Hackers Paradise Revisited

Introduction
PHP (http://www.php.net) is a powerful server side web scripting solution. It has quickly grown in popularity and according to the February 2001 usage stats PHP is installed on 19.8% of all web sites (up 7% from when I gave a similar talk last year). Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with some unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.

Being a good PHP hacker isn't just about writing single line solutions to complex problems. For example, web gurus know that speed of coding is much more important than speed of code. In this article we'll look at techniques that can help you become a better PHP hacker. We'll assume that you have a basic knowledge of PHP and databases.

The main topics that I want to cover today are:

Laziness is a Virtue
PHP First Principles
Chameleon Coding
Speed of Coding, Not Speed of Code
PHP Hacking
Some of these were covered in more detail in PHP: Hackers Paradise. This revisit has refined a number of ideas, made the transition to PHP4 and focuses a lot more on first principles and good code structure for web applications.