PHPNW is primarily a conference aimed at professionals within the industry to allow them to learn from each other and discover new ideas and techniques which they can then apply to their every day work. What is less prominent is how this is equally as useful for students, who may want to work in this same area once they have graduated.
Posts Tagged ‘Programming’
MooTools Cross Fader
I’ve recently developed a script in JavaScript which will perform smooth transitions between a number of elements. This is built using the MooTools framework and is available to download from the labs.
Happy New Year and Updates
With it being the festive season, I have not done a huge amount of interest recently. I’m hoping to have a few things for you soon. Currently I have been experimenting with Drupal, having never used it (properly) before, this is a real learning curve.
Also I am working on getting suPHP to work with userdir, to allow users of a server to have their own webspace in a secure fashion. I will be blogging about this when it is done.
However, I have found a few things that may be of interest:
Things you probably didn’t know about PHP – Some really interesting and neat things you can do with PHP.
PHP Object Generator – Generates class structures and objects, so you don’t have to
(An Extended) Beginners Guide to Object Orientation in PHP
Those of you who were that the PHPNW09 conference on the Sunday morning may have seen my talk on Object Oriented PHP. At the beginning of the month I gave a talk at the PHPNW user group which was based on the original talk, but slightly extended.
Talking at PHPNW – 1st December
Just to let you know that at the next PHPNW meeting I will be giving an extended version of my talk: Beginners Guide to Object Orientation in PHP, which I gave at the PHPNW09 conference.
For those who don’t know, this is held in Revolution on Deansgate Locks in Manchester, and starts at 7pm on Tuesday 1st December.
Zend_Auth Pam Adapter
A while ago for work I wrote a plugin for Zend Framework. It was an adapter for Zend_Auth that authenticated against PAM for authentication of local users through a web interface. So I have decided to release it in the hope that there will be other people out there who find it useful.
Please visit the Zend_Auth Pam Adapter page in the labs section for more information.
Breadth Vs Depth
Something that I’ve recently been thinking about a lot is what should be taught at Universities, particularly in my area (Computer Science). What has been bugging me is trying to think about the balance between coverage and detail. Is there a bias as in you should focus more on one and not the other, or should they be covered in equal amounts.
A great way of applying this is using development concepts. Do you teach students many programming languages, giving them experience of many different syntaxes, and methodologies of programming. Or do you concentrate on fewer languages, but going into more detail about what you can do with them.
Personally, I’m inclined to go with the latter (to a point). Concentrate your efforts and get them able to apply their current knowledge to other areas, which they have not been taught. However, this has problems. Could the jeopardise the students in the future, make them feel restricted from branching into the unknown? Could it also mean that they don’t look as good to an employer?
Although I’ve used programming as an analogy (as it’s something I’m familiar with), this balance can be applied to any learning situation.
Comments please.
Beginners Guide to Object Orientation with PHP
I have uploaded my conference talk (plus source code) on a Beginners Guide to Object Orientation with PHP to the tutorials section of my website, please have a look and leave feedback.
I will be writing a post about PHPNW09 very shortly.