Well, in response to the vote and the demand that PHP has put on the newsgroup system, the comp.lang.php newsgroups has been formed. According to PHP.net: comp.lang.php was created yesterday, after a two and a half month long process started in April by Ian Fette resulted in a 177-11 vote in favor of the group. The new group is already carried on most news servers, and should be carried on almost all news servers in the world within the next few days. This is a great step forward for PHP, as it joins the ranks of "real" languages in the comp.lang group and gets it out of the alt.* sections as it previously was. So, fire up those news readers and get those fingers ready - PHP has a new home on the Usenet!

Also this morning, over on Zend, there's a new Code Gallery Spotlight that is part 4 in the "Blackjack" script series. This is the series that details using PHP for console scripts rather than the traditional use of a website or page. They finish up the script and give you all the code to top of your copy and show you how to run it (just run one function and it takes care of itself). It's a nice change from writing websites and all, and PHP is growing so rapidly every day with more and more "system" functions that it seems silly to not use it on the console.

One of the things that several developers take for granted is the fact that they always have someone else there to bounce their ideas off of and ask questions and even just hang out with. But, there are those out there (you know who you are) that are the "lone wolves" in their company. They work for a non-tech company (usually) and could be the only one that has a clue how their code works. This article from Builder.com talks about how to handle situations like this. They give several suggestions on how to deal with your own code and how to "bring others into the fold" and teach them a little bit more about how things work. The last thing you need is someone uneducated messing with some software you're working on. They also suggest keeping up with your own training and not getting lax just because you don't have someone to report to. One nice thing about it all is - as the only developer, you get to define what kind of role the "developer" fits into in the company!