These are things in PHP which make me sad • Hacker News Board

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#41

Post by jeffreymcmanus » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

qeorge wrote: post #22

thinkcomp wrote: post #6

I've definitely run into #1 on the list. "Paamayim Nekudotayim" is a transliterated version of פעמיים נקודתיים‎, which means "double colon" in Hebrew. Zeev and Andi are Israeli, which kind of explains it, but the error message is still pretty useless.

Its only a "bug" because there's an unspoken rule that all programming languages should be written in English, and English doesn't have a proper word for this symbol. Pretend that English had no representation of an ellipsis, but Hebrew did. Should the language author say "Expected: dot-dot-dot" in the error message to appease native English speakers, or should (s)he use the unambiguous form?

It's not an unspoken rule, it's an established convention.

This isn't about whether we use English or not, or whether that's the right choice or not, it's about consistency. If you want to create a language that has all-Hebrew tokens and error messages, knock yourself out. Just do it consistently.

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#42

Post by PaulHoule » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #26

PaulHoule wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could say that all other web platforms are blub because they don't see the value that PHP brings to the table. a total idiot can install PHP and get a system that will meet the performance and reliability needs of 99.5 of web sites out there. tomcat, mod_perl, the ten different ways people host Ruby sites and all that make a lot more trouble for you. I've run PHP-based web servers for hundreds of sites that have…

A better PHP than PHP: You mean like Railo? http://www.getrailo.com/com/index.cfm/whyrailo/developers/ (Scroll to bottom where they address why for PHP devs)

that article is strikingly inarticulate. if you've got to tell me to scroll to the bottom, then it's a complete failure at selling railo, whatever it is

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#43

Post by mikey_p » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

Related: http://www.phpwtf.org/

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#44

Post by cgranade » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

I'd love to see similar lists for other languages. I've been coding in MATLAB as of late, for instance, and rediscovered my hatred for the fact that you can't index the output of a function without assigning to a temporary variable. For instance, `foo(args)(:)` causes an error. You have to use `X = foo(args); X(:)` instead. That makes me just as sad as some of these PHP sadnesses.

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#45

Post by Leynos » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #19

betageek wrote: post #3

PHP's single greatest advantage is ubiquity - would love to see a CoffeeScript compiler for PHP that smooths out these issues.

you could say that all other web platforms are blub because they don't see the value that PHP brings to the table. a total idiot can install PHP and get a system that will meet the performance and reliability needs of 99.5 of web sites out there. tomcat, mod_perl, the ten different ways people host Ruby sites and all that make a lot more trouble for you. I've run PHP-based web servers for hundreds of sites that have…

I won't defend PHP as a language, but from an accessibility point of view, other platforms could certainly make things easier.

Coming from a PHP background, the first time I tried Django, I was rather dismayed at the amount of set up involved. I think after following a few tutorials, I was able to more or less get a running mod_WSGI setup, though the only way I could seem to get the web site to refresh was by restarting Apache.

After I got over the fear of using an http daemon written in the same language as my web app, I discovered Ruby / Sinatra, which gave me more or less the same immediacy I was used to from PHP.

Even so, I doubt I could explain Heroku to a non-technical friend in the same way I could convey an understanding of uploading a php web page to a LAMP host. (Ubuntu's broken support for RubyGems didn't do much to help my migration from PHP either).

It seems to me that until Python and Ruby have an infrastructure that's as friendly to novices as PHP is, we'll be seeing the same "PHP ghetto" effect that we've been seeing for the past decade.

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#46

Post by user24 » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

thinkcomp wrote: post #6

I've definitely run into #1 on the list. "Paamayim Nekudotayim" is a transliterated version of פעמיים נקודתיים‎, which means "double colon" in Hebrew. Zeev and Andi are Israeli, which kind of explains it, but the error message is still pretty useless.

> the error message is still pretty useless.

not at all. A google search for "Paamayim Nekudotayim" gives you thousands of pages relating to exactly the error you're experiencing. It's WAY more useful than "Illegal operation" or "Syntax error".

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#47

Post by nickik » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #38

gergles wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, a downvote within 30 seconds of posting? "php" == 0 returns true, and this makes sense how?

It makes sense for the same reason it makes sense in Perl: use a string as a number and you get the number that is at the start of the string. E.g., "12" == 12, and "12php" == 12.

That does not make sence that just meens both languages suck.

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#48

Post by cag_ii » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #30

larrik wrote: post #28

What makes ME sad is no keyword arguments. Helper/wrapper functions either get an annoying and difficult-to-grok-at-glance associative-array for it's params (bad), or a huge list of rarely-used parameters (worse), or a huge set of wrapper functions to set their own paramters (even worse), or outright duplicated functions for similar-but-not-quite tasks (worst). This happens to me while producing something like a jqGr…

compact() + extract() is the closest you get. $foo = 123; $bar = getSomeBar(); myFunction(compact('foo', 'bar')); function myFunction($kwargs) { $foo = SOME_DEFAULT_VALUE; extract($kwargs); if ($foo > 5) { ... } } If you want to `sanitize' which arguments can be passed that way, use extract(array_intersect_key($allowed, $kwargs)); ((EDIT: or use EXTR_IF_EXISTS)). Nb., extract() works on any associative array, you don…

Why would this be any better than just passing in a map of the parameters as the sole parameter?

  myFunction($parms=array()) {
     ...
  }
  
  $parms = array('foo' => 'bar',
                 'baz' => 'yaz');
  test($parms);

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#49

Post by snorkel » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

Mandatory function arguments:

    function foo($arg1,$arg2) { return; }
    foo('bar');

    Warning: Missing argument 2 for foo()

Lame. But omitting arg2 is allowed if you give it a default value:

    function foo($arg1,$arg2=FALSE) { return; }

Blah. Instead I'd rather make arg2 truly optional just by testing if it's defined.

Re: These are things in PHP which make me sad

#50

Post by BruceForth » Fri, May 27, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

things about php that make me sad:

1. it exists

2. it's used

3. many of its users make more money than me

4. it has poisoned the market, clients have learned to expect and even demand php-braindeath