Kevin Schroeder has a suggestion for developers out there - you should hit F5 more often:

The best developers hit "Refresh"? No. Well, yes, but that's not what I was referring to. F5 is what you hit in Zend Studio/PDT to "Step Into" during a debug session. A LOT of developers just look at an API, or code completion, write to it, commit, deploy and they're done. I have found that the best developers not only build to the API, whatever it is, but also watch the API at work.

In his opinion, he's never met "the smartest PHP developer", someone who couldn't learn something from stepping through someone else's code. You don't even need to fully know what's going on to catch helpful bits of code or new ideas you may not have thought of along the way. He also suggests conferences (like ZendCon) are an excellent place to pick these same things up, just in person.

Having been asked what people can do to become better programmers, I would respond by saying that hitting F5 would be pretty high on my list.

On LearnComputer.com there's a new post with their top five choices of PHP books they see as good resources for any developer wanting to improve their grasp of the language.

Continuing with our best-five-book series, today we are introducing our pick of the top 5 PHP books. Obviously, PHP has been around much longer than our other review subjects such as Android or HTML5, and there is a greater general variety of books to choose from.

Their list of top five covers a pretty good range of skillsets, but leans more towards the introductory level:

• Professional PHP6 (and yes, they mention that the title is "blatant false advertising" since PHP6 is nowhere to be found)
• Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites
• PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy
• Beginning PHP and MySQL: From Novice To Professional
• Head First PHP & MySQL

Adminx Web has posted a list that, in their opinion, contains the fifteen frameworks that should be considered the "best ever" in PHP development. Some of them you might not have heard of, but give it a read and see if you agree.

Frameworks are the streamlined flow of PHP codes meshed up and baked for you to just use and implement. PHP frameworks are the result of codes written by many talented developers around the world. In other words, PHP frameworks help to promote rapid application development (RAD), which saves you time, helps build more stable applications, and reduces the amount of repetitive coding for developers. Today, in this article, we present before you 15 best PHP frameworks that are both light and easy to implement.

The frameworks mentioned cover more than just your typical MVC application environment. There's a few that touch on other technologies like REST, microframeworks and Ajax integration. Here's some of the list:

• Recess
• Akelos
• Tekuna
• Zend Framework
• CodeIgniter

Mike Bernat has come up with a list of (eight things) his best practices when it comes to PHP development:

I suggest a more retro-active approach [than trial and error]. Studying, surrounding, and forcing yourself to abide by best-practice coding standards will yield surprising results in your applications despite the fact that it may seem like more work than it's worth.

Topics included in his list are things like:

• Always develop with error reporting set at E_ALL and E_STRICT
• Portability, Portability, Portability!
• Don't over-think!
• Validate & Sanitize your Inputs!

Check out the rest of the post for more suggestions and explainations.

Roshan Bhattarai has set up an informal poll in an entry on his site asking visitors to rate what they think the "best" PHP framework is.

I've been asked a lot of times which is the best PHP framework. Well, it's a very difficult question to answer this question and there are some pros and corns in each framework. So, today I would to hear your views via poll.

Included in the list are CakePHP, Symfony, Zend Framework, CodeIgniter. Coming out with around forty-three percent of the votes, though, is the Zend Framework with CakePHP following with twenty-two percent.

If you're looking for a good PHP resource, check out this list from Top-books.org - a listing of PHP and web-related books ranked by their Amazon ranking.

Included in the list are books like:

• Luke Welling and Laura Thomson's PHP and MySQL Web Development
• Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Jason Gilmore
• Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell's Pro PHP Security (Pro)

and many more....check out the full listing to find a good one on your chosen topic.

The this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo, Matthew Weir O'Phinney and Mike Naberezny wil be presenting a "Best Practices" session, which Matthew talks a bit about in his latest blog entry.

We had so much fun presenting during last year's conference, we thought we'd do it again. The session is a pre-conference tutorial session, running for 3 hours on Monday morning, 30 October 2006.

The session will be divided up into two different main sections - programming practices and tools and processes. Each of these have their subsections, including test drive development/unit testing, project documentation, and collaboration tips and tools.

Kore Nordmann has posted about the talks from the PHPWeekender event being posted online.

The talks followed three topics:

• Best Practices - security, performance up to basic OOP features in PHP and debugging
• Object-oriented programming - "OO Candy store"
• and the ever-popular "Enterprise PHP"

You can check out the slides and information for each of the talks on Kore's own page listing them out (as well as some other great talks from other conferences).

Leendert Brouwer has come up with a list of PHP applications that he considers some of the best out there and combined them all in a list over on his blog.

Even though a lot of crap applications have been written in PHP, some applications really shine in excellence. Not only are they very usable, they are also coded well, secure, and well-documented. I've compiled a list of applications for a number of genres that stand out in my opinion.

Included in his list are applications like:

• phpMyAdmin for database administration
• JpGraph for graphing and statistics
• Smarty for templating
• Drupal for community and content management

Packt Publishing has announced a new contest today looking for the "Best Open Source Content Management System" out there (for 2006):

Packt Publishing is currently looking for people to nominate their favourite Content Management System at www.PacktPub.com/award. The five projects that receive the most public nominations will go through to a final round of voting, with a panel of judges and votes from users deciding who receives the $5,000 prize.

The award will be voted on by a panel of judges and visitors to Packtpub.com and is designed to "recognize and reward outstanding achievement in a high quality and highly competitive marketplace".

For complete information, check out their official page for the contest.