In this new post to his blog Artur Ejsmont shares some of his thoughts on bugs and how they can effect the quality of your software. He touches on topics like handling bug reports, how random code changes effect them and how effective a code review can be.

From time to time I see bugs in the code and I start thinking "really? is it possible that no one noticed that bug before? am i the first person to see this code?". I thought it might be worth writing a little post on what helps me to deal with bugs and software quality in general and what are the common pitfalls in developer's thought process. Although it is not a very extensive post i hope it may inspire some developers to try new approaches.

Other topics he offers for consideration involve the fact that bugs will never fix themselves (they might disappear in a refactor though), that the bug is almost never in the language/data source's code and how automated (unit) testing can help to find new bugs before they're released to the users.

Chris Hartjes is asking for suggestions to help solve a common problem for developers (remote or otherwise) that have to develop in a non-local setup: a better method for remote code development.

I've been playing around with Sublime Text (because of the awesome vim bindings) and was thinking about why do I always have to be logged into the remote server to do my work. Normally I connect using SSH, then attach to my tmux session and then fire up vim. This is okay but it lacks a certain elegance in it's approach. [...] What I'm chafing against is having to deal with multiple environments all the time to get my work done.

His ultimate goal is to be able to update and commit code without having to be logged into the remote server - essentially to replicate the local development experience regardless of the underlying technology. Have a suggestion or a method that's currently working for you? Leave him a comment!

On the 7php.com blog Khayrattee Wasseem has a few suggestions about how to "build your geek cred" as a PHP developer - suggestions of resources and things you can do to get more involved in the language and its community.

If you've read the PHP|Architect Magazine - March 2011 Edition, you have surely enjoyed the nice article by Jason Austin (a PHP developer from Raleigh, NC) titled "Good PHP help is hard to find". Jason talks about 'the why' and 'the how' to distinguish yourself as a qualified PHP Professional from the crowd. And the way to do that is: "You have to build your geek cred". I think he did a brilliant job with the article.

Some of Khayrattee's suggestions include (each rated with a number of "cred points"):

• Get certified with recognised certifications like the Zend Certified Engineer program
• Start a PHP meetup group near you
• Sign up to attend PHP conferences around the world
• Blog about PHP { have a blog dedicated to it }

Recently a site called The Twelve Factor App surfaced as a guideline for web applications to be at their best. Bradley Holt has taken these suggestions and has applied them to PHP applications in a few quick comments to each point.

If you develop web apps, I encourage you to check out The Twelve-Factor App. This is an excellent resource for anyone building and deploying software-as-a-service. PHP has great support for many of the twelve-factors. I want to take a look at specifically how each factor may be applied to a PHP application.

Some of the points the Twelve-Factor App makes aren't entirely relevant to PHP (like "Backing Services") but Bradley gets into details on others, providing technology that can be used to fill the need.

In a new post to his blog Marco Tabini offers some quick advice to younger developers looking to make their mark in their profession (PHP-related or not). He shares five tips to keep in mind as you hone your process and write your code.

Every now and then, I get asked by developers who are just getting started in the trade if I have any suggestions to help them out - favourite language, tips and tricks, and the like. None of these things matter, really, but there are a few things I wish I had known when I started out that have nothing to do with the mechanics of software development.

His tips each come with a paragraph or so of explanation:

• Be humble
• There is no magic
• Programming is a craft, not an art
• Software solves problems
• Code doesn't leave sawdust

Chris Anstey has a new post to his blog with some of his suggestions to framework developers out there (those writing frameworks, not writing applications with them). He mentions some of the criteria he believes frameworks should have.

A framework provides you with many of the common components required to develop a website - for example, database access, templating systems and authorization systems. [...] These frameworks are all open source - which means that anyone can review and suggest improvements to the code. Using a framework provides you with many benefits.

He suggests that a framework should be:

• Time-saving
• Reliable
• Adherent to well-structured patterns
• Fostering a good community
• Not too difficult to learn
• Well-performing (and easy to extend with something like caching)

Brian Swan is asking for user feedback about the future of the Microsoft's SQL Server driver for PHP based on a post in the team's blog.

I want to make sure that his request gets in front of lots of eyes, so I'm re-posting his request here (below). Jonathan included some links in his post so you can learn more about what the team is considering for the next release of the driver, but he didn't elaborate on "Buffered Queries".

They suggest a few features and ask for choices on which would be the most important to you as a developer - Always On support, SQL Server Serverless Express support, Buffered queries and LOB streaming support in PDO_SQLSRV. To give feedback, send an email to the address mentioned in the post or on twitter/their forums.

On PHPBuilder.com today Jason Gilmore offers some performance tips to make highly optimized code without having to use something like HipHop to get closer to the speeds you might need.

While HipHop may seem a rather esoteric solution to the performance problem, a method lies within the perceived madness; maintaining the website logic using PHP code allows Facebook to maintain a code base which remains accessible to a larger number of developers, with the added bonus of being able to deploy blazing fast C++ code. Of course, incorporating HipHop into your infrastructure might not be ideal, but that shouldn't stop you from striving to produce highly optimized PHP code. Read on to learn more about several straightforward steps you can take to boost PHP performance.

Some of the tips included in his list are obvious but could easily be overlooked like:

• Upgrade your PHP distribution
• Tone down error reporting
• Use PHP's native extensions whenever possible
• Use a PHP accelerator

Take a look at the full post for other suggestions and descriptions of each.

In an effort to get some real feedback from the community about the state of PHP and what they think it needs, Sean Coates asked on Twitter for people to respond with their suggestions as to what could help make PHP better and what the project itself needs.

PHP's intentional stagnation is eating away at me. I'm working on a list of things I think #PHP needs. What's on your list? Tag it #phpneeds

There's been a great response already with suggestions ranging from features the language itself needs out to suggestions for those running and participating in the project. Keep this Twitter search bookmarked to see some of the great discussion.

In a a new tutorial posted on his blog Martin Sik shows you how to "steal" the "did you mean..." functionality that Google's sites currently offer. His example uses cURL to get the current Google request URLs and fetch the associated results.

I really like Google and the classic "did you mean" feature is really great, unfortunately when I wanted to implement it into my project a realized that it's not provided by any of Google's APIs. [...] I believe for most developers [having a large dictionary and extend the dictionary when new terms are available] are unachievable. And so it's for me. So I was thinking if I can bypass these drawbacks and let Google do all the job for me.

The source code is included with the post showing two methods - fetching a "did you mean" block to parse or how a term is attached to a Google URL and the results are returned in JSON and parsed for display. Obviously, this is an external dependency you could consider if you put it into your application, but it can be quite a powerful tool in the right situations.