In his latest post Mathias Verraes poses the question of how much testing is too much? At what point does testing actually become less useful and how much you really need.

Figuring out how much unit tests you need to write, can be tricky, especially if you are new to Test-Driven Development. Some teams strive for 100% code coverage. Some open source projects even announce their test coverage on their GitHub profiles – as if coverage is an indicator of quality. Coverage only measures the lines of code that are executed by the test suite. It doesn’t tell you whether the outcome of the execution is actually tested, let alone how valuable that test is. Because of that, code coverage of your entire code base is a pretty lousy metric.

He suggests that the "it depends" answer to "how much testing is enough" question just isn't good enough. He puts most of this in the context of TDD (where testing is built-in to the development time) but some of the thoughts could apply to post-code testing as well. He also talks about over-design and how it relates to refactoring with deeper insight. Finally, he talks about a subject not mentioned much in testing articles - when to delete tests.

As both Andrei Zmievski and Clay Loveless mention in new blog posts from each, things in the PHP framework scene are getting a bit out of hand.

Andrei's comments:

I know you might be lusting after Rails for some reason and want to have the fame, the glory, and the dancing girls of DHH, but are we not going to be satisifed until Sourceforge is filled with the object-oriented diarrheal remains of our overblown egos and delusions of grandeur?

And Clay's thoughts:

Build a cool app. Forget about your own personal stamp on the framework world; you missed the boat on that one. But, if you want to make a mark, the world is wide open for new and cool applications. Pick an existing framework, start building your app, and contribute fixes back to that framework's community as you find shortcomings in your needs for your app.

They're both in agreement, and on more that one point. They recommend the best course of action for anyone out there with "the itch" to really work with a framework - fine one of the already established ones and dive right in. It might not be your own code, but you can contribute your own functionality and thoughts into the project and establish your own little niche.

As both Andrei Zmievski and Clay Loveless mention in new blog posts from each, things in the PHP framework scene are getting a bit out of hand.

Andrei's comments:

I know you might be lusting after Rails for some reason and want to have the fame, the glory, and the dancing girls of DHH, but are we not going to be satisifed until Sourceforge is filled with the object-oriented diarrheal remains of our overblown egos and delusions of grandeur?

And Clay's thoughts:

Build a cool app. Forget about your own personal stamp on the framework world; you missed the boat on that one. But, if you want to make a mark, the world is wide open for new and cool applications. Pick an existing framework, start building your app, and contribute fixes back to that framework's community as you find shortcomings in your needs for your app.

They're both in agreement, and on more that one point. They recommend the best course of action for anyone out there with "the itch" to really work with a framework - fine one of the already established ones and dive right in. It might not be your own code, but you can contribute your own functionality and thoughts into the project and establish your own little niche.

Harry Fuecks has posted his brief opinion on the comments that Tim Bray made recently about PHP over on the SitePoint PHP blog.

Tim Bray kicked off a big blog debate on the pros and cons of PHP (see links in his post to everyone who commented). If you’ve been around PHP for a while, there's basically nothing new here but you might find cause for optimism in how things are being said—there’s far more informed discussion happening than you might have found even two years ago.

Harry also mentions that there's not much more he wants to add other than a comment on the "PHP is too easy" comment Tim made. Be sure to check out the comments on this post for some great opinions.

Harry Fuecks has posted his brief opinion on the comments that Tim Bray made recently about PHP over on the SitePoint PHP blog.

Tim Bray kicked off a big blog debate on the pros and cons of PHP (see links in his post to everyone who commented). If you’ve been around PHP for a while, there's basically nothing new here but you might find cause for optimism in how things are being said—there’s far more informed discussion happening than you might have found even two years ago.

Harry also mentions that there's not much more he wants to add other than a comment on the "PHP is too easy" comment Tim made. Be sure to check out the comments on this post for some great opinions.

Chris Shiflett's latest post mentions this criticism of PHP's insecurity as made by Andrew van der Stock.

Andrew van der Stock has written a strong criticism of PHP's insecurity. Andrew is a seasoned security expert and a major contributor to OWASP, and he states:

"After writing PHP forum software for three years now, I've come to the conclusion that it is basically impossible for normal programmers to write secure PHP code. It takes far too much effort."

He continues, citing specific areas where he thinks PHP is weak and asserting that "PHP must now mature and take on a proper security architecture."

Chris also mentions that some of the reasons Andrew mentions include register_globals, magic_quotes_gpc, and safe_mode - all due to be removed in the latest PHP version (6). Also, be sure to check out the comments on the post for a good bit more information and discussion...

Chris Shiflett's latest post mentions this criticism of PHP's insecurity as made by Andrew van der Stock.

Andrew van der Stock has written a strong criticism of PHP's insecurity. Andrew is a seasoned security expert and a major contributor to OWASP, and he states:

"After writing PHP forum software for three years now, I've come to the conclusion that it is basically impossible for normal programmers to write secure PHP code. It takes far too much effort."

He continues, citing specific areas where he thinks PHP is weak and asserting that "PHP must now mature and take on a proper security architecture."

Chris also mentions that some of the reasons Andrew mentions include register_globals, magic_quotes_gpc, and safe_mode - all due to be removed in the latest PHP version (6). Also, be sure to check out the comments on the post for a good bit more information and discussion...