Hi there!

A new month, a new update!

PHP 8.2

PHP 8.2's feature freeze is coming in fast: there's only one month and a couple of days left to go until we know the full and final changelog for it. Since my previous mail, we now also know PHP 8.2's release date: November 24, 2022.

With PHP 8.2 around the corner, I was inspired to write about a specific topic: how to deal with deprecations? Just like every minor release, PHP 8.2 adds a couple of deprecations here and there. I have a feeling though that people might perceive PHP 8.2 as a more aggressive release when it comes to deprecations. So I thought it would be helpful to share some thoughts about how to deal with them.

These are my four key takeaways:

1. We should understand how deprecations are helpful
2. They can be silenced
3. They are notices, not errors
4. You can deal with them in an automated way

You can read the full post about them here: https://stitcher.io/blog/dealing-with-deprecations.

PhpStorm

As you know, I started working at JetBrains in the PhpStorm team a couple of months ago. One of the things we've been talking about is how to improve the PhpStorm experience for all developers, and how we can learn from the community.

Maybe you just started using PhpStorm, or maybe you've used it in the past and left? We're looking for developers who want to do a one-on-one video call tp talk about their experiences, so that we can learn and improve. By the way: JetBrains will provide you with a nice gift afterwards!

Do you have some thoughts you want to share? You can click this link and fill out our short survey to apply: https://surveys.jetbrains.com/s3/php-developers-b.

Blog and Vlog

Speaking of PhpStorm, I've just released another vlog! This one is about how I set up PhpStorm in my opinionated way to be clean and minimalistic — the way I prefer to write code. As always, I'm eager to hear your opinion; both on the topic itself, as well as the video editing and quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVTk-F3g9XM.

I've also published two more blog posts:

• My personal enum styleguide: https://stitcher.io/blog/php-enum-style-guide
• I analysed the usages of attributes in the top-1000 PHP packages: https://stitcher.io/blog/attribute-usage-in-top-php-packages

Thanks again for reading! Don't hesitate to hit that reply button if you have any questions or feedback :)

Until next time!

Brent