fuzzy notepad - Latest Comments

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

_Harold Abnabit — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:51:35 -0000

Telling if program exited due to an error is not that hard: register_shutdown_function and check if error_get_last is fatal inside the callback.

Great, now how do you get what the call stack was? Error messages without a traceback are almost completely useless.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Jon Seymour — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:14:50 -0000

You feel it necessary to accuse Eevee of mental illness because he has taken the time to document a comprehensive littany of PHPs' design flaws?

Seriously, have you considered that your reaction to this article may be indicative of your own need to reflect upon the benefits of seeking psychiatric assistance for yourself?

Re: Python FAQ - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:49:27 -0000

oh fuck

Re: Python FAQ - fuzzy notepad

name — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:47:52 -0000

dude the link is wrong on the webdev one innit

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:01:31 -0000

It is sometimes useful to know if two objects are the same and reusing === for this operations looks like a good idea to me. Comparing properties of two objects with different class is not very useful anyway.

I don't dispute that testing for identity is useful; only that making the same operator do such a conceptually different thing for objects vs scalars is horrible design. Now you can't even follow a simple rule of "use === everywhere", because you might genuinely need it for objects, and then anyone reading your code has to wonder whether you chose operators correctly.

This is one of the greatest features of PHP. It is not issue at all as limiting the scope is always a Good Thing™.

I have trouble interpreting this as a feature rather than a poorly-designed interpreter. Limiting scope is great, but the global scope is already there whether you like it or not.

PHP is simpler than other languages in several different areas.

PHP references aren't "simple"; they're inherited from C++ where there were semantics that don't exist in PHP, and the result is a weird half-assed feature that seems to get "fixed" at least once every minor release.

I loved the fact that most idioms in PHP can be expressed by a function call when I learned the language.

Why? Functions that mutate the language itself make reasoning about your code much harder and make language constructs harder to find at a glance. Would it be better if + were removed and instead you had to do assign($a, add($b, $c))? No, that's insane.

I endorse this shortcut and it also makes perfect sense to me: If you don't specify the index then use the automatic one.

I find it pretty weird that assigning with brackets tends to change an existing part of the array, but this particular syntax makes it longer. But it would almost make sense except that, as you say below, arrays are only associative...

Every function issuing E_STRICT has it written in its documentation.

So I have to scour the entirety of the documentation—all 3000+ functions, plus the language reference—to find out what an error flag does? That is not acceptable.

new ClassDoesntExist() can degrade gracefully by defining __autoload.

That's great, but I don't really want to add a bunch of proactive error-handling just because the language decides to blindly abort in mundane error cases.

Telling if program exited due to an error is not that hard: register_shutdown_function and check if error_get_last is fatal inside the callback.

Which only works because you can't recover from a fatal error? (Otherwise error_get_last could be referring to some other error.) Christ.

Again, I consider limiting scope as a good thing.

It doesn't limit scope at all. You still have the same amount of stuff available; you just have to hold the interpreter's hand if you want it.

Which is perfectly consistent with the rest of the language (passing arguments, assigning variables).

And completely inconsistent with the very concept of a closure, where closed-over variables aren't supposed to be passed at all. They aren't function arguments!

As all other uncaught exceptions. What else should uncaught exception cause?

The point is that they can't be caught. No amount of try/catch will let you intervene.

exec is built in.

That is not POSIX exec. That function is exactly the problem that fork/exec could work around, if they existed.

And the algorithm for comparing arrays is properly documented.

Documentation is not an excuse for insanity. Malbolge is also very thoroughly documented. I encourage you to try writing a program in it.

Disabling PHP execution by blacklisting extension is extremely stupid. Anybody can allow other extensions in future.

Oh yes, it's quite stupid. But it's also stupid to blanket execute files by extension in the first place.

This is one of the weakest parts of the article. To rephrase the complaint: “If you use other Apache directive than recommended by PHP documentation which works coincidentally too then you will experience some side-effects conforming to Apache documentation. And PHP is to blame.” Really?

