Rambling On [PHP] Internals • Hacker News Board

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#41

Post by Pxtl » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

shabble wrote: post #37

jlgreco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "forum" software that I have seen (opposed to more "ephemeral discussion" software like HN/Slashdot/Reddit) provides such a goddamn awful reading/browsing/discoverability experience that any benefits it may have over mailing lists are completely lost. Just for starters, mailing lists allow the discussion to thread (as do sites like HN, Slashdot, and Reddit) and don't force you to use a shoddy web interface th…

Every time I'm forced to use a forum for something, I wish usenet hadn't succumbed to spam & binary warez. Many of the clients from 20 years ago have more (useful) features than modern forums. It's probably about time to reinvent it again, tunneled over Websockets with a Flat Responsive html5 Retina-Aware Interhyperface or something.

I've always wanted to see a nested-discussion system with upvotes/downvotes that does the kind of seamless no-F5 updating you see on facebook.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#42

Post by eksith » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

robrenaud wrote: post #17

This is super relevant. How to protect your open source project from poisonous people. http://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/how-to-protect-yourhow-to-p...

That's extremely helpful advice.

The video to those slides : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#43

Post by yogo » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #2

I'd often wondered if the patchwork, self-contradicting, non-standard, anarchistic nature of PHP was a reflection of the mind-set of the creators.

I'll give you that. No clear direction. As I thought about this a little more in Ruby you have Matz, Python has Guido, Scala has Odersky, C# has Anders (those are just those that come to mind and I'm not sure of the current involvement). I can't think of who PHP really has like this. Rasmus maybe, but I don't think it's the same as the other languages I mentioned--understandably so due to other projects/engagements.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#44

Post by tzs » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #23

Pxtl wrote: post #3

Any large community has these problems. This is the advantage to using forum engines that allow non-anonymous upvotes/downvotes over a naive mail-list - people can silently agree and separate the wheat from the chaff, and consensus becomes far more visible. You can even give the important contributors greater "weight" to the ups/downs (this is not a democracy, contributors are worth more).

All the "forum" software that I have seen (opposed to more "ephemeral discussion" software like HN/Slashdot/Reddit) provides such a goddamn awful reading/browsing/discoverability experience that any benefits it may have over mailing lists are completely lost. Just for starters, mailing lists allow the discussion to thread (as do sites like HN, Slashdot, and Reddit) and don't force you to use a shoddy web interface th…

I'm not all that happy with mailing lists. Mail clients generally think of a "thread" as a list, which works OK for a back and forth discussion between two people, or for a discussion among a small group of people that are focused on a narrow problem. For a thread that gets big (in participants or in scope), that tends to suck. A tree is a better representation.

A second problem with mailing lists is that unless you keep old messages, you generally have to go to some horrible web-based archive.

Why not use an NNTP server? Newsreaders are great at handling threads, whether they are simple linear threads like those suited for email, or massive trees with dozens of participants and many side discussions.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#45

Post by jlgreco » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

shabble wrote: post #37

jlgreco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "forum" software that I have seen (opposed to more "ephemeral discussion" software like HN/Slashdot/Reddit) provides such a goddamn awful reading/browsing/discoverability experience that any benefits it may have over mailing lists are completely lost. Just for starters, mailing lists allow the discussion to thread (as do sites like HN, Slashdot, and Reddit) and don't force you to use a shoddy web interface th…

Every time I'm forced to use a forum for something, I wish usenet hadn't succumbed to spam & binary warez. Many of the clients from 20 years ago have more (useful) features than modern forums. It's probably about time to reinvent it again, tunneled over Websockets with a Flat Responsive html5 Retina-Aware Interhyperface or something.

Any reinvented Usenet should be client agnostic, otherwise it is just going to eventually succumb to the same problems that we already have with web forums.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#46

Post by mintplant » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

0x0 wrote: post #28

mintplant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the responses cited at the end of the post, I would assume that the author was previously a contributor of some significance to the project.

I just grepped the php-5.4.19 source and the only mention I found was for a bug reported and fixed in some earlier version, though.

Doing a `git shortlog --author "Anthony Ferrara"` in php-src/master pulls up 72 separate commits.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#47

Post by Pxtl » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #45

shabble wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I'm forced to use a forum for something, I wish usenet hadn't succumbed to spam & binary warez. Many of the clients from 20 years ago have more (useful) features than modern forums. It's probably about time to reinvent it again, tunneled over Websockets with a Flat Responsive html5 Retina-Aware Interhyperface or something.

Any reinvented Usenet should be client agnostic, otherwise it is just going to eventually succumb to the same problems that we already have with web forums.

In which case it will eventually succumb to the problem of RSS - the biggest client will decide to drop it in favor of moving to a proprietary system.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#48

Post by bowlofpetunias » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

The author is complaining about lack of vision, leadership and regulations. And most of us can perfectly understand that, except: those are exactly the things that set PHP apart from most other major open source projects.

It is by far the most anarchic and disorganized major OSS project and yet it still thrives. It still moves forward, it still gets better. Yes, it's design foundations as a language are not particularly elegant (to put it mildly), but that's pretty much the only major thing that's wrong with the resulting product.

According to all known wisdom about how an OSS community should function, PHP should have imploded and forked a long time ago. It should no longer exist.

And yet, despite this "I quit" rant, PHP has had relatively few major conflicts. The PHP way is unique, and while it may offend the sensibilities of people who like a nicely organized and disciplined community ran by a benevolent dictator or inspiring visionary, dammit, it works.

I strongly suspect that any successful attempt to solve PHP's organizational "problems" would actually result in killing it stone dead.

We already have Python and Ruby ea. PHP should stay weird.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#49

Post by jlgreco » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #44

jlgreco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "forum" software that I have seen (opposed to more "ephemeral discussion" software like HN/Slashdot/Reddit) provides such a goddamn awful reading/browsing/discoverability experience that any benefits it may have over mailing lists are completely lost. Just for starters, mailing lists allow the discussion to thread (as do sites like HN, Slashdot, and Reddit) and don't force you to use a shoddy web interface th…

I'm not all that happy with mailing lists. Mail clients generally think of a "thread" as a list, which works OK for a back and forth discussion between two people, or for a discussion among a small group of people that are focused on a narrow problem. For a thread that gets big (in participants or in scope), that tends to suck. A tree is a better representation. A second problem with mailing lists is that unless you…

Trees is indeed what I mean by "threads". Email naturally does it, though perhaps some clients have poor support for displaying it nicely. The linear "list" view of "threads" is what forums call "threads" and is exactly what I do not like.

Those web-based mailing list archives, while usually unstyled and therefore "ugly", are well-indexed by search engines, easy to navigate, fast, and uncluttered. They are not perfect, but they offer a much better browsing/reading experience than standard web forums.

Going back to NNTP would be idea. I don't know how we actually do that en-masse though.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#50

Post by JonoBB » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who feels like this is a temper-tantrum of somebody who wanted to be in charge of more toys, punctuated with some salient (but obvious) points about PHP?

I think you answered your own question there.