Nowadays it is easy to dismiss a discussion about coding standards with “Everyone already has one!” and move along. But upon closer inspection that doesn’t really hold true.

Just having a coding standard is meaningless if not everyone is following it and nobody bothers to check the code against it! Even if that happens people should also understand WHY those rules exist and how the help to speed up development!

This talk is suggesting that just having a piece of paper that has all the rules written on it is just as pointless as not having a standard at all, maybe even more hurtful.

PHP has grown up to be a very mature and reliable language with many great tools supporting our development. We as php developers have the ability to easily create, adapt and maintain a EXECUTABLE definition of our preferred coding practices!

Showing how to use and configure the appropriate tools this talk goes on to explain why it REALLY is important to have a coding standard and how to create and maintain one.
Should you choose an existing one and stick to it no matter what? Should you spend a week getting all your developers to agree on something or is there maybe an easier way to get a group of people to follow a common set of goals they agreed upon? And what to you do with a new coding standard when you already have a massive code base that doesn’t follow those rules. Having 10.000 violations can’t be the answer!

Ending with a short description of how problems can be easily detected and visualized, to really HELP and not hinder developers, this talk hopes to show to you that it is possible to have a coding standard for big teams and even for the smallest projects!