On the NetTuts.com site today they've posted the transcript of a panel discussion they had with several developers about exceptions and whether or not they should be used for flow control.

I'm pleased to release our first ever round table, where we place a group of developers in a locked room (not really), and ask them to debate one another on a single topic. In this first entry, we discuss exceptions and flow control.

The opinions vary among the group as to what exceptions should be used for (even outside of the flow control topic). Opinions shared are things like:

• Exceptions are situations in your code that you should never reach
• Errors cause Failures and are propagated, via Exceptions.
• So, essentially, exceptions are an "abstraction" purely to model the abnormality.
• Personally, I envision exceptions more as "objections."
• Exceptions like this should be caught at some point and transformed into a friendly message to the user.

There's lots more than this in the full discussion so head over and read it all - there's definitely some good points made.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode - a "roundtable" with coorganizers of the Atlanta PHP group - Chris Spruck, Kevin Robert and Nic Rosental.

Cal talks with them about the Atlanta PHP group and some of their experiences with it - what's worked for them in the past, what hasn't gone so well and some recommendations they might have for other user groups out there. More, specifically his questions were:

• Do you think it's important to have a "committee" rather than a single oragnizer?
• Talk about what you're proudest of around the group
• Talk some about what didn't work with the group

You can listen to this latest episode through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode in the "It's the Booze Talking" series. In this new episode (Ep. #3) the group talks about APIs. The host this time is Keith Casey.

They talk about common problems and solutions around their company's APIs (and others they've dealt with). They cover one of the most important part of any API's structure, security, and different methods of handling it (HMAC, Oauth, etc).

Others involved in the discussion are Jason Austin, Brandon West, Rob Richards and Luke Stokes. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant Podcast has posted their latest episode - a special recording made at this year's php|tek conference (Chicago) and features several guests like Keith Casey, Eli White, Chris Hartjes, Luke Stokes, Paul Jones and Ed Finkler.

This special show (ITBT meaning "It's the Booze Talking") is a roundtable where they all discuss telecommuting from both a developer and manager's perspective. They each share something that works really well for them about telecommuting and something that doesn't. It's longer than a usual episode (about 1h 15m) but it's good discussion from a lot of different perspectives in the community.

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mo3 directly or by subscribing to their feed.

In a new post to his blog today Cal Evans looks at PHP, the community and how user groups fit into the mix. He shares opinions from the community and a video taken of a roundtable at this year's TEKX.

Those that know me know that the PHP community is near and dear to my heart. I am always looking for ways to support it, usually to the chagrin of my employer. We have the greatest community of any programming language I know of and I like helping people find ways to participate in it.

The video is a roundtable featuring Raphael Dohms, Lorna Mitchell, Michelangelo Van Dam and Ben Ramsey talking about some of what they've seen as experienced group leaders. Cal also includes suggestions from other community members about what has worked in their user group (to help others out there either just getting off the ground or wanting to grow their group).

Recently CIO Magazine had a roundtable interview with representatives from each of the major language players on the web today - Javascript, Ruby, Perl, Python, Tcl and, of course, PHP.

Three years ago, Lynn Greiner interviewed the big cheeses responsible for the popular scripting languages PHP, Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby and JavaScript to find out where the languages were headed. In this follow-up discussion, she asks the dynamic language luminaries what has changed since then.

Representatives from (previously) Netscape, the Perl Foundation, the Python Software Foundation and the IronRuby team were all included. Topics asked about include the differing needs for different languages, trends on adoption and why some of these shifts are happening.

The details are a bit scarce, but the Dallas PHP User Group has posted this new entry with information about their upcoming meeting.

The group will be gathering at 7pm on May the 9th in their usual location, the UTD School of Management in Richardson, Texas. The topic for this month's meeting is just a roundtable discussion of whatever topics come up, a free time to ask questions and get answers.

You can get complete details on the location (including a map) and information on the group from their site.