If you've ever been interested in starting a technology-centric meetup in your area but haven't known where to start, Jef Claes has some helpful hints to help you get started.

I've organized a few DDDBE meetups in the past, and always succeed in forgetting something. Either someone points it out well in advance, or I end up stressing last minute. This post partly serves as a checklist for myself, but it would be a welcome side effect to also see it encourage others to help out organizing future meetups. Organizing a meetup is not rocket science, having a list of what to take care of is a good start.

He breaks down the recommendations into a list of ten things to do to make a successful meetup happen:

• Contacting a speaker
• Gathering speaker requirements
• Selecting a location sponsor
• Contacting a location sponsor
• Meetup.com
• Speaker gift
• Recordings
• Day of the meetup
• Give thanks

While ten steps sounds like a lot, some of these are optional (like the speaker gift) but they can help to build a good reputation for the group and make it easier to find future speakers.

On the Zend blog they've posted a retrospective of 2016 and some of their most popular articles published over the last year.

The audience has spoken. From Zend Framework 3 release to Zend Server with PHP 7, from IBM i to AWS, the top ten articles on the blog from 2016 cover a wide range of topics to help you deliver PHP applications rapidly, reliably, securely, both on-premise and in the cloud.

Articles that made the list include:

• 10 ways Zend Server boosts performance
• AWS 101 for PHP developers
• Zend Framework 3 release
• PHP 7 is gaining momentum

Check out the original post for the full list. Predictably, most are related to Zend's own offerings but its good to see some other topics mixed in there as well.

In this recent post to his Medium.com site Subhas Dandapani shares what he sees as the top ten modern software over-engineering mistakes developers make in modern application development.

Few things are guaranteed to increase all the time: Distance between stars, Entropy in the visible universe, and Fucking business requirements. Many articles say Don't over-engineer but don’t say why or how. Here are 10 clear examples.

Important Note: Some points below like “Don’t abuse generics” are being misunderstood as “Don’t use generics at all”, “Don’t create unnecessary wrappers” as “Don’t create wrappers at all”, etc. I’m only discussing over-engineering and not advocating cowboy coding.

Points in his "top ten problems" list include:

• Engineering is more clever than Business
• Everything is Generic
• Shallow Wrappers
• Overzealous Adopter Syndrome
• In House “Inventions”

Each item in the list comes with a bit of explanation and an image or two where appropriate. There's definitely some things in here that are a bit debatable, but development has and will always have a file line between over-engineering and "just the right amount" of work. The trick is figuring out where that line is for your development work.

On the Toptal.com site a new article has been published from author Ilya Sanosyan with his list of top ten development mistakes he sees PHP developers make leading to more buggy code.

PHP makes it relatively easy to build a web-based system, which is much of the reason for its popularity. But its ease of use notwithstanding, PHP has evolved into quite a sophisticated language with many frameworks, nuances, and subtleties that can bite developers, leading to hours of hair-pulling debugging. This article highlights ten of the more common mistakes that PHP developers need to beware of.

Included in his list are common issues like:

• Leaving dangling array references after foreach loops
• Confusion about returning by reference vs. by value
• Performing queries in a loop
• Assuming $_POST will always contain your POST data
• Ignoring coding standards

For each item on his list he provides good code examples and explanation of both why it's an issue and what can be done to prevent it.

On Kinsta.com Daniel Pataki has posted a list of seven things not to do in PHP 7 when it's finally released. It's no secret that there's a lot of new functionality coming with this new version but that also potentially means some bad practices coming along with them.

I’ve already shared some of the upcoming features of PHP 7, in this article I thought I’d take a look at some of the bad patterns we should stop using as we switch to the lightning fast PHP 7.

Among the things on his list are suggestions like:

• Do Not Use mysql_ Functions (removed from core)
• Do Not Use PHP Close Tags At The End Of A file
• Do Not Perform Queries In A Loop
• Do Not Trust User Input

Some of the suggestions do have a direct relation to what PHP 7 has to offer but most of them are just good practices to follow during your development work. Quite a few good tips in there, especially if you're relatively new to the language and want to start with PHP 7 and go.

