You might to configure error_reporting (see also), and enable the displaying of errors (see display_errors or ini_set) -- at least on your development machine
In your php.ini file, you'd use
error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT
display_errors = On
html_errors = On
Or, in your PHP code :
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');
You might also want to install Xdebug on your development box, to get nice stacktraces wehn an error / exception occurs
Of course, on your production machine, you probably don't want to display errors ; so that will have to be configured depending on your environment ;-)