Like many of us, despite being told repeatedly how great testing is, the benefits it will bring, the time it will save and how it will improve the quality of my applications, I too considered testing a second-thought. I saw it as something which was both expensive and time-consuming. If I was genuine with you, I'd say I believed it be be nothing more than a "nice to have", after the application was written. If you also feel (or have felt) this way - know that you're not alone.

He realized, though, that the usual false assumptions about testing were just that and starteed getting into testing, TDD and BDD on recent projects. He talks some about some general thoughts around testing like "testing can't be an after-thought" and the fact that it's no always easy. He includes a way of thinking about testing in your application and the confidence good, solid tests can bring.

Rasmus Lerdorf is undoubtedly the most famous Greenlandic geek alive. [...] Linux Format magazine caught up with him to find out more about his position in the PHP camp today and the decisions he made early on that made the project a whopping success.

Topics mentioned in the interview include his current involvement in the project, his role in any "final decisions" about the language and its future, what languages inspired him and his opinions on a few others that occupy some of the same space as PHP.

Just get a list of all pages google has indexed from your site and then use that as your basis for checking if your migration worked or not. This is very convenient because you do not have to know all your own urls yourself, and you'll only get the relevant ones (if they are not in google they are unlikely to have traffic).

The code is included as well as an example usage. He also points out FixtureShell for more command-line CakePHP examples.

Scripts tend to die, and that's not usually nice. We do not want to show the user a fatal error nor a blank page (display errors off) . PHP has a function called register_shutdown_function which lets us set up a function which is called at execution shutdown. What this means is that our function will be executed when our script is done executing / dying and PHP execution is about to shut down.

He suggests various things that can be done with the functionality, including checking for successful script execution (via a false variable that can be checked for success).

Congratulations are in order. Since the launch of GoPHP5.org, over 100 software projects and over 200 web hosts have come on board to support the adoption of PHP 5.2. As opposed to just a few months ago, it is now easy to find a hosting solution that supports PHP 5, and software developers can turn to the attractive new features that PHP 5 offers without the need to worry that they are leaving their end users without options.

He gives credits to Larry Garfield and Marc Delisle for their hard work towards making the project a success and notes that the project can stand as a successful effort that the community pulled together on to make development and the platforms we build on that much better. Be sure and check out the long list of projects and hosting companies that made the move to PHP5.

It sounds like they have a very active and vibrant PHP developer community in Costa Rica, and they've found two very supportive universities that have offered to host their meetings and events. I wish that every PHP user group could find sponsors willing to provide computer labs and even bring in outside speakers!

According to the Costa Rica PHP website they had a wonderful response from local developers and found them all eager to contribute however they could. They even have the support of two local universities where they can meet/do work in their labs (even bring in speakers from other countries).

The issue is that there is simply not enough top qualified talent that knows LAMP well enough to hire. Or maybe its just too hard to find them? It seems all the good guys are already hired. As a result companies end up looking for other technology, not because they actually believe that these technologies are any better or worth the license fees that these usually require to be paid up...

He suggests two things that could be possible lead-ins to the "demise" of LAMP - the fact that LAMP just isn't taught along side other languages in school and that, since PHP is only just now getting into the offices of the "major players", there hasn't been enough time to prove to them that PHP has worth in their business.

Be sure to check out some of the great comments on this one.

Wow, what can I say but w00t! The throwdown was a tremendous success and went off without any major problems. We're still compiling all the final projects and I'll be reporting some statistics about those (as in who was using what and how many competitors we had per category). I am excited to see what all has come of it.

There were also bloggers from about the web that covered the event either for themselves or for the team they were a part of.

Congrats to all of those who participated and we'll all be anxiously awaiting the results! OH, and if you didn't get a chance to participate this year, you can still grab a tshirt to remember the event by.

If you've used HTML_AJAX to make something cool I'd like to hear from you.

If what you've created is publically accessible that would be even better.

Just leave a comment on this post saying what you've created and given a link to it if you can. Any suggestions on improvements that would make further development easier are also appreciated.

With the HTML_AJAX package being as well-developed as it is, I'm sure that there are more than a few out there using it - so get on over and submit your story today!]]> Thu, 08 Dec 2005 10:27:51 -0600