Every good developer aims to deliver fully tested, well written, and scalable code, using practices and standards like Object Calisthenics, unit testing and continuous integration. The code ends up good enough for machines, but what about the user? While good code is crucial, the product still may have several usability flaws that may prevent a good experience. This article will tell you how to go beyond the code, and start taking care of users, not just machines. –by Eduardo Shiota Yasuda

We all love open source software – it’s free, and it often provides tools that we quite literally can’t imagine living without. If you’re reading this, you probably make a living from working with PHP, which is open source itself, but have you ever thought of contributing to these tools? –by Lorna Jane Mitchell

Adding Quality Assurance to your development process and your organization is not as easy as you might think. You have to deal with people, sometimes even having “difficult conversations” with some people, and that can make it a real challenge. This article will give you some tips and tricks on the process and how to make it as easy as possible. –by Lineke Kerckhoffs-Willems

Most PHP developers have heard of it, some have actually used it, and a select few have even contributed to it. Yes, I am talking about that mystical place where C meets PHP – PECL. Now, before we get too far down the line, it is pronounced pickle and not peekal – or was it just me that got this mixed up? Let’s explore some of the lesser-known PECL extensions including examples so we can see them in action. –by Simon Holywell

Practical User Experience (UX) for Developers is a new column that will address topics that solve common UX problems in a practical way, with a focus on ease of implementation for you – the over-worked software developer. In each issue, we’ll review a web component from the eyes of a UX Designer and discuss ways to enhance its usability, organization, structure, and user interface. –by Laura Smith

Every month, I will focus on a feature taken from other languages like Ruby, Java or Python and see how such features are handled in PHP, or when we can expect such a feature in PHP itself. This month, we will be discussing generators. –by Joshua Thijssen

This column will be looking back at my previous bug-fix attempt, where I tried to fix a terribly popular issue about ”preg_replace” and ”Zend_Db_Statement”. Since this bug attracts some attention, I received useful feedback, painful too. –by Bart McLeod

Can your software really make the cut? –by Marco Tabini

Find a time to get refreshed, then get involved! –by Elizabeth Tucker Long