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PHP Addiction

marco.org

241–250 of 320 posts

Re: PHP Addiction

#241
post #98
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that can never be fixed is a poorly chosen feature. PHP has a lot of them. And they interact badly.

Yes, but... All languages (like any system) will have cruft, after a while. Is the solution really to do a periodic break with backwards compatibility for purity reasons, Python 3 style? There should be a better way?! What about a low level machine like Java/.Net and just let the next language evolve on top of that -- so old libraries could run? (Maybe there could be Xcompilers for Ruby/Perl 6/xxx to the Perl "byteco…

Some things simply can never be fixed.

Figuring out when that happened to you is a judgement call.

Re: PHP Addiction

#242
post #121

Is it my imagination or is Marco the king of writing blog posts that are quick reactions to whatever is trending on HN? The message you should get from this post is that familiarity with one's tools easily trumps any aesthetic flaws (consistency in parameter ordering, naming conventions, etc are really nothing more than aesthetic flaws and not "deep" [1] as the author suggests. After all, human language is inconsiste…

> Linux (over OSX) does actually have a package system I found running a VM on my mac to be the best of both worlds. Plus you can backup and distribute your VM so the entire team develops on the same setup.

Agreed, though I would suggest using Chef + Vagrant rather than using a "master image" approach. It's much more maintainable in the long run.

Re: PHP Addiction

#245
post #154

The fear of making the "wrong" choice actually makes the familiar, mastered PHP more attractive. The multi-core reality means that the long-term languages will have a strong concurrency model. Clojure and Go are two languages with strong concurrency models that are building momentum and have potential to go mainstream. But for your first foray out of PHP, I would pick a language that has a large, well-established com…

I think that multicore support is unlikely to be the crucial feature that cements the success of the language of the future for simple CRUD web apps. Such apps are invariably not CPU-bound. Wide support on hosting providers, tooling, ease for novices, database access, etc. are far more important--which explains the success of PHP in the first place.

You're assuming that simple CRUD apps will still be interesting in the future. It's possible that future apps will be CPU-bound.

It would be nice to have a language that lets you prototype quickly but also build the real deal efficiently. Actually, not having such a language should be embarrassing for the software industry.

Maybe Clojure fits the bill, difficult to say.

Re: PHP Addiction

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop Linux is actually fucking fantastic if you are prepared to take up messing around with it as a hobby. It requires commitment, time, and and open mind, but fuck, I've just sorted out xmonad, I have my dotfiles syncing via git, and it's bloody amazing . Package management is bliss, and both pacman and apt shit all over homebrew (great as homebrew is), it's absurdly fast even on old hardware, it's free, it's got…

I'm a longtime fan of Linux and have used it as my desktop of choice for years, but apparently you and I have a different idea of what "beautiful" is. That screenshot is a ghastly smattering of black, grey, and red, with no unified look or feel. Sublime Text is really good looking in its own right, but that overall desktop doesn't look appealing to me. Granted, I use Gnome Shell for my desktop of choice, and find tha…

Do you even notice the "beauty" after spending a week with it?

Re: PHP Addiction

#247
post #204
post #190

Perhaps someone should make 'PYP', a Python that's easy for PHP programmers. Like PHP, .PYP files would be templates with no limits on mixing presentation and logic. The filesystem hierarchy provides the default URL-routing. But, you get the regularity/power/compactness of Python wherever you want it. (Perhaps, every line in a .PYP file beginning with '\' is meaningfully-indented Python.) If you ever want to hijack a…

Such a thing exists: http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/pyapi-psp.htm... I don't think it's widely used, though, probably because the possibility of using PHP in this template-like way isn't actually a big advantage (serious PHP devs almost certainly don't use PHP that way); PHP's big advantage is that it's installed everywhere.

But why is PHP installed everywhere? At least partially, it's because it offers such a low barrier to initial sloppy usage. Should a PYP offer that too? (And if there are other factors that make PHP easy to use everywhere, could a PYP mimic those as well?)

Re: PHP Addiction

#248
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for servers. Which is what we're talking about.

I was a bit doubtful, so I looked it up... turns out you're only somewhat right: CentOS + RHEL are about 40% together (28.7% + 11.6% = 40.3), but Debian + Ubuntu are over 50% at (30.8% + 19.8% = 50.6). Arguably Debian is not Ubuntu (which is why I say you're somewhat right), but it is just what Ubuntu sysadmins grow up to, and has even more of a cool underground factor, despite being the most popular server distro. O…

I have heard that there is a geographical difference where Redhat is more popular in North America while Debian is more popular in Europe. No idea if it is true though.

Re: PHP Addiction

#249
post #92
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did he say anything about scaling in the article?

I was actually pleasantly surprised by not reading about the usual "webscale" BS in these two articles. Both authors made it very clear that this is not about being able or unable to build something with a given language, but the quality of how you do it.

On what planet is the ability to scale a web application not a quality metric?

Re: PHP Addiction

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a web host include java, and no shared host has enough resources to support the JVM in the first place. It's a similar problem as Ruby and Python, believe it or not.

Actually, the GP was talking about running on your own server. Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, they're all close enough in terms of setup time that it need not factor into the decision. Or you can run any of them on dotCloud, EC2, Rackspace, lots of places. Deployability just isn't a differentiator nowadays.

No, it isn't—but if you knew how to deploy any of that, you probably wouldn't consider PHP.

90% of people just run a web site on a hosting server. Granted it's getting less and less common with the advent of the centralized service-based web, but still, that's the source of success.

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