Is AI making developers more productive or just more burned out? In this episode of Open Web Conversations, Zach Stepek and Carl Alexander sit down with Alex Standiford, creator of Siren Affiliates, for a raw conversation about the rapid shifts happening in the world of software development. They discuss how AI is re-shaping developer workflows, the pressures of keeping up with new tools, and the toll it can take on our mental health. From the rise of plugin platforms and the changing identity of WordPress to setting boundaries in an always-on AI era, this discussion goes beyond code to ask:…
Alex Standiford
I’m experimenting with integrating PHPNomad with NativePHP today. The thought of being able to run the same models and PHPNomad libraries in my desktop apps, and the server for that same app is just too dang useful to ignore! So many possibilities!
I’m already using this right now for an MCP server I’m running internally at Novatorius, and if this shapes up nicely, maybe I can cut back considerably on the amount of TypeScript I have dedicated to type coercion in the desktop app.
Alex Standiford
The number of microservices I’ve spun up this year using PHPNomad is something to behold.
I’ve really gotten into a groove with that system, and it’s just so, SO nice to have every single thing I build and manage using the exact same framework. It’s better to be consistent than great, and my biggest bottleneck right now is reviewing code. I can review and identify code smells so much faster with PHPNomad because I know just from a glance when something isn’t built using the patterns it should be built using.
Plus the CLI I buit for it scaffolds most of the code when we’re building greenfield projects, and that saves a ton of tokens when building.
I love it.
Alex Standiford
PHPnomad just got a CLI, and giving AI access to it has reduced my token usage CONSIDERABLY. Some actions are reduced by a factor of nearly 70!
What’s Changed A sore spot in WordPress is background tasks. Yes, it’s been solved several times, but to this day, there’s still a fair bit of scaffolding that goes just into making it possible to do. That’s why I’m so excited that I’ve published a new update to PHPNomad’s WordPress integration to finally leverage the tasks integration that I’ve been using for several months in non-WordPress solutions. This update makes it possible to use PHPNomad to dispatch asynchronous tasks consistently, and reliably in WordPress in exactly the same way it’s done outside of WordPress. This update comes in the 3.0…
I spent some time re-building the abstractions for background tasks in PHPNomad, but this time it’s through the lens of a Redis integration.
Summary The phpnomad/tasks package has been rewritten in v2.0.0 to introduce a modern, dependency-injection-friendly, platform-agnostic task system. This update deprecates the legacy TaskScheduler and CanScheduleTasks model and replaces it with a new, unified architecture centered around: This issue proposes refactoring the WordPress integration to fully adopt the new task system. Why The current WordPress integration schedules tasks using TaskScheduler, which is tightly coupled to the now-deprecated CanScheduleTasks API. That implementation is: Bringing the WordPress integration in line with the new task model will simplify the codebase, improve maintainability, and ensure consistency across all platform integrations. What Needs to Happen Compatibility…
Introduction This release introduces a new task system built on the unified TaskStrategy interface. The previous task execution model relied on CanScheduleTasks, which was tightly coupled to time-based, WordPress-style scheduling. It used string intervals and closures, and did not support modern queue systems or dependency injection. The new model introduces a clean, declarative, platform-agnostic task architecture that mirrors PHPNomad’s event system, but is purpose-built for executing units of background work using real task classes and handlers. Why This Changed The legacy task system: This update unifies all dispatching and handler mapping into a single strategy: TaskStrategy. This model supports immediate…
PHPNomad’s documentation site is now being built using…PHPNomad!
The current datastore interface returns arrays for collection methods which leads to memory and performance issues in REST implementations where N+1 queries are sometimes unavoidable. By changing these methods to use generators, we can process items as they arrive and maintain constant memory usage regardless of collection size, creating a more efficient implementation without sacrificing usability.
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Founder of Novatorius & creator of Siren Affiliates. WordPress engineer and partnership advocate helping businesses grow with flexible incentive programs.
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