Elizabeth Smith has been using PHP since time immemorial (PHP 4), but has used PHP 5 for so long now that she's forgotten how she ever got by without SPL and a real object model.
Elizabeth is a certifiable (yes, we mean men in white coats coming to put on strait jackets) Windows geek; if it can be compiled on Windows, she’ll compile it. If not, she'll fix it. She enjoys doing very perverse things to Windows using PHP as well—all this in between caring for her 4 kids and husband.
She recently joined the crew at OmniTI and hopes to learn something from the masters. She went to college for an English degree and instead wound up with several children and a career in computers. Her first foray into PHP was running an anime/manga fan site. She liked creating applications and web sites so much, it became her day job.
Elizabeth is a charter member of PHPWomen.org and wants to make sure other women have the same opportunity to see how much fun programming can be. She is active in several PHP projects, including PHP-GTK (where she claims to be the constant thorn in Andrei's side) getting things working and building for Windows. Elizabeth also contributes to PEAR and is currently helping out on PEAR 2 (at the prodding of her brother Joshua Eichorn). Her current pet projects include Forkr (an ADP framework), Callicore (a PHP-GTK framework), Perisama (Various PHP Windows builds on multiple compilers), and the WinAPI extension (win32api wrapper).
I believe open source shares a lot in common with the children's story The Little Red Hen. If you want something done, you have to just do it yourself. I also find the current partisan politics in open source, whether related to your choice of editor or operating system or some other software, to be downright annoying. For me, software is about creating something interesting, not about design perfection or politics.
When I don't enjoy the work I'm doing, I'll find something else to do; no one should spend their lives dreading to come to work. I live in a household of males (I have three sons and one daughter plus a male dog and cat) and work in a field that is primarily male, so while my love of geeky things made me odd in high school, now it makes me feel like "one of the guys."
I'm a walking contradiction in my hobbies and activities. When I'm not learning a new programming language or doing something remarkably evil to or with PHP, you'll find me playing video games, watching anime, and creating web sites for myself and friends. But, my favorite color is pink.
I love to read science fiction, fantasy, and romance novels. I also write fiction, knit, sew, embroider, cook, and collect dolls. I need a clone.
Elizabeth Smith
