Programming

JSON supplanting XML

Lessons: Use Cases matter, and programmers (the users in this case) will choose tools that are both simple, in that they are not complicated/over-engineered, and easy to use, requiring little setup and code to accomplish a task.  For parsing data with PHP, constrast using something like SimpleXML or DOMDocument (which is light-years better than where

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NetBeans 6.9 is out.

There's a new release of the the one full-blown IDE that I've managed to stick with.  If Eclipse doesn't fit your style, give Netbeans a spin – I like its inline code completion, the source-code beautifier, and the integration with SVN and Mercurial.  I particularly find the source control usability much better than Eclipse. After

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Make them Interact!

The more that a team can interact and iterate, the better you're final product can be.  In my ideal world, I'd skip a detailed wireframing exercise and get to building a prototype as soon as possible.  Its so much easier to explain what is difficult to build if there's something to click on.  Or you

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Writing an intelligent hook_nodeapi function in Drupal

For Drupal module developers, the hook_nodeapi function affords a lot of flexibility for interacting with nodes at various operation.  If you just start pasting or writing code, you’ll quickly end up with a giant, messy switch statement.  But there is a simpel way to keep your code nicely organized.  First, lets take a look at

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