I've been away for a week, and a lot has happened in the PHP world during that time.

Tim Bray sparked a debate with his discussion On PHP. Greg and Marcus were quick to point out how silly it is to be comparing tools. It reminds me of soccer players who are proudly showing off their shiny new Predators while getting their asses kicked by the guy wearing 10-year-old shoes. Or, as Marcus puts it:

Pick your weapon and master it and stop wasting time, life is short.

Harry posted a nice pro-PHP rant that's worth reading. I was reminded of George's why PHP scales explanation from a few years ago, which is still as relevant and useful today as it was back then.

Via Jeremy and Simon (two blogs worth reading), I noticed that Yahoo has released a Design Patterns Library and a UI Library. More recently, they've published a PHP Development Center.

Lastly, Zak announced that ApacheCon EU is going to be held in Dublin this year. How awesome is that? :-)