On NetTuts.com there's a recent post that tries to explain the "whens" and "whys" of design patterns - when using them is a good idea and why you might want to implement them as a part of your application.

There are plenty of articles that explain what design patterns are, and how to implement them; the web doesn't need yet another one of those articles! Instead, in this article, we will more discuss the when and why, rather than the which and how. I'll present different situations and use-cases for patterns, and will also provide short definitions to help those of you who are not so familiar with these specific patterns.

They've broken them up by topic instead of by the patterns themselves with sections like:

• Finding the Data We Need
• Reusability
• Discover-ability
• Singularity
• Controlling Different Objects

There's also a few sections that look at other patterns that really only have a handful of uses - like the Decorator, State and Composite patterns.

One of the features that's recently been introduced into the PHP language has been a feature for keeping code not only more organized, but more modular - namespacing (PHP 5.3+). In this new tutorial from PHPMaster.com they introduce you to this handy feature and include a bit of code showing their use.

Namespaces were a long awaited feature in PHP. While many other important features were released with PHP 5, namespaces were not supported until version 5.3. This led to various techniques for emulating them which, though necessary, were messy and confusing. Although namespaces have been part of PHP for over a year now, such techniques still exist. Many developers simply don't know how to use proper namespaces in their code. In this article I will explain why namespaces are important and how you can use them in your own PHP code.

He starts off by talking about what namespaces are and how they can be used to segment up applications, especially larger ones, into more manageable chunks. Basic code is included showing how to implement a namespace, referencing items inside a namespace, the "use" keyword and the __NAMESPACE__ magic variable.

In this new article from Noupe.com they look at a hot topic in the PHP community - frameworks - and give an overview of the features of five popular choices.

PHP is the world's most popular scripting language for many different reasons - flexibility, ease-of-use, among others - but often times coding in PHP, or any language for that matter, can get rather monotonous and repetitive. That's where a PHP framework can help. [...] Frameworks can also help beginners to build more stable apps by ensuring proper database interaction and coding on the presentation layer. This allows you to spend more time creating the actual web application, instead of spending time writing repetitive code.

They touch on why you should use a framework and when are appropriate times to make them a part of your development. They also point out a few common mistakes that are often made when using frameworks like using a framework above your skill level or ensuring that all other technologies will work with your framework of choice.

They finish the article off with a look at the features of five different frameworks:

• Zend Framework
• CakePHP
• Symfony
• CodeIgniter
• Seagull

On PHPBuilder.com today there's this new tutorial for those out there at the most basic level of PHP development looking to get up to speed on what PHP is and what makes it one of the most popular web scripting languages out there.

PHP (or Personal HomePage Tools) was created by Rasmus Lerdorf over three years ago to track visitors to his homepage. PHP has since evolved into a powerful server-side markup language with syntax that resembles a mix between Perl and C.

They cover all of the key questions - what is PHP, why use it and a simple explanation of a basic script (outputting the date) as well as links to other external resources where you can get more information.

Josh Sharp has posted a new article to his blog advocating something that there's still a lot of controversy around in the PHP community - frameworks (when to use them and when to not).

PHP's ease of use is also its downfall. Because there are less restrictions on the structure of the code you write, it's much easier to write bad code. But there is a solution: use a framework. [...] Of course, if you're not taken with any of the packages above you can also write your own framework, which I've done and will talk about in the next few posts. But for now, let's have a look at the common benefits of a framework.

He's broken it out to talk about the usual framework structure, MVC and how a framework can enforce good code standards. He also mentions some happy side benefits of their use including making for "pretty URLs" and the helpers that most of the frameworks come with.

Krystian Hoffman has posted to his blog today a few reasons (10 to be exact) that he likes and uses PHP. Fortunately, most of them are some of the best reasons for anyone to use the language.

ended up with ten points on why I use PHP and I guess this would be a good post here on my blog, as it seems people like lists in general and maybe I could get some people out there that aren't really sure about whether PHP is good or bad, to get some insight at least.

Here's some of his list:

• The PHP Community
• The (language's) Performance
• Its Portability
• It has strong Object-oriented support

Other things got a mention as well - the low learning curve, low cost, included libraries - but the above few seemed the strongest.

Stefan Mischook has posted another take on why he thinks PHP developers should learn object-oriented programming:

For people new to OOP and are comfortable with 'classic' procedural php, you may be wondering why should you even bother to learn object oriented concepts...why go through the trouble?

He has several suggestions included in the post like:

• PHP is moving in an OOP direction [...] So, to really understand and use these frameworks properly, you need to understand object oriented PHP.
• Object oriented PHP really begins to shine as the project becomes more complex, and when you have more than one person doing the programming.
• OOP is the modern way of software development and all the major languages [...] it only makes sense (in terms of career,) to keep your skills up-to-date.
• OOP based PHP is much easier to maintain and update

He also suggests a method for developers to get started with OOP in PHP - how to plan out a project and think in objects rather than procedurally.

On the Stubbles blog, there's a new post that answers a question they'd mentioned in a previous post about why they develop the Stubbles framework.

In an earlier entry I promised that we will explain why we develop Stubbles. Well, there is a short version of it and a long version.

Short version: for us.
Read on for the long version.

He (Franke Kleine) lists out the reasons in his long version, including:

• Release cycles and maintenance requirements
• Why "use your force to improve another framework" is not a valid point
• Do we really reinvent the wheel?
• More company influence
• To open source or to not open source

...each with their own justification. Even if some of them are a little weak ("other people started frameworks, why can't we?"), most are good reasons for them to create their own in-house framework that just happens to be released to the rest of the community. Their effort wasn't to create something for the greater good, but to make something that they (and anyone else that might find it useful) could use.

Courtesy of an update to this post on the Zend Develoer Zone site, there's a bit more detail from Hannes Magnusson, himself (the developer behind the recent changes to the PHP.net website) in a new blog post on his site.

As many of you know I changed the frontpage of php.net recently by moving conference announcements and call for papers to its own dedicated page in a desperate attempt to regain the control of our frontpage.

The rest of the post discusses the points of "why?", "regain control?", "what gave you the right?" and even links to a patch that puts a "conference teaser" back on the page (near the top).

On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans looks back some more at his experiences at this year's OSCON and mentions his personal favorite session attended while there - the PHP Lightning talks.

The absolute best session I attended at OSCON 2006 was the "PHP Lightening Talks". Some of the presentations were interesting, others were hilarious. Theo Schlossnagle's Why PHP Sucks was both. Theo is a facilitating to sit and listen to, as you'll soon see when I post my interview with him. He's also quite funny when he wants to be. His presentation was interesting. It was part tongue-in-cheek and part dead serious but Theo left it to you to decide which was which.

He also points out another post about the talk from Chris Shiflett where a rather large discussion started about the contents of Theo's slides. And Cal hits the nail on the head:

The talk was good, don't get me wrong, but the conversation it inspired is much more interesting.