HN white knights JavaScript but hates PHP. I can't figure it out. Each language is horrible in similar ways.
Rambling On [PHP] Internals
71–80 of 169 posts
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's only universally deployable if the developers knew what they were doing. The same can be said of any language, it just happens that PHP makes it a bit easier than the others.
The problem is that cheap hosts will often not support newer best practice libraries like PDO. So apps that are widely deployable tend to end up as a jungle of mysql_query().
Is this really still the case?
Granted, it's been a while since I went shopping for hosts, but I thought these days more and more hosts (even cheap ones) at least support 5.3+ if not 5.4. PHP got a huge swath of improvements in these releases so I'd imagine these were more well supported. I mean we're in the middle of 2013 for crying out loud.
I also see more and more cheap VPSes popping up and these may be a more attractive alternative (for novice admins/developers, I think these are still a bit too intimidating).
The biggest hurdle is still the lack of quality tutorials that use PDO for complex projects. You still see a whole bunch of older examples out there that still use mysql_query() and the like and not many that do "A-Z of Building a blog with PDO" or similar.
The power of quality free tutorials shouldn't be underestimated.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#73An eyeopener for me was reading parts of the discussion how the new namespace seperator was chosen: http://pastebin.com/2iJP4Qhx (from https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaceseparator)
If you read that IRC log and truly believe that a multi-million/billion dollar ecosystem/environment should be ruled by what reads like kids between 12-16 chatting, then go ahead. I won't. Apart from that there is enough rant on PHP on the internet already ;)
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#74Any 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).
He's not looking for up/down votes. He's looking for a discussion. Which well-meaning participants in an open source project should be able to have with some civility.
The problem is the mailing list is open to anyone and the majority of people on the list should be providing input.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that cheap hosts will often not support newer best practice libraries like PDO. So apps that are widely deployable tend to end up as a jungle of mysql_query().
Is this really still the case? Granted, it's been a while since I went shopping for hosts, but I thought these days more and more hosts (even cheap ones) at least support 5.3+ if not 5.4. PHP got a huge swath of improvements in these releases so I'd imagine these were more well supported. I mean we're in the middle of 2013 for crying out loud. I also see more and more cheap VPSes popping up and these may be a more at…
It varies, but it's often server configuration as much as language version. You'll still find servers with magic_quotes enabled and a bunch of features disabled.
VPS is a better alternative, but at that point it's just as easy to use something other than PHP.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#76HN white knights JavaScript but hates PHP. I can't figure it out. Each language is horrible in similar ways.
The similar horrible things are the superficial warts related to dynamic typing and heavy usage by amateurs leading to poor code quality in the wild. However there's a big difference which is that Javascript has always had first-class functions, lexical scope, and object-oriented via prototypal inheritance. PHP attempted to bolt on some approximation of all of these over the years, but the result is a sort of Frankenstein shambler.
Javascript for all its problems at least was designed with a reasonably powerful core. That said, HN has plenty of terrible things to say about JS, so I think you're exaggerating a bit.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's not looking for up/down votes. He's looking for a discussion. Which well-meaning participants in an open source project should be able to have with some civility.
The problem is the mailing list is open to anyone and the majority of people on the list should be providing input.
There are moderated lists. When someone gets out of hand give them a temporary ban, and tell everyone why there were banned. People will learn that if they want to participate they will have to behave. After time, when the community scares away the trolls, they can loosen the moderation rules. There are plenty of communities that self moderate after having a strong leader show them what was socially acceptable and what was not.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this really still the case? Granted, it's been a while since I went shopping for hosts, but I thought these days more and more hosts (even cheap ones) at least support 5.3+ if not 5.4. PHP got a huge swath of improvements in these releases so I'd imagine these were more well supported. I mean we're in the middle of 2013 for crying out loud. I also see more and more cheap VPSes popping up and these may be a more at…
It varies, but it's often server configuration as much as language version. You'll still find servers with magic_quotes enabled and a bunch of features disabled. VPS is a better alternative, but at that point it's just as easy to use something other than PHP.
Ouch. So it's still the wild west out there.
I hope there will come a time for some standardization for web hosts where minimum versions for software packages and sane defaults are enforced. I agree, anyone deploying on VPS really don't have shared host bounds any more.
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#79The 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 particul…
Keep PHP weird. Love it :)
Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals
#80The 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 particul…
As I was reading the article I was just thinking about how so many projects have exactly the type of leadership, vision and reputation norms that he wishes for in the PHP project, and the result is that people complain that project is elitist or unapproachable. In php-internals maybe you have to run with the bulls to get something done, but at least its accessible.