[Webdev] PHP: exception handling / dereferencing / backtracing / conference

[adam beecher]

Greetings,

As many of you probably already know, the PHP Group has released the Zend
Engine 2.0 as a PHP beta:

CHANGES:
http://www.php.net/ZEND_CHANGES.txt

EXAMPLES:
http://www.php.net/source.php?url=/zend2_example.phps

The major change in Zend Engine 2 is a much-anticipated and much-improved
object model, which should knock the problems of object-oriented development
in PHP - most notably a ~20% degradation in performance - on the head for
good, which is pretty handy as PHP applications get bigger and bigger. Since
I'm not a 'proper' programmer though, I don't /get/ some of the new
features - in particular exception handling, dereferencing, and
backtracing - so I'd appreciate it if people could help me out by explaining
them in small, easy-to-understand words, preferably written in crayon with
accompanying colour-by-number drawings.

Also, an FYI: The second International PHP Conference will be held in
November in Frankfurt, Germany, and the conference organisers are looking
for speakers for the event at the moment:

http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200206/msg00533.html

The topics are:

 - General PHP
 - PHP & Business
 - PHP & Databases
 - PHP Design
 - PHP Extensions
 - PHP & XML
 - PHP-GTK
 - Start Up

I would love to give a talk there myself, on a very simple subject like, for
example, "Eating into Proprietaries in Ireland", but I don't have much
experience with annunciating to large audiences, and I'm not exactly the
Irish PHP kiddy either, so I thought I'd share with the group. I'd very much
like to see someone from Ireland up on the stage though, so if anyone else
has any ideas, let me know so I can help out.

Day Day,
adam


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echo ' p - 353 21 429 2250     ';
echo ' m - Box 81, Eglinton St ';
echo '     Cork, Ireland       ';
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