My suspicion is that the documentation used to use AddHandler, until someone pointed this out. The idea must have come from somewhere, after all. But I don't really know, and in any case the popularity of this approach casts a bad light on the PHP community's security awareness. Like I said, I've seen this problem in the wild more than once.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:35:10 -0000

HAHAHA oh my god

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Telegram Sam — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:31:37 -0000

Perl is dead, Python and Ruby are for elitist hipster who meet at coffee
shops to have code offs and spend hours writing editorials on why this
and that programming language is better than the other. PHP is the
working man's toolkit, it gets the job done, and with the proper
knowledge it can do the job elegantly. PHP is kicking ass and the
community is growing. Face it, your kids will grow up using PHP and not
Python because there still won't be any decent frameworks for Python by the
time your kids can code. Ruby and the Rails fan boys won't exist because
they would have by this time clawed each other to death because no one in that community can seem to agree on anything. PHP will
then inherit the earth.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Jakub Vrána — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:22:55 -0000

I am a co-author of official PHP Manual and I use PHP every day (in Facebook). I like PHP quite a lot. Yet I have to say that this is a great article with numerous valid complaints. There are only couple of points which are wrong or which I don't agree with. I've posted them at http://php.vrana.cz/php-a-frac.... Feel free to improve the article by fixing the inaccurate points.

Re: Python FAQ: Webdev - fuzzy notepad

Allen Short — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:14:34 -0000

Even if one believes that Python 3 is something worth investing time into, that's still no reason to inflict it on people fresh off the boat from PHP. Python 2 is way less frustrating to use today.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

thallisphp — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:07:22 -0000

you need to be dealing with a psychiatrist.

PHP was not made to be equal to the syntax of other languages or follow the stripepatterns of variable declarations and bla bla bla bla .... He was made to get things done

examples:

Json_encode function is not found natively in many languages (that I know of no other)

The declaration is not made in advance because it is a bag to work with variables of other variables that need to be able to change type, for example, you want to convert a numeric value formatted currency, with strong typing you need an int and a string with phpjust any one variable

Furthermore the statement wasting unused variables

If you want to use typing settype () or casts (int) (string)

# PHPIsLife

Any error in translation, complain with Google Translator: D

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:23:13 -0000

I would go dancing naked on the street to celebrate it if wordpress would get ported from PHP to perl - it may not be for everyone, but neither are your 3 options, and in my case I have nothing against Python but I would loathe having to go program in Java again - no experience on Ruby so no preference, but I do love perl.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:46:19 -0000

Can't argue with nihilism.

I make plenty of money, but thanks for your concern.

Re: Python FAQ: Webdev - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:44:19 -0000

MySQL is a bit harder.

Consider: for all PHP's faults, there are still plenty of people who haven't experienced other languages, have no baseline for comparison, and so just can't understand why PHP's problems are problems.

How many people who've used MySQL have experienced other databases? Virtually everyone using free databases is now trained to be complacent with data-eating as a normal behavior and just routes around the damage, whereas Postgres's replication not being precisely identical to MySQL's looks like a catastrophic deal-breaker. The status quo is etched much more deeply here.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 10:13:32 -0000

@pythonhater:
Seriously? I mean... err, really, are you really serious?
There is a saying about arguing on internet that this reminded me of so I'll just leave any argumentation for posters I can take seriously and understand their point of view...

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:55:21 -0000

Are you seriously asking for reasons why people care about writing server-side programs cross-platform or just what are the reasons it matters to him specifically? Because there is a large number of factors why anyone might care about their code being cross-platform and I'm having hard time believing that any programmer could not think of at least couple factors by themselves - I can respect anyone's choice to choose a non cross-platform language over other reasons, but I have little respect for people telling others that it's a non-factor or ignorantly dismissing with "you want [x] server-side then use Java" when there are numerous reasons for choosing one language over another, and Java is not the only, nor first, last or even "most cross-platform" language out there (I have many reasons to prefer perl rather than Java I rate more important, but it's also supported on way more platforms than Java).

