All beginners face many obstacles with PHP - granted there are things that are easy about it (ease of use, familiar syntax, etc), but the error reporting isn't one of them. Everyone gets them, even the seasoned professional, but making sense of them is a whole other story. Sometimes, the error isn't even on the same lines as the one that's reported, and that can confuse even a PHP guru from time to time.

Well, DevArticles.com to the rescue this morning, with their latest article, Making Sense of PHP Errors. The author covers various topics to help you understand how PHP parses the documents you feed it, and why it reports errors like it does. He also points out several very common errors that no one is immune to - things like missing a semicolon, forgetting a bracket or a brace, and using reserved words as variables.

Debugging is one of the most important parts of being a developer, and increasing your debugging efficiency can greatly improve your overall work ethic, reduce the time taken to complete a project, and obviously reduce stress related to coding frustration.