John Lim has two new posts covering parallel processing in PHP and how to use this "divide and conquer" idea to not only speed up your code but to make it more maintainable down the road.

In the first post:

One problem we were having is that some of our batch processing jobs were taking too long to run. In order to speed the processing, we tried to split the processing file into half, and let a separate PHP process run each job. [...] Here is our technique for running multiple parallel jobs in PHP. In this example, we have two job files: j1.php and j2.php we want to run.

The code is included for the job files and the "controller" that manages them. In the second article, he builds on this and shows a more practical example - finding the median of a set of records out of a database.

Nick Halstead has posted a few more of his programming tips in the series he's running - three more to be exact dealing with readable code, aggregation, and code structure tips.

• Programming Tips #3 "Divide, Indent, Comment and Name": "We all started programming at some point in our life, some of us on our own, some under guidance of teachers, parents, but even now there are few tips, that should be known by everyone."
• Programming Tips #4 "Aggregation over Inheritance": "My favourite rule is to favour aggregation over inheritance."
• Programming Tips #5 "Readable Code": "It’s easier to debug, and later to maintain. Make it readable by using descriptive identifiers, properly tabbing the code, and breaking down the application into functional and reusable pieces."

You can check out the full list of his programming tips in this list.

Nick Halstead has posted a few more of his programming tips in the series he's running - three more to be exact dealing with readable code, aggregation, and code structure tips.

• Programming Tips #3 "Divide, Indent, Comment and Name": "We all started programming at some point in our life, some of us on our own, some under guidance of teachers, parents, but even now there are few tips, that should be known by everyone."
• Programming Tips #4 "Aggregation over Inheritance": "My favourite rule is to favour aggregation over inheritance."
• Programming Tips #5 "Readable Code": "It’s easier to debug, and later to maintain. Make it readable by using descriptive identifiers, properly tabbing the code, and breaking down the application into functional and reusable pieces."

You can check out the full list of his programming tips in this list.

On Matt Kalinowski's blog, there's a quick post with some code to help you test just how fast your user's browser speed is as they hit your site.

Basically, the script works with the microtime functionality in PHP to do some speed tests for the amount of data given divided by how long it takes that data to get out to the user.

On Matt Kalinowski's blog, there's a quick post with some code to help you test just how fast your user's browser speed is as they hit your site.

Basically, the script works with the microtime functionality in PHP to do some speed tests for the amount of data given divided by how long it takes that data to get out to the user.

It seems like every time you turn around, there's always someone going on about the "latest and greatest" framework that's just popped up and how it'll change the way you write your code. Of course, not all of them are all their cracked up to be, and in his new post Jared White looks at some of the things they'd need to be to make it.

He starts with a clean slate, looking first at what a framework really is, it's usefulness, and a few of the general issues that surround their use. Also, based on the latest PHP stats (from Nexen.net), the gap between the use of PHP4 and PHP5 is still very large, making developing frameworks a bit more tricky.

Jared also lists out three objectives that the future of PHP will have to hold to make this gap get any smaller (and make developing applications a simpler process). Basically:

• adoption for PHP 5.1+ needs to increase dramatically
• standardized design patterns need to be established
• a general need for interoperability between frameworks/applications.

It seems like every time you turn around, there's always someone going on about the "latest and greatest" framework that's just popped up and how it'll change the way you write your code. Of course, not all of them are all their cracked up to be, and in his new post Jared White looks at some of the things they'd need to be to make it.

He starts with a clean slate, looking first at what a framework really is, it's usefulness, and a few of the general issues that surround their use. Also, based on the latest PHP stats (from Nexen.net), the gap between the use of PHP4 and PHP5 is still very large, making developing frameworks a bit more tricky.

Jared also lists out three objectives that the future of PHP will have to hold to make this gap get any smaller (and make developing applications a simpler process). Basically:

• adoption for PHP 5.1+ needs to increase dramatically
• standardized design patterns need to be established
• a general need for interoperability between frameworks/applications.