A few years ago, knowing just a few html tags and tricks could probably have gotten you a job as a full-fledged Web designer, or at least Web coder. As things get more complicated and Web sites more dynamic, the tools you need to create that all-singing, all-dancing user-interactive content have gotten more complex than carets and single letter tags. Danny Yee wrote these reviews of two of the many available books on PHP programming; to see Danny's hundreds of other reviews, check out the links provided at the bottom.

jhylton writes "How's this for a rapid release schedule? Python 2.0 beta 1 is now available from BeOpen PythonLabs. There is a long list of new features since Python 1.6, released earlier today. We don't plan on any new releases in the next 24 hours ."

laci asks: "I'm sure many of you have used memory debuggers in the past. I have used Purify before, but now I need a memory debugger for Linux and/or AIX. My main concern is that the application I'm working on does a HUGE number of memory allocations (100s of millions). A constant factor slowdown is acceptable (even if it's a factor of 10), but the debugger should not slow down to a crawl. Also, I'd like to know which memory debuggers work on both platforms (I know of insure++ only)."

tonys1110 was one of the first to tell us that Python ^[?] 1.6 Final has been released unto the world. They've got a bit about the license, and of course, the obligatory "What's New".

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Sokolov (a Special Agent of the International Free Computing Task Force - and that's not a joke!) has published an interresting article about how is maintened gcc, gdb and the GNU compilation toolchains on his ftp site (also send to several related mailing lists - gcc, gdb, etc..) It points at some problem and one may think that Cygnus-Redhat is again trying to take over the linux world... but that's not the point." The conspiracy theorists will definitely find room for conspiracy, but really this looks like a major issue for development, and one that warrants discussion.

Mihai Budiu wrote to us with an interview done with Brian Kernighan, one of the High Creator's of C. Good reading and good perspective on C.

qbasicprogrammer writes "The long awaited Perl 5.7.0 version has finally been released! Source code is available from CPAN. If you haven't upgraded yet, now is the time. In related news, development of Perl 6 is continuing swiftly as demonstrated by the Perl 6 Library." Check out the head's up story saying that it was coming - just a reminder this is *devel*. Don't play with it unless you know what you are doing.

JJ asks: "What has happened to Jini, Sun's networked mobile code technology that debuted with Mmuch fanfare nearly two years ago? The answer seems to be not much. What's the reason for the lack of adoption of Jini? Is it because nobody can understand the trademark and licensing requirements? Or is it because few people have realized Jini's true potential?"

ckotchey asks: "Being new to the Linux/GPL world over the last few months, I'm amazed at the lack of informative comments that I'd like to find at the begining of each source file, and within the code itself. At a minumum, I'd like to see summary lists of functions, parameters, return values (and their meanings), etc., that are within the file I'm trying to dissect, along with some descriptive comments within the code to help understand what is happening. Without such comments, it seems counter-productive to the whole open-source concept of allowing others to see the code, understand the code, and fix/enhance the code (at least, in a timely manner!). Should there be, at a minimum, some sort of 'commenting standard' to be (at least voluntarily) followed by developers in the Linux/Open Source community?"

KOHb writes: "The NY Times has a front-Web page article on using Open Source to bridge the "Software Gap." Mentions Mozilla, Apache, and other friends." Well-researched piece, talks of potential changes in software development -- both positive and negative -- as the Open Source model spreads. (Free, reg. req. to read.)

Another not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "This is a question that comes up every so often on the comp.lang.forth newsgroup. Which Open Source license is best to use for compilers for a language like Forth, where it is normal to develop an application by extending the language until it is the application, and then save an image of the whole bundle? The problem, of course, is that in use, Forth isn't exactly an interpreter and isn't exactly a compiler, as commonly understood. It is closer to an interpreted language, where the interpreter serves as a runtime engine, except that the Forth runtime engine has had -just enough- added to permit it to extend itself."

