On SitePoint.com there's an interesting opinion piece on one of the bigger debates in the web development world - should designers know how to write code, even if it's just a little?

This debate has been raging on SitePoint for some time. The issue was raised by Elliot Jay Stocks following a simple tweet: "Honestly, I'm shocked that in 2010 I'm still coming across '˜web designers' who can't code their own designs. No excuse."

This, of course, sparked a whole host of other opinions from the SitePoint readers and they've gathered them together and summarized the "for" and "against" topics from there. Those on the pro-coding side suggest that not only does it give them some appreciation for what the developers do for the designers but it also can make them a better, more flexible asset down the line. The those on the con-coding side suggest that designer time is precious and should be devoted to the usability of the site. They also note that you don't "need to be a plumber" to know how to get a working site together - each member needs to do their job.

Be sure to check out the comments for some other great thoughts from the community.

In a new post Juozas Kaziukenas takes a look at reasons he thinks you should (or shouldn't?) use the Zend Framework for your next application.

This is not a comparison of frameworks though, because I don't feel like having enough experiences with other frameworks to make a fare comparison, that's why this is going to be only a Zend Framework analysis.

He starts with some of his history with the Zend Framework so you'll know where he's coming from. He also lists out some of the advantages of the framework - it's customizable nature, the quality of the code, the large user community - and some of the disadvantages like it being hard to learn, that it's too loosely coupled and the fact that some components have fallen by the wayside and aren't really being maintained.

In this new post to his blog Mike Willbanks talks about some of the reasons he's found (including a few bad ones) to use or not use the Zend Server (Community Edition) for your application.

At work, we were looking to see where we were going as far as future PHP versions and maintaining our production environments it was appealing to see the Zend Server offering. After receiving the email about the public beta, I decided to give this a test spin and the results of which was taken with high regard.

Mike looks at some of the advantages the software offers - including the Zend Control Panel and extensions offered - and a few disadvantages - like the location of the Apache configuration files and the age of some of the extensions included. He also briefly looks at the Zend Control Panel and the features it offers.

In this recent post to his CodeDiesel.com blog, Sameer is promoting the use of colons in control structures over curly braces.

PHP offers a alternative syntax for some of its control structures- if, while, for, foreach, and switch, where you change the opening brace to a colon (:) and the closing brace to endif;, endwhile;, endfor;, endforeach;, or endswitch;, respectively. [...] With the colon syntax you just have to match a '˜if' with a '˜endif' or a '˜for' with a '˜endfor'. When you are mixing HTML with PHP in web pages the code can become quite dense and confusing if it uses a lot of braces.

An example is included showing its use in "if" and "white" statements. With most editors and IDEs supporting brace matching and code folding, this is less of an issue, but it can help make for cleaner code.

Richard Heyes has shared an epiphany he's come up with - a method for running scripts in a web-based environment using lynx.

OK maybe not to you, but it has just occurred to me, and things don't come to me all that fast these days. Cron jobs. [...] You can have a directory inside your webroot called "cron" (imaginative eh?) with scripts in there that are run via cron.

His method uses the cron daemon on the machine to invoke lynx and call the web page through its url. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages of the method (including having the script open to the world - scary). Be sure to check out the comments for other suggestions from fellow developers.

Stefan Mischook has posted another take on why he thinks PHP developers should learn object-oriented programming:

For people new to OOP and are comfortable with 'classic' procedural php, you may be wondering why should you even bother to learn object oriented concepts...why go through the trouble?

He has several suggestions included in the post like:

• PHP is moving in an OOP direction [...] So, to really understand and use these frameworks properly, you need to understand object oriented PHP.
• Object oriented PHP really begins to shine as the project becomes more complex, and when you have more than one person doing the programming.
• OOP is the modern way of software development and all the major languages [...] it only makes sense (in terms of career,) to keep your skills up-to-date.
• OOP based PHP is much easier to maintain and update

He also suggests a method for developers to get started with OOP in PHP - how to plan out a project and think in objects rather than procedurally.

In a new post to his "Quaint Tech" blog, Paul van Iterson talks about why you want (to use) object-oriented programming in your PHP applications versus the more procedural methods.

Most modern programming languages are based on an OO approach and don't even allow for procedural coding anymore (for instance in languages as Java, C++, C#, Python, and Ruby). Explaining OOP goes beyond the scope of this article, so for understanding OOP in PHP I'd like to point you in this direction. For now let's just say that OOP is about creating relatively small objects with specific functions that interact with each other to form a complete application.

Right off, he lists two advantages to using OOP methods (reusability and better structure) and a disadvantage (can be more time consuming to write). He does still recommend it though to any "serious PHP developer taking on serious projects". He illustrates the point with some of his own experience - an application for a real estate firm.

The International PHP Magazine has posted this week's poll results for their question "What's the biggest advantage of PHP5?"

The choices for this poll were "Performance", "Easy to work with", "Being web-like", "Varied choice of tools", "It has good community back up", "None". Coming out on top was the performance factor with a vote percentage of 20.3%. Next on the list was that it was easy to work with at 15.2%. And, coming in at number three (just barely) - the varied choice of tools that it offers.

They have a new poll up this week too, with a timely question on a topic a lot of PHP developers are working with right now - "Which is the Most Common Design Pattern?" Head on over and cast your vote today!