Chris Roane has put together a list of things that he wishes someone would have told him back when he was starting out as a web programmer ten years ago, helpful hints that could have made things easier in the long run.

When I reflect on my past experience as a web programmer, there are many things that I know now that I didn't know ten years ago. The learning process was valuable, but I could have been at a different spot today as a PHP web programmer if I knew these things earlier. Sometimes you don't have the info when it would benefit you the most, but my hope is that this list will give you something to reflect on.

Most of the tips a more of the general tech nature with a few non-tech ones thrown in. Here's a few examples:

• Over Estimate Your Time
• Don't Assume that Where You are Working is the Best Opportunity
• Learn How to Use and Work with SVN
• Master Organization
• Learn Outside of Work

Read the full post for more great tips.

In a recent post to his blog Gonzalo Ayuso has a brief introduction to CouchDB and how you can use it in your application. Most of the post is made up of code samples showing some of the basic relational database operations translated over to a CouchDB database (found in this class).

I come from relational database world. NoSQL is new for me. Maybe I'm wrong but I want to use INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and SELECT statements in CouchDB in the same way I use them in Relational database. The class is focused in the HTTP Document API. There is a great tutorial here that explains the API. Now I'll show the interface I've made to perform the statements with CouchDB.

There's examples of both simple and more complex selects, updates and deletes as well as the handling of exceptions via two types he's included support for - NoDataFound and DupValOnIndex.

After putting together an example setup of how to run multiple PHP versions all on the same machine with as little hassle as possible, Christian Weiske is back with the second half - putting those multiple versions into Apache.

After showing you how to set up multiple PHP versions on a single machine, it's time to explain how to stuff all those compiled php-cgi executables into a single Apache web server instance.

The key lies in using the mod_fastcgi module for Apache rather than the usual mod_php one. Each PHP version gets its own CGI server and the versions are changed based on the virtual host names.

Till Klampaeckel has a very quick post about a problem he was coming across when using PHP as a CGI on the nginx web server. It was throwing errors ("client prematurely closed connection...") with no evident cause.

The issue was a PHP parse error which I overlooked when I added a new file. The weird thing is, I had nothing in the logs (E_ALL, display_errors is off, but all logs are enabled and I tailed them using multitail) and nginx only displayed a blank page. The errors above were in nginx's own log file.

The multitail command lets you run the "tail" command on more than one file at a time and view them split out in your console for easier reference. The full error message reads:

client closed prematurely connection, so upstream connection is closed too while sending request to upstream, client: a.a.a.a, server: localhost, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/tmp/.fastcgi.till/socket:", host: "localhost"

On the Zend Developer Zone there's a recent post from Kevin Schroder (a Tech Evangelist at Zend) about the MVC request lifecycle for the Zend Framework every time an application runs.

When I have done training for Zend Framework, one of the things that mystifies students to some extent is the whole plugin architecture and where things can go. There has been several articles written about it, but they tend to use code to describe it. [...] I had found that when I drew out the request lifecycle that it helped the students understand it better.

His diagram (seen here) lays out the full execution relationship for the request structure including where plugins, action helpers and controllers fit in the mix. He also describes it in more detail, mentioning some of the variations that could happen along the way.

Derick Rethans, realizing that he wasn't ready to jump back into a full-time position just yet has decided to refocus his efforts on helping make PHP a better place with work on PECL extensions and on internals-related issues.

Instead I will be available to work on (custom) PHP extensions and internals related issues. Extensions are a great way around PHP's limitations and performance issues.

His first project is a QuickHash extension to interface with the popular StumbleUpon and works more efficiently by using more clearly defined data structures. There's no stable release yet, but keep an eye on the subversion repository for the latest enhancements.

On his blog today Alan Sorkin has a humorous take on what the difference is between computer scientists, programmers and developers according to where they place their focus.

I have often used those three terms almost interchangeably, yes, even computer scientist. After all, most of us have a degree in computer science, so what does that make us? However, recently I find that those three things have come to take on more and more distinct personalities in my mind. [...] It is difficult to define what each one should be, (it is more of a gut feel rather than a strict delineation) they are very similar (and rightly so), but I am going to attempt to do it anyway.

He splits them up according to a few criteria - how their code looks, how it works and what level their math skills are at. The photos he uses to further define each are pretty dead on too.

• gearman 0.7.0
• memcached 1.0.1
• intl 1.1.1

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial walking you through the creation of a simple WordPress plugin that shows the latest YouTube video from your blog's channel.

Think of plugins as components where you put your functionality and widgets as components of your user interface. Building your own WordPress plugins and widgets will make your blog truly original, and all you need is basic PHP and HTML knowledge - and your imagination.

They help you get started with defining a few constants, registering the actions with WordPress, building the widget (with complete cut-and-paste-able code) and including it in your WordPress blog. You can download the complete source if you want to get started quickly.

In response to one of the constant claims about the Zend Framwork - that it's large and bloated - Juozas Kaziukenas tries to dispel three things that people use to reinforce this belief.

Zend Framework is always considered as being the slow/bloated one. I don't think this is right, so I decided to prove that it's not correct and in fact ZF is as good as other frameworks are. This post doesn't cover any benchmarks though; this is more like a architecture review and some misconceptions disproof.

He counters the following with a bit of logic that makes the points a bit more shaky than they first seem:

• Large installation footprint
• Unnecessary features
• Use more system resources

If you're still not convinced, he offers two other tips to help streamline your Zend Framework install - profiling to find the bottlenecks and using Zend_Application sparingly as it can be a bit of a resource problem.