I agree with your disagreement though, but your counter argument does seem out of place after you just wrote "...then use [OneSpecificSystem]" yourself...

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:20:34 -0000

Thanks man, this one I added right to my programming/perl bookmark folder after checking a couple pages :)

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:47:02 -0000

"easy to get going", well, so is BASIC - PHP is easy only so far, but writing complex, large, easy to maintain code is hard, and keeping it secure is way too hard. I host my site with wordpress, have written an extension for it and also written couple small sites from scratch with PHP and while writing small extensions with it is OK for me - but I didn't choose Wordpress because of the language it's written in, I chose it despite it.

And when it comes to "ugly", well, ugly is in the eye of the beholder: IMHO PHP is a perl look-alike, but ugly - unless you learned pearl with perl 3 and obfuscated code competitions I don't understand how you can see it as ugly and PHP as something else. Sure you can write ugly with any language but some make writing elegant looking code hard, and PHP is one of them.

Let's face it, PHP is good for little more than it was written for - to use as batch "scripting" and enhanced SSI for people who don't even want to learn how to program well. The fact that it has become a big player with large CMS systems and other web applications available for it amazes me as much as success of Java used to amaze me, but for mostly other reasons - but it has, and while I use it on most server side web programming, I do so reluctantly - and with special care - with no interest whatsoever in using it for other stuff when I have perl.

Besides, PHP has it's roots in perl, it started as perl module but then became language that looks somewhat perl'ish but shows incredible determination in eliminating any and every one of design principles that make it good.

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

JaniSaksa — Sat, 12 May 2012 04:50:51 -0000

perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

Seems like an acronym to me, though it's not written capitalized (in the perl man-file), but I believe there is a perldoc dedicated just for the issue of how it's written :p

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Jack Handy — Fri, 11 May 2012 23:42:57 -0000

Nobody should complain about programming languages until they have written a better one.... Meanwhile...learn it, shut up, and go make some money.....all this "technology" will be dead in the future anyway....so your opinion regarding PHP or any other programming language for that matter is meaningless....the only languages that are truly shit are the ones no one is willing to pay money to have something written in it with. If you look at it any other way, then you don't belong in the IT industry......(I assume you are given how narcissistic you are in trashing PHP)

Re: Python FAQ: Webdev - fuzzy notepad

Toksyuryel — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:18:24 -0000

I'd love to see a post about why MySQL is so tremendously broken, a la your PHP post. I of course have known this for over a decade, but only because I've been friends with professional DBAs (who, amusingly, love PostgreSQL because of how well it scales… hmm…). It'd be great to have another post like that to share with people who don't understand that MySQL is horrible, because much like PHP I find it difficult to easily sum up *why* it is bad because the problems are so systemic.

Re: Eevee has gained 1801 experience points... - fuzzy notepad

Jesus — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:30:37 -0000

I wonder what kind of stone he is gonna use to envole?

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

moveon — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:46:11 -0000

this i'd like to hear

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

good developers — Thu, 10 May 2012 05:51:30 -0000

good developers can write good code in any language

Re: PHP: a fractal of bad design - fuzzy notepad

Ted — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:53:00 -0000

Python 3 breaks backward compatibility. However, python 2.X continues to be actively developed and is in no way dead. Python, and python libraries understand how bad breaking backward compatibility is and do it verbosely on the occasions they have to break it.

From the python download page: "If you don't know which version to use, start with Python 2.7; more existing third party software is compatible with Python 2 than Python 3 right now."

Re: Python FAQ: Webdev - fuzzy notepad

Eevee — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:37:51 -0000

The first draft droned on about pip and virtualenv for a while, but I realized that an article on web development probably didn't need to replicate the documentation for projects that have nothing to do with web development.

It's hard to feel confident in Django when I've seen the lengths people go to to customize it; my wording here was edited to be more generous several times :)

Puppet is probably not necessary for someone's first Flask app, but it's worth mentioning when I get around to that deployment article, sure.