Unpretentious and easy to approach, Codeacademy makes coding so enjoyable, it’s hard to believe you’re actually learning something. The website starts users off small, offering tutorials on how to use some very basic JavaScript commands. Each lesson is incrementally progressive and conversational in tone, making it easy to advance your skills without breaking a sweat. Each time you reach a new plateau of coding knowledge, users are awarded with a virtual trophy, making the time spent learning how to do something useful feel a like playing a game.

via Maximum PC | Cool Site of the Week: Codeacademy.

PHP has the reputation of being the poor cousin of scripting languages, due to outdated language features and plenty of poor quality code written using it. I use PHP as my main programming language and it’s seen waves of change over the last five years; it’s so much more than a language for script kiddies and hobbyist hackers. There are some ‘truths’ about the language that aren’t true these days, so I’d like to bring you a little update.

via Debunking PHP’s bad reputation | Opinion | .net magazine.