The php[architect] podcast, hosted by PHP community members Eric Van Johnson and John Congdon, has released their latest episode: Episode #16 - Remotely Working. In this episode they're joined by guests Jennifer Wadella and Oscar Merida.

Eric and John discuss learning about how the OPCache works, working with Jenkins, being a remote worker, and diving into PHP internals. Oscar talks lessons learned when adding AWS S3 service to phparch.com. He also describes the all-new approach to tracks and speakers for php[tek] 2019.

[The episode also includes an] interview with Jennifer Wadella from Kansas City about remote working, her community work to reach women and minorities in tech, and kombucha brewing,

You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed to get updates when new shows are released.

On the php[architect] site they've shared an article from their December 2018 edition by Colin DeCarlo and issues with dates and times that most developers deal with at some point in their careers.

As applications scale and gain adoption, dates and time become much more of a concern than they once were. Bugs crop up, and developers start learning the woes of time zones and daylight saving time. Why did that reminder get sent a day early? How could that comment have been made at 5:30 a.m. if the post didn’t get published until 9:00 a.m.? Indiana has how man time zones?!

Luckily, PHP developers have the tools they need to face these problems head-on and take back control of their apps.

The article covers some of the basics of "time" and some of the concepts that PHP uses to measure it. It then introduces the different time functionality that PHP offers including timestamps and functions like strtotime and date as well as the DateTime handling. They dig into this last one in more detail before talking about timezones and date arithmetic.

php[architect] magazine has posted an announcement about the release of their December 2018 issue - Better Practice - Improve Your Skills.

Practice and more practice are the keys to adopting modern software engineering practices. It doesn’t matter if you’re using WordPress or Drupal to manage website content, trying to learn unit testing, get hired, or looking for better ways to manage date and time data—there’s always an opportunity to learn how to do it better. This issue rounds up articles on each of these topics to help you deepen your problem-solving skills.

Articles in this issue include:

• "Custom Post Types in WordPress" by Andrea Roenning
• "The Flexibility of Drupal 8" by Michael Miles
• "How to Learn PHP Unit Testing With Katas" by David Hayes
• "It’s About Time" by Colin DeCarlo

All of the usual columns have returned as well with thoughts about creating a culture in your development organization, hashing, interview coding challenges and more. Check out the full list of articles and columns for this month's edition on the php[architect] site and pick up a copy of your own! If you want to "try before you buy" you can read this month's free article and get a feel for the content.

The php[architect] site has posted an article pulled from their November 2018 issue providing a case for generics in PHP.

To elucidate their merit, we will look at how they might fit within the evolution of PHP’s type system to put us in a position to write more robust software:

“How can I signal that my method will return a Collection of User objects? And why would I want to do that?”

The article starts with a look at generics in other languages and how they're handled (such as Java and C#). From there they shift over to PHP, giving a code sample of a class that is typed to only accept one kind of value for its constructor. They provide an update for this that would work in PHP 7.4 (with typed properties) and how with the help of generics it would be simpler to define a more dynamic type requirement, allowing for more generalized class descriptions.

Larry Garfield has posted a book review to his Steemit site giving his thoughts about the "Functional Programming in PHP" book from php[architect] press.

I was asked by php[architect] a while back to review "Functional Programming in PHP, 2nd Ed" by Simon Holywell. I've been sitting on this review for a while, so it's time to finally get it done.

He starts with some of the usual disclosures about receiving the book (for free), what the review is based on and that the opinions are his alone. He goes on to share some of his initial impressions of the book and whether he feels it's a good book to recommend to those wanting to start out with functional programming in PHP. He also points out that, while the book was published in 2016 the recommended PHP version even then was quite old (v5.4). He covers some of the topics that the book covers, noting that many of them, while interesting, don't add much to the overall book.

He does focus on one chapter and how, at the beginning, it showed promise but quickly moved towards using 3rd party libraries for more complex operations. He finishes the review by answering the question: "does this book make me care about functional programming in PHP?"

On the php[architect] site they've shared the contents of one of their regularly published columns - "The Dev Lead Trenches", written by Chris Tankersley - covering burnout of developers from their day-in and day-out work.

The tech industry is a double-edged sword. On the one side, we (generally) have well-paying jobs with nice perks, but on the other, we can easily slip into not only boring, repetitive work but figurative death marches. The former is used by most companies as an offset to the latter, but that rarely works out well. This leads many developers to come face-to-face with burnout.

He starts with some suggestions of ways to detect burnout in your own life including lack of motivation, sleep, and other emotional types of signs. He then makes a list of suggestions of how you can avoid burnout in your own work:

• set working hours
• use vacation time
• take 15 minute breaks
• take up hobbies outside of development

There's several others in the list too, so I'd recommend checking out the full article for more information about each.

php[architect] magazine has released their latest issue for November 2018: Generics and Project Success. In this issue they feature articles like:

• "The Case for Generics in PHP" by Chris Holland
• "Maintaining Laravel Applications" by Jason McCreary
• "Getting Started With Php? Let’s Start the Right Way!" by Junior Grossi
• "How to Knock Down Any Project in Ten Steps" by Pawe? Lewtak

The usual columns are all returning including Joe Ferguson continuing his series on creating packages, Eric Mann covering five security risks to look for in a code review, and James Titcumb with some resources you can use to continue "leveling up" in your development career.

If you want to "try before you buy", they're also offering a free article, "The Case for Generics in PHP" by Chris Holland. You can pick up a copy of your own directly from the php[architect] site or subscribe to their print or PDF versions!

The php[architect] podcast, hosted by PHP community members Eric Van Johnson and John Congdon, has posted their latest episode: Episode 14 - Prototyping with PHP.

In this episode Eric and John cover a wide range of topics including:

• stickers
• the MySQL 8 window functions
• sub-domain takeovers
• framework trade-offs

They're also joined by Oscar Merida who covers lessons he learned about software estimates and Marcia Burrows (a.k.a "The Logical Woman") and her experiences speaking at the Pacific Northwest PHP conference and her work on creating games. You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and get updates when new shows are released.

The php[architect] podcast, hosted by Eric van Johnson and John Congdon, has posted their latest episode: Episode #13 - PHP 7.3.

Fresh off of hosting WavePHP in San Diego, Eric van Johnson and John Congdon put the finishing touches on the latest episode. Eric and John talk about stickers, forthcoming PHP 7.3 improvements like garbage collection, how to make estimates, penetration testing for security, job hunting, and more.

Sammy Kaye Powers joins to discuss podcasting, swing dancing, and challenges when upgrading legacy applications.

They also give some reasons why you should update to PHP 7.3 (when it's released), deprecated features, and a preview of what might be added in PHP 8. You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed to get updates when new shows are released.

If you're a reader of php[architect] magazine or even just want to have an influence on what the future of the magazine might look like, you should contribute your thoughts to their 2018 audience survey.

Our 2018 audience survey is online to help gauge how we can provide what you need to be a better developers. Whether you subscribe to the magazine, listen to the podcast, or just visit phparch.com, I want to here from you. I’m no fan of long surveys so I’ve kept it short and to the point. It should take about 10 to 15 minutes at most to complete.

The questions on the survey differ slightly for subscribers versus non-subscribers. There's questions about:

• why you subscribe/don't subscribe
• if you know what a subscription comes with
• preferred distribution method (PDF, print, ePub, etc)
• their php[podcast]

There's also some questions for general demographics around your job, technologies commonly used and preferred devices. Help php[architect] magazine keep providing the content that PHP developers need and can help them enhance their careers - follow out the survey today!