The dead parrot curriculum
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The shake-up of the school curriculum signals a truly radical change in education, argues Mike Baker
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Piers Cawley has the latest from the Perl 6 mailing lists. The perl6-compiler list discusses grammar bootstrapping, the Parrot people debate namespaces again, and the Perl 6 Language list ponders the freshly updated Synopsis 5.
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Paul Jones will be one of the presenters at this year's php/db|works Conference happening up in Toronto this week and he's offering a teaser of his talk (here's the synopsis) for those interested - "Organizing Your PHP Projects".   Fans of Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" will recognize the kind of talk I have in store, although I don't have the time available to expound in detail the way Hazlitt does. The talk will consist of a one-sentence lesson for you to remember when deciding how to organize your PHP project, whether it's a library, an application, a CMS, or a framework. I'll then explain how to apply the One Lesson in your project, and the various follow-on effects the One Lesson will have on your project organization.   He also jokes that he'll be the only presenter to use references to livestock, Jimmy Hoffa, and Mir as a part of the talk. He's even included a slide of the presentation for even more info.
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Adding to his popular Install PHP 5 on Windows workshop, Edward Tanguay has just posted two new steps, which teach you PHP 5 object-oriented programming in a very practical manner: In the first step you download and set up a PHP 5 page which reads an XML file and displays book reviews linked to the Amazon Associate program. In the next step, Edward goes line-by-line through the code and examines the classes, properties, constructors, public methods, private methods and static methods discussing how each works and why programming in this fashion is better than procedural programming. There are dozens of screen screenshots which make this tutorial easy to follow. If you get stuck or want to discuss an issue, you can instantly post questions and comments on each step without registering.
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On CodeSnipers.com there's a new book review of one of O'Reilly's PHP-related offerings, "PHP Hacks" by "Jack D. Herrington".   I had borrowed a Perl Hacks book from and friend and really liked it, it was great! It had a lot of practical things as well as some fun things. I expected the same from PHP Hacks and I was not disappointed!   She links to both the table of contents and the sample chapter to give you an idea of the feel of the book. There's two main sections in the review covering both aspects of the book - the Practical Stuff and the Fun Stuff. Of course, no book is perfect, so there is one thing she mentions that wasn't really worked into the book, but you'll need to read the review to find out what.
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Letâs not lose the plot. In defense of âbadâ words in childrenâs books.
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Michael Kimsal has come up with the start of a series to introduce PHP developers to the world of Grails (the Java framework).   The comparisons I plan to make will be mostly to PHP, cause that's what I'm most familiar with, though there may be some other comparisons from time to time.  This is a work in progress, but I'd be very interested in feedback from anyone out there interested in this aea - Grails, Groovy, PHP, why another language/platform/framework, etc.   The first two installments have been posted - part one and part two - with an introduction to what Grails is and a brief dip into some "Hello world" sort of code to give you an idea of the structure.
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Key: F-Fiction; NF-Nonfiction; H-Hardcover; P-Paperback
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's this new tutorial that looks at making the move from PHP4's object-oriented programming up to the "more complete obejct model of PHP5" - specifically with the Decorator design pattern.   While working on a project I realized one particular solution was a pretty good way to demonstrate the decorator design pattern together with some of PHP5's features, including abstract classes, interfaces, type hinting, the final keyword and the visibility of properties and methods. This article is intended for those of you who, like myself, are moving from object-oriented programming, including some use of design patterns, in PHP4, to the more complete object model of PHP5.   He sets up a scenario about the development of an online pizza ordering system to show how to "decorate" a pizza with each of the toppings on a list (instead of having to list out every pizza in every possible topping combination). Of course, all of the code is included and explained so you understand exactly what's happening. Finally, there's a demonstration of its usage - a simple call that grabs the stock level/name/cost of each of the items in stock (pizza combinations).
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Latest PHPClasses.org Releases:SPL and IteratorsBWT & MTF encodercPanel Sub-domains CreatorObserverableHTTP SpySimple and Attachment Send MailWindows RegistryClean OutputCryptPHP RARRTF Generation ClassBar ChartPclTemplateICQ Protocol
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By Tom Angleberger   tomangleberger@yahoo.com
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The Zend Developer Zone has another new tutorial from Padraic Brady talking about testing your applications (i.e. unit tests). In this new article, he expands on his previous one and dives a bit deeper into the behaviour-driven development process.   In this article, I introduce a TDD related practice called Behaviour-Driven Development which has been gathering attention for over a year and gaining converts (like me!).   He briefly covers what BDD is and how it can be used to solidify code against issues that might come up down the road (and how it compares to test-driven development). Some sample code/tests are included to give you a better idea of how it all fits together - a set of scenarios for any given "story". True to the title, Padraic writes his tests around the construction of a Klingon Bird of Prey ship.
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Tycho: There are two things I must mention.First, Gabriel liked the cover for book four (entitled "Birds Are Weird") so much that he wanted to make a poster of it, and it's not worth arguing with him when he gets like that so we let him do it. It is, even now, awailable!Also: PAX preregistration opens today, and since we've had a couple of these now you probably know if it's something you'd like to attend. You save ten dollars over the door price, which is, like, ten bucks. This is money you could put toward some other purpose!(CW)TB
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P&aacute;draic Brady has a suggestion for all of the PHP readers out there - two articles in the latest edition of php|architect magazine, the May 2007 edition:   The two that stick in my mind are Jim Delahunt's "Unicode and PHP: A Gentle Introduction" and Jeff Moore's "Test Pattern: Model View Controller". Both are something those seeking illumination on these topics should certainly read.   The first presents an introduction to one of the hottest topics in the PHP world - Unicoding - including a few same scripts to get you going. The second article, a look at the Model/View/Controller pattern that really gets more to what the pattern is about rather than just talking about its structure.
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From iTunes U, which lets students take educational podcasts on the road; to the computational tools running on Xserves, which allow students to see and explore the structure, function, and behavior of molecules; to the Digital Academic Television Network, which delivers live TV via a network connection using QuickTime as a client), Macintosh computers, servers, and software help educators articulate the âWisconsin Idea.â Erasing completely the âborders of learning,â they depend on the Mac to let learning go onâfor students and teachers alikeâanywhere and at anytime.
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This week, Cal Evans is reporting live from this year's php/db|works conference in Toronto. Since today is "Tutorial Day", the schedule is a little lighter, and he makes to time to catch Rob Richards' talk on PHP and Advanced XML and Web Services.    Rob Richards is the author of Pro PHP XML and Web Services. He literally wrote the book on using PHP and XML together. At php|works, he is leading a tutorial on using XML in web services using the DOM extension.    If you ever get a chance to hear Rob do a presentation, let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. As I learned last night when I sat down with Rob to record an interview, Rob likes to speak on leading edge and advanced topics. This tutorial is an excellent example of that philosophy.    Cal talks more about the content of the talk - its simplicity despite the complex topic, how much info is jammed in, and the fact that it's not just one giant pitch for Rob's book.
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Piers Cawley has the latest from the Perl 6 mailing lists. The perl6-compiler list discusses rule engine flexibility, the Parrot people discuss the Parrot versions of Forth, Tcl, and Python as well as lexical pads, and the Perl 6 Language list argues about what being in the core really means.