Apples and PEARs

I’ve finally decided that PEAR is a good thing. For those unfamiliar with it it’s a little like CPAN for Perl. For those unfamiliar with that it’s a repository of high quality PHP code, covering everything from benchmarking and debugging to database abstraction.

I’m about to dive back into PHP after a minor break playing with mainly client side toys, and with my work now mainly on the markup/styles and planning side of things PHP is a nice break. PHP isn’t the devil as far as I’m concerned, and I think now I’ve grown up PEAR is part of the non devil like side to PHP – the professional side if you will.

I like PHP for it’s flexibility. The same problems this causes in terms of it being easy to write poor, unmaintainable code are the same boons in brings if you use it nicely. I dont want static typing, on occasion being able to get down and dirty with procedural code is handy and with so much good code out there in places like PEAR it’s often very quick to put together something from existing parts.

I even went as far as getting a book, PHP Tools to have a good going through. I’ve been on something of a mad web design book shopping spree of late, so I’ll try do a quick round up of books soon as well.

Anyone else have much playtime with PEAR, or similar code repositories?

PS. Apologies for the two week hiatus. I’m something of a busy person at the moment. More quality posts as soon as possible. Promise.