Stefan Koopmanschap has shared a rant about best practices in a new post to his site. In it he shares some of his thoughts as presented in a lightning talk at the PHPAmersfoort meetup.

I have yet to talk to a developer that has told me that they were purposefully writing bad software. I think this is something that is part of being a developer, that you write software that is as good as you can possibly make it within the constraints that you have.

In our effort to write the Best Software Ever (TM) we read up on all the programming best practices: design patterns, refactoring and rewriting code, new concepts such as Domain-Driven Design and CQRS, all the latest frameworks and of course we test our code until we have a decent code coverage and we sit together with our teammates to do pair programming. And that's great. It is. But it isn't.

In the post he touches on a few main topics with his ideas for each:

• Test Coverage
• Domain-driven design
• Frameworks
• Event sourcing + CQRS
• Pair programming
• Refactoring + Rewriting

He ends the post with a suggestion to "consider all the best practices" when writing your code and developing applications. It's not just about applying them because they're defined as "best practices", it's about determining which of these practices make sense for your situation.

The PHP Town Hall podcast has returned with their latest episode, the first in 2016: Episode 46: Christmas Theraphpy.

Ben and Phil have a little catch-up to try and get things back on track after a little 2015 lag. Basically this episode is just Sober Phil having a massive vent about daft people are on the Internet.

For some reason he accidentally read some /r/lolphp and got into an argument about how they think that PHP 7 is purely a cosmetic change. This was a good excuse to re-emphisize what an awesome set of fundamental changes PHP 7 really was.

You can catch this latest episode either through the in-page video player, the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe to their feed or follow them On Twitter to keep up with the latest shows as they're released.

The Loosely Coupled podcast, hosted by PHP community members Jeff Carouth and Matt Frost, has posted their latest episode. In Episode #4: An Agile Rant they talk about agile development practices and compromises.

In this episode Matt and Jeff talk about their experiences with adopting Agile as individuals and as teams. The important take aways are to not be too loose nor too rigid with the practice; to accept change as it happens but to not force change too rapidly; to honor the purposes of the components of agile practices; and, above all, to find what works for your team specifically over what you read in a book.

Topics mentioned include the Agile Manifesto and the books "Agile Project Management and Extreme Programming Explained. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to their feed and following them on Twitter.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted episode eighteen of their PHP Abstract podcast series - another episode from Davey Shafik. This time he goes on an "API rant".

Todays special guest is Davey Shafik. If you are a regular listener of PHP Abstract, you will recognize Davey's name from previous podcasts. For those of you new to PHP Abstract, Davey is a full time PHP Developer with 10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. He is an author of both magazine articles and books. Davey keeps his mind sharp by trying to tackle problems from his unique perspective. Today, Davey is going to rant a bit about APIs.

The show can either be downloaded directly, listen to the show via the built-in web player, or you can subscribe to the podcast's feed to get this and more great content from PHP Abstract.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted episode eighteen of their PHP Abstract podcast series - another episode from Davey Shafik. This time he goes on an "API rant".

Todays special guest is Davey Shafik. If you are a regular listener of PHP Abstract, you will recognize Davey's name from previous podcasts. For those of you new to PHP Abstract, Davey is a full time PHP Developer with 10 years experience in PHP and related technologies. He is an author of both magazine articles and books. Davey keeps his mind sharp by trying to tackle problems from his unique perspective. Today, Davey is going to rant a bit about APIs.

The show can either be downloaded directly, listen to the show via the built-in web player, or you can subscribe to the podcast's feed to get this and more great content from PHP Abstract.

On the PHP-Tools blog, there's a noteStubbles.

Stubbles is a new framework for PHP 5.2 which focuses on clean OO design, the use of patterns and ports some features from the langauges commonly referred to "enterprise languages" to PHP. If you are looking for new ways to develop your PHP applications, you should definitely take a look at the stubReflection package, which brings Java Annotations to PHP. The next issue of the German PHP Magazin will feature an article, that shows how to use this package.

The blog has been set up to give the community a window into the framework abd will include things like tutorials, thoughts on the framework and its direction, and maybe a little general PHP talk to balance things out. Check out the framework and the blog at stubbles.org.

On the PHP-Tools blog, there's a noteStubbles.

Stubbles is a new framework for PHP 5.2 which focuses on clean OO design, the use of patterns and ports some features from the langauges commonly referred to "enterprise languages" to PHP. If you are looking for new ways to develop your PHP applications, you should definitely take a look at the stubReflection package, which brings Java Annotations to PHP. The next issue of the German PHP Magazin will feature an article, that shows how to use this package.

The blog has been set up to give the community a window into the framework abd will include things like tutorials, thoughts on the framework and its direction, and maybe a little general PHP talk to balance things out. Check out the framework and the blog at stubbles.org.

Markus Wolff takes a look at a part of the setup surrounding the Zend Framework in this blog post today - the Framework's CLA.

Contributors to the Zend Framework must first sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before they're allowed to commit anything. This is claimed to make the Zend Framework "IP clean", so big corporations have no problem adopting it.

I've never believed in this proclaimed need of being "IP clean". Maybe that's because stealing someone's proprietary code never came to mind - am I just to good a person? However, in a world where in certain strange countries (I won't drop any names here) you can actually patent software - or worse, ideas - it is increasingly difficult to write a single line of code that you can be sure of not violating anyone else's so-called intellectual property.

He quotes from the CLA's FAQ on the Framework site about the protection this CLA offers to both the Framework and to the developers that contribute to it.

His rebuttal is one of "how can this be enforced?", which, of course, he realizes is just not possible. He casts a "marketing first" light on the CLA, suggesting that it's just a way to help sell it to corporations.

Markus Wolff takes a look at a part of the setup surrounding the Zend Framework in this blog post today - the Framework's CLA.

Contributors to the Zend Framework must first sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before they're allowed to commit anything. This is claimed to make the Zend Framework "IP clean", so big corporations have no problem adopting it.

I've never believed in this proclaimed need of being "IP clean". Maybe that's because stealing someone's proprietary code never came to mind - am I just to good a person? However, in a world where in certain strange countries (I won't drop any names here) you can actually patent software - or worse, ideas - it is increasingly difficult to write a single line of code that you can be sure of not violating anyone else's so-called intellectual property.

He quotes from the CLA's FAQ on the Framework site about the protection this CLA offers to both the Framework and to the developers that contribute to it.

His rebuttal is one of "how can this be enforced?", which, of course, he realizes is just not possible. He casts a "marketing first" light on the CLA, suggesting that it's just a way to help sell it to corporations.

In a follow-up to his brief opinion on the Tim Bray comments about PHP, Harry Fuecks has poested this longer rant on the SitePoint PHP blog today.

He looks at eight different topics:

• It's the execution model
• Excellent database support
• PHP Arrays
• The SPL Extension
• PHP 5(.1) XML Support
• The stuff that says it works...works
• Unicode and ICU
• Stuck in Little boxes

For each of them he explains them briefly, dispelling any rumors that might have come up from those not as experienced with the PHP language.

Update: if you'd like to help promote it, it's been digged.