Dave Liddament
Dave is a director and developer at Lamp Bristol, a software consultancy. He’s been writing software commercially for over 22 years in many languages including C, Python, Java and PHP.
Dave is keen to pass on his knowledge. He speaks at conferences and user groups. He is an organiser of PHP-SW. He also runs a monthly workshop that covers topics including testing, CI and git.
He is also the author of an open source tool called SARB (static analysis results baseliner).
Montreal 2027 sessions
Rector Beyond Upgrades: Still Essential in the Age of AI
English session - Intermediate
Rector is best known for upgrades, but it goes much further. And no, AI coding agents haven't made it redundant.
Ask an agent to change 500 files and it might miss a few. Ask it to write a Rector rule and the change is made the same way everywhere, every time.
We'll look at automating repetitive tasks, enforcing standards and creating custom rules, by hand or with AI. You get the flexibility of AI with results you can trust.
Your Database Is a Gold Mine. Let AI Dig Safely.
English session - Intermediate
Imagine anyone in the business asking questions of the database like they're talking to a person. No SQL. No ticket. No waiting for a developer.
We built it: an MCP with read only DB access that hid PII. Every client who has tried it is hooked.
But AI also finds fool's gold. I'll show how to build one, how to stop confident wrong answers (well, most of them), and how to turn the best questions into trusted reports.
