In the world of PHP 7, blocking I/O will still be a problem (at least, it was when I looked at the proposed feature set over a year and a half ago), but in PHP 5.x, the Zend engine is actually just incredibly inefficient, to the point where it is often the largest bottleneck on the request path.
PHP has xdebug. You can debug interactively using an IDE like IntelliJ / PHPStorm or whatever floats your boat. Is that not enough?
Edit: I commented on this post before the OP edited the original with a longer form explanation. Originally it just said he didn't like the debugging and left it at that.
I worked in PHP at Box for about 3 years. This article does a great job of reflecting my sentiments on the language. In particular, I'm glad to see that the author recognizes that there are some glaring issues with PHP that aren't tradeoffs in favor of something else - they're just warts.
That said, PHP is really good at what it does - providing a framework and environment for serving web requests efficiently and easily. I find developing in it very fluid once you know how to avoid the warts. A lot of the flak that PHP receives as a language revolves around the fact that it doesn't actively discourage developers from doing bad things, and sometimes the language itself does some crazy stuff (as shown in the article with the divide-by-zero behavior). I think this is a huge shortcoming of the language, especially as code bases and teams grow and your organization needs to depend on the language more and more for safety. That said, I still don't hate working with it. Sometimes I rather enjoy how quickly I can develop in PHP, and how reliable it can be if you know how to operate it.
I think in all, it was a bit of a slog to get to the point where I am with PHP today - to the point where I understand its strengths and flaws, but ultimately I think it does have a place in modern webapp development. I think Hack and HHVM are excellent spiritual successors to what PHP tried to (is trying to?) accomplish, and that they do a great job of hiding or eliminating some of the warts of their parent language.
Kudos to the Slack team for being pragmatic about their approach to the technology, and hey again to all of my former colleagues working there!
I can't find in any of the linked sources any conclusive proof that all children are born with perfect pitch. From my own research in 2011, I hadn't discovered any papers which would make so bold of a conclusion.
This proposal[0] linked by the article mentions a few studies that show some environmental factors that seem to have a high correlation to absolute pitch, such as growing up around tonal languages, but nothing conclusive about absolute pitch just being a thing that we all have but that most of us lose. There are correlations to age groups, ethnic backgrounds, linguistic backgrounds, and musical backgrounds, but again most studies have looked at the environment for clues about how absolute pitch works as opposed to presenting evidence of something innate.
Musical cognition is an absolutely fascinating field of study, and it absolutely plays a critical role in the way humans function. However, I think this article is a little click-bait-y, seemingly drawing an unfounded, fantastical conclusion about a particularly popular aspect of the field. As far as I can tell, it's completely unsubstantiated.
@ BoxWorks this year, Jeff Lawson of Twilio fame touched on APIs and mentioned something along the lines of
"A developer should never trust an API or expect anything of it if he's not paying for it. As long as you're not paying, you're just another developer to the API provider. The moment you fork over any cash, you're a customer."
Mind, this is really crudely paraphrased, but the sentiment remains. This was immediately in the wake of Twitter's API changes last summer.
Adrian: as you are one of the only people on YouTube I've ever subscribed to, I felt the need to say that this is fantastic not only for the features of the software itself, but also because you've provided a wealth of tabulature for your own arrangements. And it's intuitive to use and GREAT for practicing. The ability to scope out which part of the track I need to loop for practice is invaluable!
This is really remarkable stuff, and I hope to see more in the future!
Also, if you could please get back tor recording a little ditty here or there for public enjoyment, it'd be much appreciated :)