As PHP developers, we commonly resort to browsing the Web for people with similar programming problems. Now that we have The PHP Anthology, why should we? While the book certainly does not cover everything, there is something for everyone, and even the few sections you find useful make it all worthwhile.

He talks about the book's target audience, the quality of the examples it provides and some of his suggestions on how the book could have been even better.

There's always a bridge between textbook knowledge of programming - syntax, procedure etc. - and the real world knowledge that you get from actually developing real applications. Here are five things every PHP developer should be familiar with before they begin developing web applications in PHP

The list is:

• Frameworks
• Templating engines Code availability
• Don't reinvent the wheel
• IRC is a wonderful thing

I'm a particular fan of that last one and regularly hang out in the same ##php channel over on Freenode.