SitePoint.com has a new article sharing three of the things they see as common myths around learning new programming languages.

Are you yet to learn your first programming language? Why is it that you’re putting it off? If you think it’s going to be too hard, like learning a real, spoken language – you are wrong. In fact, you’ve fallen victim to what I like to call The Big Programming Language Fallacy - the mistaken belief that programming languages are analogous to real languages.

They go through each of their myths and explain what's wrong about them, each building on the previous ones in the list:

• Myth 1: Programming Languages are the ‘Languages of Computers’
• Myth 2: Programming Languages are Foreign and Hard to Read
• Myth 3: Programming Languages Take Years to Learn

They point out that, in the case of most programming languages these days, they've been designed to be "readable" and something that can relate to basic terms (a subset of a completely new language).

Anthony Ferrara has posted his own response to the recently posted MicroPHP Manifesto (from Ed Finkler that has caused quite a stir in the PHP community). In the post, Anthony mentions some of the points he both agrees and disagrees with about the manifesto.

I came across a rather interesting post yesterday entitled The MicroPHP Manifesto. The author made clever use of a very interesting analogy (drum players) to try to prove his point that less is more. The article makes a very interesting read, and I would suggest that everyone reads it. Go ahead. I'll wait. With that said, I have to disagree with the article rather vehemently. I think the message is somewhat right, but for all the wrong reasons.

One of his main points is that he believes in the "right tool for the right job" mentality and suggests that, like the manifesto says, small things are good for some jobs. In other places, though, a full-stack framework (or component-based one) is the right fit. He finishes off the post by going through the manifesto points themselves and adding commentary with his thoughts on each.