity or another for over 30 years. I continue to find it a challenging and rewarding career. I still learn new lessons about my profession every day, as I think is the case for every programmer dedicated to this craft.
Even more challenging and rewarding is helping other programmers to learn what I have learned. I have worked with PHP for 15 years now, in many different kinds of organizations and in every capacity from junior developer to VP of Engineering. In that time, I have learned a lot about the commonalities in legacy PHP applications. This book is distilled from my notes and memories from modernizing those codebases. I hope it can serve as a path for other programmers to follow, leading them out of a morass of bad code and bad work situations, and into a better life for themselves.
This book also serves as penance for all of the legacy code I have left behind for others to deal with. All I can say is that I didn't know then what I know now. In part, I offer this book as atonement for the coding sins of my past. I hope it can help you to avoid my previous mistakes.