On the Fortrabbit.com blog today they have a post where they share what they see as the 10 Pillars of PHP Development. It's a set of ten things they see as the most important to consider in a developer's work.

For most of us PHP developers writing applications now compared to ten or so years ago is quite a different endeavor. [...] This has changed in recent years. Classical web sites are becoming more and more the domain of specialized SaaS. [...] So web developers changed themselves by specializing and concentrating on what cannot be automated so easily: web applications. Along with this came a new mindset on how PHP development should be done and what tools should be used.

Their list of ten includes both generic topics (with a few subtopics for explanation) and specific technical items like:

• Code management
• Tests
• Dependencies and modularization
• Runtime data
• Deployment

Check out the rest of the post for other "pillars" in their list and explanations for each.

The SitePoint PHP blog has a new post today from Daniel Berman (of Zend) with the top 10 features of Z-Ray to be sure to check out. Disclaimer: Z-Ray is a tool provided by Zend, a part of their Zend Server product.

Necessity is the mother of invention goes the famous saying. For PHP developers, there is no greater need than visibility. But developers today have a tough choice to make as they develop and debug their apps. Either use crude methods such as printing, debugging information, or storing it in a log file, or – use multiple debugging/profiling tools that are awkward and require a lot of work from the developer’s side. [...] This article introduces the top 10 features of Z-Ray – an innovative new technology from Zend that makes PHP development a whole lot quicker and easier by giving developers unprecedented insight into their code – and the visibility they need to develop top-notch apps.

Among the items on their Top 10 list are things like:

• Viewing information about page requests
• Execution time and memory consumption
• Showing errors and warnings
• Viewing functions called during execution
• Debugging features for mobile apps and APIs

Check out the full post for a list of more features and screenshots/detail on each one.

The Symfony framework blog has posted their end of year review for 2014 with happenings in both the Symfony framework and community.

2014 has been the busiest year in the entire history of the Symfony project website. First, we redesigned our website to bring in a more modern look and feel. Then, we added two new sections: Symfony Marketplace, which is the place where you can find all the products and services built around Symfony ecosystem and Symfony Jobs, which is the official job board to look for and post Symfony related job offers.

In addition, we boosted the official Symfony Blog with lots of new articles and a faster post publishing pace to provide you more contents.

They list out their "top ten" of most popular posts on the site including articles about performance, the v 3.0 roadmap and developer experience. They end the post with a reminder about another new part of the site coming soon - the Symfony Showcase showing off sites built with the framework.

Christoph Rumpel has posted a list of ten things he thinks will help you be a better programmer overall.

It is easy to become a web developer these days. The only things you need is a computer and Internet. But I believe there is big difference between a developer and a good one. Good developers are like little heroes. They are awesome in what they do and are there when you need them. A real benefit to the our world and definitely someone you can look up to! I believe everyone can make this step and start being a better developer today. This is why I asked great developers from all around the world what they think makes someone a really good developer.

His list covers more than just good coding practices too. He suggests things like:

• Experimentation
• Reading the code of other good developers
• Just build websites
• Contribute to other projects
• Watch out for the Hypetrain
• Never give up

He includes a quick summary of each of these and the rest of the top ten list too. Be sure to check out the full post for more.

On the Inviqua techPortal today Marcello Duarte lists out his top ten favorite limitations with the PhpSpec testing tool. PhpSpec is a tool where the tests are driven by specifications, focusing on the "how".

PhpSpec is enjoying a growth in popularity lately, probably related to the recent release of 2.0. Lots of people have been playing with it and trying to get to grips with what it can do. Naturally they try to do the same things they would with other testing tools. Soon they find out they can’t. “Oh! This PhpSpec has some many limitations… I can’t do this… I can’t do that…”. Ironically, other people make positive comments about the same “limitations”. So I decided to publish a list of my top ten favourite limitations of PhpSpec, and why I love them so much.

His limitations list includes things like:

• I can't test private methods
• You can’t have code coverage
• I can’t use a data provider
• My tests can’t follow a code standard

Check out the full article for more of his list and some code examples ot help clarify each topic.