I discovered a video presentation available from QCon SF 2008 by Neal Ford called 10 Ways to Improve Your Code. Although the examples are in Java, most of the presentation is relevant to PHP. There are some ideas here that I’ve never heard of myself, such as “anti-objects”.

Some of the main headings are a bit cryptic, so you may have to see the video itself to have them explained.

Here are the 10 ways:

1. Composed method
2. TDD (test-driven development/design)
3. Static analysis
4. Good citizenship
5. YAGNI (you ain’t gonna need it)
6. Question authority
7. SLAP (single level of abstraction principle)
8. Polyglot programming
9. Every nuance (=learn every nuance of your programming language)
10. Anti-objects

I recommend this presentation. It’s about the things that really matter if you want to be productive.