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.

In a post from Nick Halstead on the Programming and Management Blog, he discusses something just about every developer is familiar with - pseudo code.

Writing pseudo code and program code separately simplifies the overall task by splitting it into two simpler tasks. While writing the algorithm the developer can focus on solving the problem, not how it is written in a a particular language. Once the pseudo code is written and has been checked; writing the real code becomes much simpler, the programmer is only concerned with converting the pseudo code into the appropriate program code.

Nick looks at both sides of its use and includes the good (doesn't take language-specific understanding) and the bad (could hide logic flaws that could be tragic later). He also includes a quick overview of how to write it, making sure to keep things high level and all about the structure.

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 site has two new polls posted today, one looking at the most requested features in a content maangement system and the other asking about the biggest disadvantage to using PHP5.

In the first poll (CMS features), they ask readers to tell them which features they'd rather have most in their software of choice. Options range from "small footprint" to "easy to skin". Submit your choice here

In the second poll they already have the results posted, showing what readers think the biggest disadvantage of choosing PHP5 for their platform is. Top on the list is the overwhelming number of frameworks that are available for it. Coming in last is a tie - problems with dynamic typing in debugging and, of course, "all of the above".