In his latest post Tomas Votruba shares some of his thoughts around the importance of code readability and the idea of "cognitive complexity".

Cyclomatic complexity is a static analysis measure of how difficult is code to test. Cognitive complexity tells us, how difficult code is to understand by a reader.

Today, we'll see why is the later better and how to check it in your code with a Sniff.

He references this post and this PDF as sources for more information about cognitive complexity but opts for code examples to explain some of the basic concepts. He then gets into the automation of these kinds of checks, using a custom code sniff to check the complexity of the code. He walks through the installation process of the CognitiveComplexitySniff and shares some example results from its evaluation.

The latest issue of the Web & PHP Magazine has been released - Issue 8 - The Power of Design. Articles in this latest issue include:

• Todd Lombardo on user context
• Stefan Priebsch on data and persistence
• Patrick Allaert about data structures
• June Henriksen on the human side of programming

You can find out more about this issue (and go download your free copy) on the Web & PHP site. There's also seven previous issues, all free for download (PDF format)!

The Boston PHP User Group will be having their next meeting tonight (the 15th) at 7pm at the Microsoft N.E.R.D Center in Cambridge. The featured speaker for the evening is Chris Shiflett, a well-known member of the PHP community. He'll be speaking on "Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior".

Join Boston PHP and O’Reilly Author Chris Shiflett as we take you through a fascinating talk on the human behavior and social aspect of security. We’ll explore topics such as change blindness and ambient signifiers, and we’ll show some real-world examples that demonstrate the profound impact human behavior can have on security. If your a designer, developer, human interaction designer, you won’t want to miss this talk.

So far there's over 150 marked as attending - if you plan on trying to make it tonight, be sure you RSVP so they know how many to expect.