I’ve just finished reading a PHP 5 book. It’s really changed my take on PHP. The last time I got dirty with serious PHP programming was back in version 3 and maybe a little of version 4. My view of PHP before reading this book was that it was a nice powerful language for quick dirty scripts but any large project would be completely unmaintainable. PHP 5 is a great advance and has squashed my previous conception of the language. I’ve always been a PHP fan but more recently have become a Ruby and Python convert. I’m not an expert at either by any means but I feel the power when I use the two languages. PHP 5 gives me that same feeling and has a familiar syntax already. It doesn’t have the mysticism and intrigue that Ruby and Python give me but I am confident that when the time comes for me to use PHP again I’ll be comfortable with the power it’s now capable of.

Due to a recent shake-up in the organizational structure of the contract we’re working under, I’ve been offloaded from the Tools team to the Training team. I’m still not sure how the move will work out for me but so far not much has changed. My job now is to pretty much read a lot and become an expert at the system so that I can eventually teach programmers how to program with it. Sounds reasonable but we’ll see how things work out.