While the release of PHP 5.5 did not send tremors through the community, it nevertheless brought our favorite language one step closer to perfection. In this article, let’s take a look at the new features and how we can leverage them to their full extent to make our code easier, simpler, more robust, and more maintainable. –by Dirk Merkel

It doesn’t seem so long ago that folks were making a fuss about that new-fangled PHP 5 syntax or griping about all the crazy changes that showed up in PHP 5.3… Namespaces? Really! Well, the PHP wagon has been in full gear since, blowing past 5.4 (who’s using Traits yet?) and even 5.5… There’s already an Alpha RC for 5.6 at the time of writing. What does this mean for you, dear reader? Well, first off, time to do some reading…! –by David Rogers

The inevitable march toward the PHP 6 “spec” (really just a list of good ideas) continues with the eventual release of PHP 5.6…! As with PHP 5.5, there are already a couple of Backward Compatibility (BC)-breaking changes that you should know about, some deprecations of interest, and some new features to look out for. In this article, we’ll take a look at what will ruin your lunch and which shiny new features you will love in 5.6! –by David Rogers

It’s (mostly) always the same story: I’m trying to convince some of my friends to finally submit a talk to a conference Call for Papers (CfP), and the answer is always: “Yeah, I would love to…but I have no idea what I should talk about.” It’s time to get over your reservations and find your voice. –by Ole Michaelis

In the last decade or two, the U.S. proliferation of low-quality reality television shows has been unstoppable. “Big Brother” would be ashamed by some of his siblings. There are shows that follow famous people (although, I’m not entirely certain why some of them are famous), shows that involve the audience, shows that support nerds – basically anything you can imagine! I pretend I’m above this, I surely don’t fall into the category of people who sit at home and pine over “The Bachelor”. I normally flip the channel right past these shows. –by Aaron Saray

There are a lot of frameworks for PHP available, but are they all easy to use or high performing? In this month’s column, we look at a new contender which lives up to both claims – Phavour. –by Matt Setter

Blade, Laravel’s built-in template engine meets basic requirements, but falls short when it comes to more advanced features. Thankfully, we can easily leverage more powerful and mature template engines by installing them via Composer. –by Dirk Merkel

This month’s finally isn’t going to really propose any groundbreaking theories, but just spark a conversation. –by Eli White

Change is hard. I don’t get enough sleep as it is. I don’t have time to mess around learning new things. I need to get this job done because there is more piling up while I’m sitting here contemplating this. –by Beth Tucker Long