I had been itching to dive into the Zend Framework, so I jumped at the opportunity. It has taken me a while to get around to reviewing it, but I'm glad I did. Jason's writing style makes challenging concepts easy to learn and his focus on good development practices are sure to inspire you to become a better developer. Here's more detail on what I thought after reading the book...

He talks about the things he likes - like the fact that the book uses a single application to base the examples on and that it focuses on the development process as well as the end result. He notes that the book struggles a bit when trying to find a target audience. He felt the book jumped around from beginner to advanced topics quickly and that a less experienced user might get confused. Overall, though, he found the book a good addition to any developer's library.

Those readers who know me, know that I'll pass on writing a review on a book I don't like. Having written one (and have another in the works), I know the work that goes into even a bad one. So instead of denigrating someone else's work, I'll simply not write the review than write something bad. I said all that to say this, the fact that you see this review means I found enough in this book that I like to review it.

In the "good" section he mentions that the book is for beginners and, because of this, it aims to help them over the large learning curve the framework comes with. In the "bad" section, one of his few comments is that Jason teaches "models" as database interfaces, not more general data source interfaces. He also mentions an "interesting" thing - the fact that Jason wrote up a chapter on using the Doctrine ORM with a Zend Framework app too.

At 240 pages I wouldn't say this is the type of book that you can really read cover-to-cover at a rapid pace. I think it is more suited as a very long and expanded HOWTO for building an application from scratch. I was also pleased to see that Jason had made the commitment to pushing Test Driven Development by having the reader write tests for the site they were building as they went along.

Chris goes on to talk about the contents of the book and how it uses a project (creating a social networking app called GameNomad) to help squeeze as much about the Zend Framework into your head as possible. In his opinion, the book is a good resource for both beginning and intermediate users of the framework and can potentially be used as more of a reference for different takes on common problems.

Given the current popularity of the Web development language PHP, it makes sense that newcomers to the language have a large number of introductory and reference volumes from which to choose. But for the more advanced PHP programmer, there are far fewer titles that explain how to make the most of the language, by applying it to solve relatively substantial problems. One such book is PHP Hacks: Tips & Tools for Creating Dynamic Websites.

They explore the contents of the book, noting that the bredth of topics covered is a bit more than they wanted to get into (and to check out the book's website for more). Overall, their review is good - the book does want it says and provides helpful and handy bits of code to help you just when you need it. There were a few technical issues they noticed, but, on the whole, it's a positive review.

The PHP scripting language has an enjoyed an enormous growth in popularity over the past few years. It benefits from being particularly easy to pick up, and from having been designed as a language specifically for producing webpages. This means that choosing PHP as your implementation language allows you to build a dynamically-generated webpage quickly and easily.

However, it is not clear how well PHP scales for use in larger commercial websites. This paper examines the issues in trying to do so.

He invesigates topics like:

• Separation of presentation from business logic
• Areas where PHP's initial simplicity can actually make things more complicated
• Using a team of developers to build a site

For each item, he looks in detail about what the topic is and how a manage/develoeper can get a handle on it. There are good and bad sides to all, but finding the right balance is key.]]> Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:16:53 -0600 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4625 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4625 Jim Plush's blog today, there's a new post as a follow up to his previous post concerning the Zend Encoder and some issues with sites that can decode its files.

I made a post on the Zend Forums asking for a statement on the decoding of Zend Encoded files.

Notice how there is NO MESSAGE. Why would they delete the text of my forum post? I was asking for a statement and a patch fix for a list of sites offering the decoding of encoded files. Is Zend trying to sweep this under the rug because they're looking to dump the encoder project and don't want to waste any money on fixing this issue? This doesn't look good for Zend PR.

It's definitely interesting to see that they removed the post - not just replied with a simple "We're looking into it" or "We're aware of the situation. Thank you for your input" kind of thing. Instead, they take the "what forum post?" approach. Well, Jim's posted another message that, as of the writing of this post, is still there, but unanswered...]]> Mon, 09 Jan 2006 06:37:40 -0600