The PHPClasses.org site has posted a book review of Paul Jones' "Modernizing Legacy Applications" ebook today covering some of the content in the book and the reviewers own personal opinions on what was good and what could use improvement.

The current technologies we have today and the numerous improvements to the PHP programming language, makes our legacy applications operate "below today’s standards". They need to be improved or rewritten, but who would want to rewrite an application of many thousands or millions of lines of code?

That’s why you should read this book, ‘Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP’ by Paul M. Jones. It explains the nitty-gritty of how PHP applications were built over a decade ago and why they are now called legacy applications. He explains why your legacy applications are not meant to be rewritten, but optimized and improved to support today’s standards.

The reviewer goes through each chapter of the book, giving an overview of each including topics discussed and a few of the handy tips. Overall he recommends the book not only to those experienced in the industry but also those new to developing in PHP, helping to prevent bad behaviors before they start.

Based on his popular conference session "It was like that when I got there", Paul Jones has announced the release of an ebook covering the migration of legacy applications to a more recent, well-structured system. The book, "Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP", is still in the works, though.

My upcoming book, “Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP”, [shows how to improve your application with small changes]. Using my talk “It Was Like That When I Got Here” as a starting point, I condense 15 years of fixing PHP codebases into a collection of specific steps to complete in order. As you apply these small fixes, each one building on the last, you will be able to restructure your codebase from a spaghetti mess to a testable, organized, modernized application, free of globals and mixed concerns.

If the premise sounds interesting, be sure to sign up to be notified of updates as they happen. There's also some freebies that'll come along with the subscription including a pre-publication chapter.