Anthony Ferrara has a new post today on his blog with some things he think you can do to become a better overall developer (and not just in PHP). He shares six things from his own experience to help answer this question.

One of the most frequent questions that I get asked is "How can I become a better developer?" I think that it's a very good question to ask that deserves a good response. But how can you respond to something like that? Becoming a better developer depends so heavily on past experience (where to grow), interests and rationale (why do you want to grow), that it's really hard to answer without a fair bit of discussion. This post reflects my experiences from both my own growth and the growth that I've seen in others.

The things on his list are pretty simple, but they're easy to forget in your day to day development life. Things like being motivated to better yourself, gaining confidence in your abilities, sharing your knowledge and/or becoming a mentor to developers with less experience than you. Interestingly enough, this last one can sometimes teach you a little something about you and your processes too.

In this recent post to his blog John Congdon looks at some of his local user groups - Orlando and Daytona Beach in Florida - and how they handle their meetings and groups differently.

I am a member of two PHP user groups. Each one runs a little bit differently. I am looking for feedback from other people in other PHP user groups to find ways we may be able to make these better. he East Central Florida PHP User Group (Daytona Beach area) is new/restarting. [...] They seem to be more geared towards teaching new PHP developers. [...] The Orlando PHP User Group is quite different. They lean towards more presentation style meetings. Someone proposes a topic, and then someone volunteers to be the presenter.

He asks for comments from the community as a whole, wondering what he can do and what other groups in similar situations have done to help grow and improve their group. Comments on the post include suggestions of a more traditional approach over the mentoring aspect, a possible mixing of the styles and using tools likee Google Moderator to pick out the topics people are most interested in.

Its that time of year again - time to get the ball rolling for this year's PHP TestFest. Zoe Slattery has kicked things off with a new post for today.

It's time to start getting the 2009 PHP TestFest underway. The TestFest is a worldwide event in which PHP user groups and individuals contribute to PHP by writing tests for PHP. It's a great way to contribute to one of the most successful open source projects there has ever been, it's also pretty cool to see your name in the the source distribution for code that's running on over 20 million web domains.

If you're a user group (or really just want to participate), send an email over to the PHP qa list (php-qa@lists.php.net) with your preferred date and a primary contact for the group. The groups/people will then be listed over on the PHP wiki so you can check to see if there's others in your area already participating.

Things are just getting organized, but there's already a few things in the works - a SVN repository where participants can commit tests directly (instead of funneling them all through a few people like before), some sponsors (maybe elePHPants!) and the search for mentors to help out those writing tests and can do the final review/commit of the user-submitted tests.

More event and contact information can be found near the end of her post.

The mentor list for this year's TestFest 2008 has been started (as mentioned by Ligaya Turmelle on her blog). The list so far includes people from the community like:

• Elizabeth Smith (near Chicago)
• Pierre Joye (Munich)
• Sebastian Bergmann (Cologne)
• David Coallier (Ireland & various others)

Local organizers are still being assigned. Those considered must already committers at PHP.net and will be available to answer questions for their given areas. Ultimately, they will do the final commits of the resulting tests.

Following up from a previous post of his that got lots of great feedback, Joshua Eichorn has posted his own thanks, not only for the responses to his own thoughts but to the PEAR community as a whole.

You'll be happy to know that were already working on many of your suggestions, Greg's post on the subject has some more details. I'll be sharing everyones comments with the rest of the PEAR group at our meeting on the 13th, so if anyone has a suggestion they haven't submitted yet thats your deadline.

The thing he's most excited about is the new mentoring program that will introduce new developers to the PEAR-ality of it all and get them involved with both the coding and the community.