Weekly review of Symfony and PHP development news. 3/10/23
This highlights post is a shortened version of a communiqué that originally appeared on Symfony Station, your source for cutting-edge Symfony, PHP, and Cybersecurity news.
Welcome to this week's Symfony Station highlights. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. We also cover the Fediverse.
Please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. There is a good bit of Drupal content this week, including the featured item.
Thanks to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our latest communiqué in their Week of Symfony.
My opinions will be in bold. And will involve profanity.
A significant proportion of the content we curate is on Medium. I highly recommend investing in a membership to access all the articles you want to read. It's a small investment that can boost your career. As you may have noticed, non-members can only access a limited number of articles per month.
Become a member here! The compensation we receive from your use of this link helps pay for our weekly communiqué.

As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony. Highlight -> “This week, Symfony 5.4.21
and 6.2.7 maintenance versions were released. Meanwhile, the upcoming Symfony 6.3 version added support for managing command exit code while handling signals. Lastly, the SymfonyOnline June 2023 conference announced that you can submit your papers until March 6.“
A Week of Symfony #844 (27 February - 5 March 2023)
Symfony announced:
SymfonyLive Paris 2023: Only 2 weeks to go for the pre-conference workshops!
SymfonyCon Brussels 2023 - Call for paper is open!
Blackfire has:
Getting started with the Blackfire test suite: part 3 of a series
SymfonyCasts continues its API Platform course.
This week on SymfonyCasts

I am tooting my own horn this week as I have published my first “opinion” piece. It examines if Drupal has a path to growth.
“Idiots have been claiming PHP is dead for years. Guess what? It’s not dying. It’s growing and mainly via WordPress and outside the United States. With Drupal, not so much.
This piece will cover Drupal’s strengths and weaknesses as I see them affecting its growth. And when I talk about growth, I mean the total number of Drupal users, not the profits of companies basing their businesses on Drupal.
Then I will look at three paths its future could take. Those of what I want, what could happen, and what will probably happen.”
Anton Lytvynov has:
Why use Symfony for web development
The Future of PHP and Symfony: Predictions and Trends for Web Development
How to Set Up a Local Symfony Development Environment with Docker Compose
It is great to see Smaine Milianni back with:
Feature Flag and Strategy pattern with the Symfony framework
Mark Caggiano shows us:
How to create a WordPress plugin using PHP and OOP, with Composer for package management, Symfony components for backend functionality, and Twig for frontend templating
Quick Sprout has a:
PrestaShop Review – What Makes PrestaShop Great and Where PrestaShop Falls Short
Shopware shares:
Shopware Community Digest February '23
Edna Ololade compares:
Medusa Vs. Sylius: Which Should You Use for Your Ecommerce?
Zyxware Technologies compares:
Drupal Updates vs Upgrades vs Migrations: What's the Difference and When Do You Need Them?
Prometsource shows us:
How to Leverage Load Testing to Scale up a Drupal Site
CKEditor can expand its capabilities:
Drupal Premium Features module now stable
Star Shaped of Lullabot shares her experience at:
Florida DrupalCamp 2023
Mateu Aguiló Bosch of lullabot explores:
Getting Single Directory Components in Drupal Core
This is fantastic news.
And Lullabot has this case study.
American Bookseller Association

Derry Ross explores:
Mastering PHP for Dynamic Web Development
Dolly Aswin looks at:
PHP Development Trends In 2023
Marcel Bootsman looks at:
Switching to PHP 8.x in Four Steps - An Interview with Juliette Reinders Folmer
This got lots of interest when I shared it on Mastodon this week.
Nikola Stojiljkovic shares:
Impressions on GitHub Copilot and PHPStorm — March 2023
Geek Job shows us how to:
Disable eval in PHP 8
Aminul Islam Sarker examines:
Unlocking the Power of PHP with the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
Great stuff here.
İlyas Özkurt shows us how to:
Boost Your PHP Testing Speed with Paratest

