PHP community

205. Top Version Control Systems used by PHP Developers

Posted on: 2013-04-29

Version Control Systems are important tools that every developer should be using. However, for many developers version control systems do not make part of their development tool set.

Read this article to learn what are version control systems, why they are so important to be used by all developers, and what are the most popular systems used by PHP developers.

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204. A Better PHP Feature Voting Process - Lately in PHP podcast episode 34

Posted on: 2013-04-10

The current PHP feature voting process causes problems to those that do not know why features are approved or rejected by each voter. A better solution was proposed to require justification for each feature vote.

This was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Cesar Rodas on the episode 34 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed about the latest PHP releases, updating PHP with minimized downtime, as well how brilliant are some developers for creating pure PHP components that overcome PHP limitations without upgrading to a newer PHP version.

Listen to the podcast, or watch the hangout video or read the transcript to learn more about these interesting PHP discussions.

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203. 26 Ways to Show that PHP Can Be Better Than PHP

Posted on: 2013-03-21

The fact that PHP has limitations does not mean that it is not possible to overcome some those limitations with alternative solutions that use only pure PHP code and do not require a newer PHP version.

Read this article to learn about many creative solutions that several PHP developers implemented to overcome some of the PHP limitations.

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201. 6 Reasons Why PHP is a Hobbit

Posted on: 2013-02-18

Sometime ago a user of the Quora site asked a question if there was a language war, which languages you support and why.

Another user gave a very creative response comparing programming languages with characters of the Lord of the Rings story of JRR Tolkien.

Read this article to understand why PHP or its fans should be compared with Hobbits.

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199. Test Driven Development brings Stability to Zurmo Open Source CRM

Posted on: 2013-01-17

Employing a Test Driven Development (TDD) methodology when building a complex application may be tedious and take twice as much time, but the upshot is scalable stability as the tortoise beats the hare.

As lead developers of Zurmo, an Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, we are driven by the need to build rock solid, reliable software, something that is hard to come by in our field.

In order to accomplish our goal, we decided to bite the bullet and sweat it out with Test Driven Development - TDD.

Zurmo is written in PHP and utilizes jQuery, the Yii Framework, and RedBeanPHP. With 1700+ unit tests running across eight server configurations, Zurmo is built with a passion for software engineering best practices.

Read the article to find out why it is beneficial to be in the habit of testing, testing, and more testing.

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198. The Urge to Kill Older PHP Versions - Lately in PHP podcast episode 31

Posted on: 2013-01-14

As PHP 5.5 is getting ready to be released in the next months, the end of line for PHP 5.3 is being planned, while the original MySQL extension is being deprecated in PHP 5.5 to be killed in a later version.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing for PHP developers, was one of the main topics of debate between Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 31 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed new PHP 5.5 features such as class variable type hinting and accessor functions, the apparent lack of interest of core developers to participate in the PHP FIG standards group, and what PHP developers have been searching for in 2012 by looking at the PHP Zeitgeist initiative.

Listen to the podcast now, or watch the podcast video, or read the audio transcript to learn more about these and other interesting PHP discussions.

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186. Do PHP Developers Need and will Adopt PHP Coding Standards? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 24

Posted on: 2012-06-04

The PHP Standards Group is trying to push new specifications for PHP coding standards. Whether PHP developers need and will adopt these standards was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Arturs Sosins in episode 24 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed the complaints of Linus Torvalds on the limitations of GitHub handling Git pull requests and whether that will affect the processing of pull requests to the PHP core project.

Other topics include the latest PHP 5.4.3 and 5.3.13 bug fixes, the chart of PHP releases over time, and the JavaScript Innovation Award initiative that is about to start and repeat the success of the PHP Innovation Award.

Listen to the podcast, watch the video recording or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics here.

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183. Will it ever Matter if PHP Sucks? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 23

Posted on: 2012-05-07

Once in a while we see fans of other languages writing long articles on why PHP sucks and you should not use it. But will that ever matter?

That is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 23 of the Lately in PHP podcast, for the first time also recorded in video using Google Hangouts On Air.

They also covered other polemic ideas for future PHP versions like the pure PHP script proposal, making function names case-sensitive and the option to skip optional function parameters.

Another interesting topic discussed in this podcast is about the proposals for HTTP 2.0 protocol.

Listen to the podcast, watch the video recording or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics.

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177. Is PHP Source Quality really Good or is it still Insecure? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 21

Posted on: 2012-03-01

A study from Coverity claims that the source code of Open Source projects such as PHP has a low defect rate.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, the security expert Stefan Esser claims that PHP source security bug prevention has a lot to be desired because PHP core developers do not have the habit of using source code auditing tools to prevent security bugs.

The matter of the PHP source code quality and security bug prevention was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in episode 21 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

Among other interesting topics, they also discuss the new features of Apache 2.4 and whether it is already possible for PHP sites to take advantage of this new Apache release.

Listen to the podcast now or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics.

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174. MicroPHP vs Complicated PHP - Lately in PHP podcast episode 20

Posted on: 2012-02-01

Earlier in January Ed Finkler announced the MicroPHP manifesto. It seems to be a rant about against the practices of developers that make PHP development more complicated than it should be. This is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 20 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discuss the final release of PHP 5.4.0 and whether you should upgrade it or not, the repercussion of the PHP Hash Collision Vulnerability, as well the trends of PHP world based on the analysis of the PHP Zeitgeist 2011 initiative.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript now to learn more in detail about these interesting PHP topics.

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