Biweekly roundup: more and more languages

I am a PHP developer and a student by day, but I don't want to limit my options: I'm currently experimenting with Clojure and exercising with Rails. Each new language or platform teach us something general about programming; I advise you to abandon any prejudice if you decide to dive into a new language in your practice time (which for a PHPer programming Ruby is essential.)

Here are my articles published in the last two weeks.

What I learned in the Global Day of Code Retreat is a summary of my experience at the Code Retreat in Milan during the Decembed edition.
Practical PHP Refactoring: Remove Setting Method is about guaranteeing immutability or simplifying the interface of an object by throwing away a method.
Testing and specifying JavaScript code with Jasmine is an example of usage of the popular BDD JavaScript testing framework.
Practical PHP Refactoring: Hide Method is about information hiding: limiting the scope of a method to be able to easily evolve it later.
Practical PHP Refactoring: Replace Constructor with Factory Method transforms a giant constructor into several well-named Factory Methods.
Rails from the point of view of a PHP developer is about me trying out Rails 3 (again, without prejudices).
Practical PHP Refactoring: Encapsulate Downcast (and Wrapping) is about the PHP version of downcasting: converting primitives and wrapping them in Value Objects.
jQuery plugins with jsTestDriver is an example of real world JavaScript development with TDD.