Zack Whittaker opines:
Today’s startups should terrify you
Fast Company reports on:
5 cybersecurity trends people who work from home need to know
Use password managers, two-factor authentication, VPN, etc. peeps.
Tech Republic reports on the:
Top 10 open-source security and operational risks of 2023
New National Cybersecurity Strategy: resilience, regs, collaboration and pain (for attackers)
The Guardian reports:
Sensitive personal data of US House and Senate members hacked, offered for sale
Maybe the fucks will do something about cybersecurity now.
Bleeping Computer reports:
GitHub makes 2FA mandatory next week for active developers
Marcus Bentele shares:
How To Become A Git Pro By Mastering Only One Powerful Git Command
Leticia Coelho shows us how to write:
Clean HTML
The acerbic and awesome Jason Knight has:
Adam Wathan (Part 1): Deluded, Predator, Or An Outright Fraud?
Adam Wathan (Part 2): The Ignorance On Full Display
TLDR Tailwind CSS sucks. Don’t be lazy. Learn HTML and CSS.
Cory Doctorow says:
The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble
Yes.
Let’s start with a few items about the biggest driver of Fediverse growth, Twitter.
The BBC reports:
Twitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk
Musk takes the shittiest thing about Twitter and makes it shittier.
The Verge reports:
How a single engineer brought down Twitter
Stupidity in management = product incompetence.
Daring Fireball reports:
Phony Stark Picks on the Wrong Guy, Attempting (and of Course Botching) an HR Exit Interview Live on Twitter
Being a cnt = being a cnt
In late-breaking news, Platformer reports:
Meta is building a decentralized, text-based social network
Fucking hell. While this will work with Activity Pub, at least these instances can be blocked when the inevitable tracking starts.
Fastly shares:
Fastly and the Fediverse, pt.2
Here’s an analytical breakdown of the exodus from Twitter to the Fediverse:
A Snapshot of the Twitter Migration
Daring Fireball reports:
Medium’s me.dm Mastodon Server Opens Up
I mentioned this was coming last week.
TechCrunch provides more detail:
Medium launches a ‘premium’ Mastodon instance as a membership perk
Here the official details:
Join Mastodon with Medium
If you are also interested in content production, marketing, strategy, and related fields, you can follow me at [@mobileatom@me.dm](https://me.dm/@mobileatom).
More importantly, if you are a Ukrainian company with coding-related products, we can offer free promotion on our Support Ukraine page. Or, if you know of one, get in touch.
Keep coding Symfonistas!
Visit our Communiqué Library
You can find a vast array of curated evergreen content.
Author

