Biography
Derick Rethans is a PHP internals expert and author of Xdebug. He works as an independent contractor and consultant on PHP extensions, the PHP language, and related projects.
He works for the PHP Foundation to improve PHP, and continues to contribute to the PHP project in numerous forms (Date/Time Extension, Xdebug, PHP 4.4/7.4 Release Manager, etc). He is a frequent lecturer at conferences, the author of php|architect's Guide to Date and Time Programming, and the co-author of PHP 5 Power Programming. Derick also hosted the weekly-ish PHP Internals News podcast.
In his spare time, he likes to travel, hike, and photography.
Awards
- 2023 — OpenUK Honours List
- For my work on PHP through the PHP Foundation
- 2011 — php|architect Impact Award
- For Xdebug
- 2022 — ActiveState Active Awards
- The Activators Choice Award for PHP
Career
The PHP Foundation
- February 2022 - present
- Working on the PHP language, as a software engineer of the PHP Foundation.
- Some of the feature and functionality that I focus my attention on:
- The Date/Time extension
- Unicode Support
Derick Rethans Limited / Self-employed Contractor
- January 2019 - present
- I'm a self-employed contractor/consulting doing C, PHP, and Go projects.
- Some of those projects include:
- Maintaining Xdebug, the PHP debugger.
- Development of Xdebug Cloud, a SaaS platform for making debugging possible and more convenient in cloud environments.
- The Instana/IBM monitor for PHP.
- Converting the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (Ciclops) from a dynamic site to a static legacy site, and its new static search engine.
- Upgrading and maintaining timezone support for PHP and MongoDB.
- November 2001 - present
- Speaker at numerous conferences, seminars and usergroup meetings around the world.
- February 2010 - March 2012
- Some of those projects include:
- The QuickHash and StumbleCache extensions for StumbleUpon.
- Senior PHP Developer/Systems Architect at PlumWillow.
- The camouflage PHP extension for TEQneers.
- Developing the camouflage PHP encoding extension into Camouflage Encoder as part of Anderskor Ltd.
- The twig PHP extension for Sensio Labs.
- Maintaining the MongoDB PHP driver for MongoDB.
The PHP Project
- May 2002 - December 2018
- Working on Xdebug, the PHP debugging and development assistent extension.
- August 1999 - January 2021
- Joined the PHP development team and submitted my first patch: SWF support for getimagesize(). Since then I've been continiously contributing to the PHP project. I was release manager for PHP 4.1.1, various PHP 4.2.x releases and the PHP 4.4 and PHP 7.4 series.
May 2004 - Dec 2005- Helping out with the Zend Certification process in order to boost enterprise support for PHP.
MongoDB
- December 2015 - January 2019
- Senior Software Engineer
- April 2012 - December 2015
- PHP Engineer and Evangelist
- I am the "voice" of PHP, on both the MongoDB team and within the broader MongoDB community. I am responsible for supporting MongoDB in the PHP ecosystem through driver development, integration with open source tools, community support, and developer advocacy.
eZ Systems
- July 2005 - January 2010
- Working as project leader for the eZ Components project, eZ Systems AS in Norway.
- June 2009 - October 2009
- Serving on the board of directors for eZ Systems AS in Norway.
- January 2004 - June 2005
- Working as core-developer on eZ publish, eZ Systems AS in Norway.
JDI Media Solutions
- January 2001 - December 2003
- Working on countless projects for my own company, JDI Media Solutions.
- October 1998
- Founded JDI Media Solutions with two other class-mates to provide internet services to local customers.
Other work experience
- June 1997 - October 1998
- Did tech support for customers of PC Privé projects for Diabolo Informatisering.
- October 2002 - January 2004
- Editor-in-chief of the International PHP Magazine managing content and themes of issues.
Education
- May 2001
- Received my Bachelors degree in CS and Information Technology.
- 1997 - 2001
- Attended the Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen to study Computer Science.
- 1991 - 1997
- Went to highschool at the Thomas à Kempis College.
Publications
(since September 2004)
Books
- April 2009
- php|architect's Guide to Date and Time Programming, Derick Rethans, ISBN: 978-0-9810345-0-8
- October 2004
- PHP 5 Power Programming, Andi Gutmans, Stig Sæther Bakken, Derick Rethans, ISBN: 0-13-147149-X
Articles
- June 2013
- "Introduction to Document Databases with MongoDB", Web & PHP, June 2013
- Januari - March 2009
- 3-part column in php|architect about PHP's Garbage Collection mechanism
- Februari 2006
- "eZ components", php|architect, Februari 2006, page 27 to 35
- January 2005
- "Transliteration with PHP", php|architect, January 2005
- June 2005
- "References: an in-depth look", php|architect, June 2005 [PDF]
- December 2004
- "Translittération en PHP", direction|php, December 2004, page 27 to 33
- September 2004
- "Debugging Questions and Xdebug Answers", php|architect, September 2004, page 9 to 22 [PDF]
Running
- December 8, 2019 — The Regent's Park Royal Parks Winter 10K Series - Regent's Park
- 10 km in 55m05s (5m31s/km)
- November 3, 2019 — Mornington Chasers Regent's Park 10K - Regent's Park
- 10 km in 55m03s (5m30s/km)
- December 13, 2015 — Royal Parks Winter 10km series - Regent's Park
- 10 km in 51m49s (5m11s/km)
- September 15, 2015 — Run the River 2015
- 5 km in 24m56s (4m59s/km)
- September 6, 2015 — Kew Gardens 10K
- 10 km in 49m17s (4m56s/km)
- July 12, 2015 — British 10K London Run
- 10 km in 55m47s (5m34s/km)
- June 4, 2015 — JP Morgan Corporate Challenge
- 3.2 miles (5.15 km) in 28m53s (5m37s/km)
- April 12, 2015 — The Race Organiser - Hyde Park 10k
- 10 km in 59m13s (5m55s/km)