The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast today - this time, it's hosted by Cal Evans himself and talks about ways to kill a software project.

We use the analogy "train wreck" for so many things including software development projects gone horribly wrong. I've managed my share of development projects both successful and failures in the past 20 years. Along the I've learned a lot about what it takes to succeed and what it take to fail when building software. Many good books out there will show you how to succeed few have dared to tackle the subject of how to fail. So today I'm going to step out on a limb and do just that.

You can either subscribe to the feed and have the show brought to your front door or you can choose one of two alternate methods - listen right on the page in the embedded player or just download the show on its own and sit back and enjoy some great PHP content.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast today - this time, it's hosted by Cal Evans himself and talks about ways to kill a software project.

We use the analogy "train wreck" for so many things including software development projects gone horribly wrong. I've managed my share of development projects both successful and failures in the past 20 years. Along the I've learned a lot about what it takes to succeed and what it take to fail when building software. Many good books out there will show you how to succeed few have dared to tackle the subject of how to fail. So today I'm going to step out on a limb and do just that.

You can either subscribe to the feed and have the show brought to your front door or you can choose one of two alternate methods - listen right on the page in the embedded player or just download the show on its own and sit back and enjoy some great PHP content.

In a new post to the PHP 10.0 blog today, Stas asks the question "Why do we still have resource type in PHP?"

Since 5.x, objects are perfectly capable on encapsulating any void * transparently (there's at least 2 Java bridges doing that, for example) and of course using objects doesn’t force you to use OO syntax. [...] So objects as I see it can do anything resources can do. And much more - you could extend it (had we had file as object and not resource, streams probably would be much easier to implement), serialize it (provided correct methods of course), etc., etc.

He suggests letting them go all together and letting objects swoop in and take over, making things simpler to manage.

In a new post to the PHP 10.0 blog today, Stas asks the question "Why do we still have resource type in PHP?"

Since 5.x, objects are perfectly capable on encapsulating any void * transparently (there's at least 2 Java bridges doing that, for example) and of course using objects doesn’t force you to use OO syntax. [...] So objects as I see it can do anything resources can do. And much more - you could extend it (had we had file as object and not resource, streams probably would be much easier to implement), serialize it (provided correct methods of course), etc., etc.

He suggests letting them go all together and letting objects swoop in and take over, making things simpler to manage.

In his latest post today, Stefan Mischook asks the question every PHP developer (and company looking to invest in the language) out there is wondering - will Ruby kill PHP?

With the recent rise in popularity of the Ruby programming language (largely driven by the excellent but not perfect web framework called Rails), I've noticed a little fear in the air...fear on the part of some people in the PHP community.

Will Ruby kill PHP? The short answer is: no.

He takes the reader on a trip through his reasoning - things like "Ruby is elegant, but not complex" and "Java nerds love Ruby". But, one of the things that is talked most about for Ruby (everything's an object) is the same reason why PHPers and those looking for a quick, powerful, easy-to-use language will still stick with PHP.

In his latest post today, Stefan Mischook asks the question every PHP developer (and company looking to invest in the language) out there is wondering - will Ruby kill PHP?

With the recent rise in popularity of the Ruby programming language (largely driven by the excellent but not perfect web framework called Rails), I've noticed a little fear in the air...fear on the part of some people in the PHP community.

Will Ruby kill PHP? The short answer is: no.

He takes the reader on a trip through his reasoning - things like "Ruby is elegant, but not complex" and "Java nerds love Ruby". But, one of the things that is talked most about for Ruby (everything's an object) is the same reason why PHPers and those looking for a quick, powerful, easy-to-use language will still stick with PHP.