Sadistic Yoda asks: "I walk into my entry level C++ class and the TA informs us that the code must compile under CodeWarrior for Windows, which is included with the text (Problem Solving with C++: The Object of Programming, Second Edition, by Walter Savitch), to receive passing grades. Personally I would rather use vi and g++ on the department's Debian machines from the shell. Will I run into any problems or do I bite my tongue and make it through class using their program?" I find it disappointing that schools think that "teaching programming" involves locking their students into a specific environment. I know it makes it easy for the teachers and TAs when it comes to technical support, but what about those students who already have a handle on their own system, are willing to learn the language (and its pitfalls in all environments) who can't (or won't) run the required software for whatever reason? Is this limited form of teaching really teaching?

jsarnat writes "A recent Ask Slashdot revealed revealed that there are indeed many programming language bigots (myself included) who read Slashdot. What better way to prove that your favorite language is the best one there is than to win the Third Annual ICFP Programming Contest? The contest doesn't start until August 26th, but they encourage you to register soon. Prizes include: `cash awards, famous texts on functional languages donated and autographed by the authors, and, of course, unlimited bragging rights.'"

dmd writes: "Does there exist Open Source software for maintaining a small to medium sized library card-catalog? It seems all the tools are available: a perl module for working with MARC records, several for working with Z39.50 and XML, and even a web site apparently devoted to nearly this exact topic. An actual, working, catalog, however, seems to be missing. Is this something that would be valuable? I, for one, have nearly 5k volumes in my collection, and they're begging for some discipline." I'm sure cash-strapped public libraries and schools would like to be able to use free / Free tools for this, since paper books aren't going away anytime soon. Not to mention for CDs, videos, charts, museum holdings ... any ideas out there? Turnkey solutions?

Begonia writes "While we're on the subject of Java, I'm really impressed with its performance on Linux these days. I'm using IBM's latest (1.3) version of the JDK, which has only been out for a couple of months. And I just stumbled across this latest set of benchmarks for various JDK's on Linux and Windows here. Not dated, but must be at most a couple of weeks old. Lots of very interesting food for thought."

William Tanksley writes "For all those not yet tired of Java: Aromasoft has announced a Java-based OS for handheld devices, Teapot. It's allegedly Personal Java 3.0 compliant, and cleanroom engineered (which probably means no Sun code, although I'm not certain)." Is it just me, or is everyone working on a really cool Java project, and dismissing Sun at the same time.

cllajoie asks: "Every programing language has a list a mile long of optimization tips ranging from the mundane to the cryptic. I was wondering if anyone has compiled a list of these tips and tricks for Java. Some things are fairly easy, like adding final to methods so that they get inlined by the compiler, but what other deeper, darker secrets does Java have for making code faster and what are their implications on code size and memory usage? For example, if I had an accessor method is it better to use the this "pointer" in the return statement or not, or does it make any difference at all in performance? I mean lets face it, Java isn't blazingly fast to begin with so every little bit in the area helps."

A reader wrote to us saying: "Technocrat.net has this story about how Inprise is pissing off the developers and users of Interbase, who were creating a vibrant community around the open source RDBMS. As a result, It looks as like the project is about to fork, and the independent branch will be called Firebird."

martin asks: "Just saw this page on WebML. Looks quite interesting for spec-ing out a Web site and its navigation, how does this compare with the more general UML ^[?] and WML ^[?] ?"

Caine asks: "While having some dead time at work, I spent some time thinking about how to write a good GUI. I started thinking about if you could implement pipes in a GUI. My thought was something like this: You could connect two programs and/or widgets by a GUI pipe. This could be visualized if the user wanted to, as a thin, pulsating red line or something. For example, you could pipe your browsers' status/error window to a log colorer. You could also pipe other things than text, such as pictures; if you're watching a streaming movie you could pipe it into the graphic programs' filters for example. Basically they would do the same as a normal "|" but with all kinds of data and in a GUI. Has this ever been done or written about before? Any implementations?" Interesting idea, but before this would be possible, we'd have to introduce the concept of discrete input-channels and output-channels into our GUIs, and that's not as easy as it sounds.