Mysql

Good testing will result in better code. If you have to wait endlessly for on SVN commits, uploads or compile steps, you will simply produce less inventive code. This has to do with: patience, creativity flow, will, and of course time. Constantly being interrupted breaks concentration. If there's one thing I've really learned, it's **invest in a good testing environment**. Rapid review of code results will pay off (I promise).

In PHP, sessions can keep track of authenticated in users. They are an essential building block in today's websites with big communities and a lot of user activity. Without sessions, everyone would be an anonymous visitor.

Recently two of my articles reached the Digg frontpage at the same day. My web server isn't state of the art and it had to handle gigantic amounts of traffic. But still it served pages to visitors swiftly thanks to a lot of optimizations. This is how you can prevent heavy traffic from killing your server.