Excellent PHP writing, hand-picked.
No buzzwords. No ads. No nonsense. Curated by Stefan Priebsch and Sebastian Bergmann of thePHP.cc as a free service to the PHP community.

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Issue #6

Debugging, Dependencies, and Discipline

7 April 2026

"This week, we look at innovation in tooling, the value of keeping projects lean, and show some gratitude for the infrastructure the ecosystem depends on."
— Stefan & Sebastian

ddless.com

Building step debugging without an extension

This article tells the story behind DDLess, a promising new debugging tool for PHP. What makes it especially interesting is the technical direction: instead of relying on engine-level integration, it instruments userland code at runtime. That opens up a different path for step debugging that is less dependent on PHP's internals.

Picked by Stefan Priebsch – "I like this piece because it explains the architectural journey, not just the end result. It is a good example of how alternative technical approaches can lead to new solutions."

seld.be

10 years ago: Composer goes gold

Jordi Boggiano’s post is a reminder of a milestone that shaped the modern PHP ecosystem: Composer 1.0 was announced on April 5, 2016, after roughly five years of development. Since then, Jordi and Nils Adermann have carried an enormous share of the work behind the most important tool in the PHP ecosystem.

Picked by Sebastian Bergmann – "One of PHP's real advantages is that the community converged on a single package manager. We owe Jordi and Nils a great deal of thanks for their outstanding work."

stitcher.io

Dependency hygiene: A case for fewer dependencies

Package managers are indispensable, but they also make it very easy to introduce dependencies a project does not actually need. This article highlights a neat composer.json technique to stop upstream dependencies from pulling in unnecessary polyfills.

Picked by Sebastian Bergmann – "What I like about this is that it treats unnecessary dependencies as a design problem, not just a tooling detail."

Issue #5

Seeing PHP more clearly

31 March 2026

"This week’s picks all reward a closer look: at codebases, at language design, and at security assumptions we too easily take for granted."
— Stefan & Sebastian

phpstan.org

Understanding the bigger picture of your code

This article by the creator of PHPStan shows how you can gain useful insight into your codebase, such as understanding dependencies, spotting architectural patterns, and generating data that supports documentation or decision-making.

Picked by Sebastian Bergmann – "We need better tooling to understand our code. I love that Ondřej is pointing the way forward."

medium.com/@edmond.ht

How far is PHP from true multithreading?

This article looks into what it would really take for PHP to support meaningful multithreading in the future. In addition to the single-threaded-plus-offload model, true parallel execution inside the language would require deep changes to memory management, object handling, and the engine itself.

Picked by Stefan Priebsch – "What makes this worth reading is not whether multithreading arrives soon, but how clearly it shows the architectural cost of getting there."

github.com/m0x41nos

Limits of PHP sandboxing

This repository presents a proof of concept that makes an uncomfortable point very clearly: PHP sandboxing mechanisms like disable_functions are not a reliable security boundary on their own.

Picked by Stefan Priebsch and Sebastian Bergmann – "This is not an article in the usual sense, but we still think it is worth knowing about. In practice, we never see server security depend on this feature."

Issue #4

A community gaining momentum

24 March 2026

"This issue is a reminder that communities grow stronger when they question, rethink, and build in public."
— Stefan & Sebastian

blog.daniil.it

Could community releases accelerate PHP?

Daniil Gentili, maintainer of Psalm, proposes an official rolling community release that would give developers early access to experimental PHP features. He argues that this might help the PHP community evolve the language even faster.

Picked by Sebastian Bergmann and Stefan Priebsch – "An interesting idea, albeit a controversial one. Discussing proposals like this is what PHP moves forward."

ilia.ws

Persistent database connections in PHP

How do persistent database connections in PHP work, and why can they boost performance? Ilia Alshanetsky, PHP core contributor and former release manager, revisits why they were considered problematic in the days of shared hosting and explains why those concerns are often manageable in modern PHP deployments.

Picked by Sebastian Bergmann – "Seeing Ilia, one of the most experienced voices in the PHP community, blogging again is a real pleasure. We'd like to think that PHP Reads helped inspire his return."

afilina.com

A community-run video platform for PHP

A new project aims to give the PHP community a community-run alternative to YouTube, focused on discovery, openness, and creator control rather than algorithms, ads, and platform lock-in. Built on PeerTube and inspired by the federated model behind phpc.social, it is intended as a more sustainable home for PHP video content and community exchange.

Picked by Stefan Priebsch – "Communities become stronger when they create the platforms and spaces they want to belong to."