Reuben Walker
Founder
Symfony Station
Welcome to this week's Symfony Station highlights. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. We also cover the Fediverse.
Please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. There is a good bit of Drupal content this week, including the featured item.
Thanks to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our latest communiqué in their Week of Symfony.
My opinions will be in bold. And will involve profanity.
A significant proportion of the content we curate is on Medium. I highly recommend investing in a membership to access all the articles you want to read. It's a small investment that can boost your career. As you may have noticed, non-members can only access a limited number of articles per month.
Become a member here! The compensation we receive from your use of this link helps pay for our weekly communiqué.
Symfony
As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony. Highlight -> “This week, Symfony 5.4.21
and 6.2.7 maintenance versions were released. Meanwhile, the upcoming Symfony 6.3 version added support for managing command exit code while handling signals. Lastly, the SymfonyOnline June 2023 conference announced that you can submit your papers until March 6.“
A Week of Symfony #844 (27 February - 5 March 2023)
Symfony announced:
SymfonyLive Paris 2023: Only 2 weeks to go for the pre-conference workshops!
SymfonyCon Brussels 2023 - Call for paper is open!
Blackfire has:
Getting started with the Blackfire test suite: part 3 of a series
SymfonyCasts continues its API Platform course.
This week on SymfonyCasts
Featured Item
I am tooting my own horn this week as I have published my first “opinion” piece. It examines if Drupal has a path to growth.
“Idiots have been claiming PHP is dead for years. Guess what? It’s not dying. It’s growing and mainly via WordPress and outside the United States. With Drupal, not so much.
This piece will cover Drupal’s strengths and weaknesses as I see them affecting its growth. And when I talk about growth, I mean the total number of Drupal users, not the profits of companies basing their businesses on Drupal.
Then I will look at three paths its future could take. Those of what I want, what could happen, and what will probably happen.”
Does Drupal Have a Path to Growth?
This Week
Anton Lytvynov has:
Why use Symfony for web development
The Future of PHP and Symfony: Predictions and Trends for Web Development
How to Set Up a Local Symfony Development Environment with Docker Compose
It is great to see Smaine Milianni back with:
Feature Flag and Strategy pattern with the Symfony framework
Mark Caggiano shows us:
How to create a WordPress plugin using PHP and OOP, with Composer for package management, Symfony components for backend functionality, and Twig for frontend templating
eCommerce
Quick Sprout has a:
PrestaShop Review – What Makes PrestaShop Great and Where PrestaShop Falls Short
Shopware shares:
Shopware Community Digest February '23
Edna Ololade compares:
Medusa Vs. Sylius: Which Should You Use for Your Ecommerce?
CMSs
Zyxware Technologies compares:
Drupal Updates vs Upgrades vs Migrations: What's the Difference and When Do You Need Them?
Prometsource shows us:
How to Leverage Load Testing to Scale up a Drupal Site
CKEditor can expand its capabilities:
Drupal Premium Features module now stable
Star Shaped of Lullabot shares her experience at:
Florida DrupalCamp 2023
Mateu Aguiló Bosch of lullabot explores:
Getting Single Directory Components in Drupal Core
This is fantastic news.
Previous Weeks
And Lullabot has this case study.
American Bookseller Association
PHP
This Week
Derry Ross explores:
Mastering PHP for Dynamic Web Development
Dolly Aswin looks at:
PHP Development Trends In 2023
Marcel Bootsman looks at:
Switching to PHP 8.x in Four Steps - An Interview with Juliette Reinders Folmer
This got lots of interest when I shared it on Mastodon this week.
Nikola Stojiljkovic shares:
Impressions on GitHub Copilot and PHPStorm — March 2023
Geek Job shows us how to:
Disable eval in PHP 8
Aminul Islam Sarker examines:
Unlocking the Power of PHP with the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
Great stuff here.
Previous Weeks
İlyas Özkurt shows us how to:
Boost Your PHP Testing Speed with Paratest
Other
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Zack Whittaker opines:
Today’s startups should terrify you
Fast Company reports on:
5 cybersecurity trends people who work from home need to know
Use password managers, two-factor authentication, VPN, etc. peeps.
Tech Republic reports on the:
Top 10 open-source security and operational risks of 2023
New National Cybersecurity Strategy: resilience, regs, collaboration and pain (for attackers)
The Guardian reports:
Sensitive personal data of US House and Senate members hacked, offered for sale
Maybe the fucks will do something about cybersecurity now.
More
Bleeping Computer reports:
GitHub makes 2FA mandatory next week for active developers
Marcus Bentele shares:
How To Become A Git Pro By Mastering Only One Powerful Git Command
Leticia Coelho shows us how to write:
Clean HTML
The acerbic and awesome Jason Knight has:
Adam Wathan (Part 1): Deluded, Predator, Or An Outright Fraud?
Adam Wathan (Part 2): The Ignorance On Full Display
TLDR Tailwind CSS sucks. Don’t be lazy. Learn HTML and CSS.
Cory Doctorow says:
The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble
Yes.
Fediverse
Let’s start with a few items about the biggest driver of Fediverse growth, Twitter.
The BBC reports:
Twitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk
Musk takes the shittiest thing about Twitter and makes it shittier.
The Verge reports:
How a single engineer brought down Twitter
Stupidity in management = product incompetence.
Daring Fireball reports:
Phony Stark Picks on the Wrong Guy, Attempting (and of Course Botching) an HR Exit Interview Live on Twitter
Being a cnt = being a cnt
In late-breaking news, Platformer reports:
Meta is building a decentralized, text-based social network
Fucking hell. While this will work with Activity Pub, at least these instances can be blocked when the inevitable tracking starts.
Fastly shares:
Fastly and the Fediverse, pt.2
Here’s an analytical breakdown of the exodus from Twitter to the Fediverse:
A Snapshot of the Twitter Migration
Daring Fireball reports:
Medium’s me.dm Mastodon Server Opens Up
I mentioned this was coming last week.
TechCrunch provides more detail:
Medium launches a ‘premium’ Mastodon instance as a membership perk
Here the official details:
Join Mastodon with Medium
If you are also interested in content production, marketing, strategy, and related fields, you can follow me at [@mobileatom@me.dm](https://me.dm/@mobileatom).
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this communiqué.
- Also, be sure to join our newsletter list at the bottom of our site’s pages. Joining gets you each week's communiqué in your inbox (a day early).
- Follow us on Flipboard or at [@symfonystation@phpc.social](https://phpc.social/web/@symfonystation) on Mastodon for daily coverage. Consider joining the @phpc.social instance.
More importantly, if you are a Ukrainian company with coding-related products, we can offer free promotion on our Support Ukraine page. Or, if you know of one, get in touch.
Keep coding Symfonistas!
Visit our Communiqué Library
You can find a vast array of curated evergreen content.
Author
Reuben Walker
Founder
Symfony Station
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