Sustainable Local Development;

... or, 2 PHP scripts in a trenchcoat

John Durno, UVic, code{4}lib BC, 2025.10.16

20 years of CRUD

creating, reading, updating and deleting for two glorious decades

My kind of development

small apps that fill the gaps

More taxonomy, it's what we do

• Staff facing
• User facing
• Machine facing

Examples

• Database of Databases (the OG)
• Desk stats collection widget
• Location maps, online fine payments
• Course videos

Some are only memories now, but many still live!

So?

How to keep these things running with not a lot of resources

Avoid unnecessary dependencies

especially frameworks, javascript libraries

(Slow the hamster wheel of endless churn)

Minimize languages & databases

For us, PHP and MariaDB (almost) all the way

Resist new shiny things

Open source is good

particularly if it's widely adopted

Not every web app needs an admin interface

It's OK for some updates to happen server-side

[Infosec tangent]

• But if there is an admin interface, don't hang it out on the public web
• And, consider a separate database user for public stuff (SELECT only)

Interfaces can be simple and ugly

We're providing a service, not selling a product

[Accessibility tangent]

but, interfaces must at least be

• accessible
• responsive
• comprehensible

It's doesn't have to be that hard!

Hot Take

Version control? We don't need no version control!

Looking Ahead

Documentation? Succession plan?

The lone and level sands stretch far away

jdurno@uvic.ca