Matt Butcher has a new post listing out some of the things he sees as the top five strengths that the PHP language has going for it.

PHP. It's the much-maligned whipping boy of "serious" programmers. And in some sense, its ill repute is justified. PHP's early evolution was choppy. The standard libraries don't feel all that cohesive. Decades ago, it had some security issues. And the community, as diverse as it is, continues to churn out just as much bad PHP as good PHP. However, PHP does have strong points.

His list of five things comes some from his own experiences and a bit with some of the newer developments in the language and community:

• One Data Structure To Rule Them All
• Web-first
• Vast Troves of Documentation
• Surprisingly Good Standard Libraries
• Stability In The Strangest Form

Each of the strengths comes with a paragraph or two explaining his thoughts, for better or worse.

On the "Learn Computer" site there's a recent post that wonders if the web development standard of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack is "still strong" and will still stand up with new technologies.

This year in tech (like almost every other year) has been filled with buzzwords. Many of them this year, however, are based around big data processing and web content: NoSQL, Hadoop, BigTable – the list goes on. With all the fuss around these new technologies, one might be tempted into thinking that these are the technologies of the future, and that from now on our servers and websites will be built upon, leaving technologies like LAMP in the dust.

They talk about some of the things the LAMP stack doesn't do well like difficulties with scalability on both the web server and database side. There's also mention of the things that it does do well, like getting things up and running quickly and with a solid structure.

That being the case, the LAMP stack is still going very strong, and it’s definitely still extremely viable in small and medium-sized deployments; there are no signs of it waning in that regard, and I’d expect it to be a standard deployment for many companies and organizations for quite some time to come.

As is pointed out both by Cal Evans and the Zend Developer Zone, there's been another article posted due to the response from the (now infamous) CIO article - "PHP’s Enterprise Strengths and Weaknesses, Take 2" (by Zend's John Coggeshall).

So, in the digital toolbox of the developer, where has PHP been designed to work best? And where is it, perhaps, not the best tool for the job? [...] While other languages can surely be used to solve The Web Problem, in this article I explain why PHP is the premier solution for server-side Web scripting.

John talks about how PHP was written for the web, how it approaches and handles web requests, the security of the language and some of the major software packages that are being used in PHP development today (like the Zend Framework, PHPUnit and PECL extensions).

The International PHP Magazine conducted a poll this past week that asked visitors to vote on which of the options was the biggest strength that the Symfony framework had over the competition.

Of the four options given, the one that came out on top was that the project is still under active development and was being added to all the time. Coming in second place was an appreciation for the level of documentation that the project offers.

Be sure to get your votes in on this week's poll that takes a step back and asks visitors to pick which of the options is their favorite framework. Options include WACT, CakePHP, Prado, Phrame, and others. Head over and cast your vote today.

The International PHP Magazine conducted a poll this past week that asked visitors to vote on which of the options was the biggest strength that the Symfony framework had over the competition.

Of the four options given, the one that came out on top was that the project is still under active development and was being added to all the time. Coming in second place was an appreciation for the level of documentation that the project offers.

Be sure to get your votes in on this week's poll that takes a step back and asks visitors to pick which of the options is their favorite framework. Options include WACT, CakePHP, Prado, Phrame, and others. Head over and cast your vote today.

In a recent post to his blog, Mike Bernat gets down to basics with one of the key pieces of functionality in PHP data persistence - cookies vs. sessions.

Knowing the basics of cookies and sessions is essential to any successful PHP programmer. It is useful to store pieces information on the users computer for later use. Things like when they last visited, language of choice, age, etc. Cookies and Sessions are the perfect solution to our needs.

He talks about both, including demonstration code to clarify some points and a chart at the end to compare their features, strengths, and weaknesses.

In a recent post to his blog, Mike Bernat gets down to basics with one of the key pieces of functionality in PHP data persistence - cookies vs. sessions.

Knowing the basics of cookies and sessions is essential to any successful PHP programmer. It is useful to store pieces information on the users computer for later use. Things like when they last visited, language of choice, age, etc. Cookies and Sessions are the perfect solution to our needs.

He talks about both, including demonstration code to clarify some points and a chart at the end to compare their features, strengths, and weaknesses.