A lot has happened since my October post announcing ProTalk, the secret project I am working on with my friend, Kim Rowan. So much in fact that now seems the ideal time to update you on our progress! Now, down to business! Since announcing the project in early October we have achieved the [several] project milestones.

The milestones include hosting by Combell (who also host Joind.in), a new domain, a commitment from Ibuildings for a design/logo/wireframe set and a new twitter account.

ProTalk is a "community resource aiming to provide a central point of access to video and audio content with a PHP focus." For more information and to sign up for details when they launch, check out their new site.

I got mail yesterday from a former student of a friend of mine who has just been told that he has to teach an "Intro to Software Engineering" class this fall to a bunch of third-year undergraduates. He's not an SE guy-his background is operating systems-so he asked me what he should read to get one step ahead of his future students. As regular readers will know, I don't think much of most traditional software engineering books: I've never seen most of what's in them in the real world, and most of what I've needed to know hasn't been in them.

Included in his books of recommended reading are things like:

• Making Software (of which he's an author)
• Karl Fogel's Producing Open Source Software
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code (from Michael Feathers)
• The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Take a look at the full post for the rest of his list and a bit about why he chose each.

In principle, I have nothing against micro-optimizations; I just think they're a waste of time - perhaps even more so because they take the focus away from the simple fact that it's a rare performance problem that is cause by the language: the problem, almost inevitably, resides either with the developer, or with an external system.

He explains that it's no so much about dropping them all together as it is starting from the beginning and teaching best practices and good use of standards and proper development practices. That's what we should be promoting, not things that might shave milliseconds off the total execution time.

I thought all of Akash's suggestions were good but a little broad and seemed to involve a lot of reading. And while any budding developer will jump at the chance to expand their burgeoning technical library, I thought there were a couple of items we could add to his list.

The recommendations that made his list are

• Start a project that other people (developers and end users) will use.
• Learn another language.
• Teach someone PHP.
• Ask for suggestions not solutions.
• Use what you read.

I'm particularly a fan of the third one (teaching) - not only does it spread PHP out even more through the masses, but it can really test you on your knowledge (some of those "how do I.." questions can get a bit complex, even from beginners).

He (David) suggested that the format for teaching PHP needs to change and that these books need to start not by teaching PHP from the Web but by introducing newbies to PHP concepts by creating command-line applications. The idea being to introduce them early on to OOP and best practices, rather than trying to get them started fast with a simple "Hello, World" Web site.

For Ben, the idea was agreeable, but he wasn't sure on whether or not such an approach would take off with the current book market. He does agree with David, though, that things need to change.

As far as David, his thoughts can be best summed up with this post on his blog, talking about a way to learn PHP without some of the drudge they pass along with the lessons in some of the "Learn PHP Now!" kinds of books. He even includes a table of contents for such a book.

So, which is the better of the two? Well, book publishers still think the second (the give examples and teach practices too) is the proven formula for a good PHP book, but maybe a company out there could benefit from Ben and David's suggestion of a no-nonsense, clean, easy book that fosters an approach supporting the basics, not someone's opinion of good code.

Windows is making a strong play for the server market with their "Cross Training for Developers" program. And look at the co-sponsors: O'Reilly and Dr. Dobbs. Not too shabby.

Oh, and if you dig around on the site you will see tutorials on PHP, Java and Coldfusion. You will also see that if you sign up for three of their webcasts you will get a free copy of Visual Studio 2005, a free book and some other stuff that they don't tell you about. What better way to fend off the IBM/Eclipse onslaught than start giving away Studio. Whoever said Microsoft wasn't getting smarter with age was wrong.

It's an interesting tactic, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. So far, from what Marcus has said, it seems like a half-hearted effort - but that might just be because it's just getting the ball rolling.]]> Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:35:11 -0600