PHP an idiot's tool (was OT: Web page source code )

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008, Fairlight wrote:
>On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 08:16:30PM -0700, after drawing runes in goat's
>blood, Jose Lerebours cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
>> Yeah, explode was not a good choice of word ... I was just trying to
>> see if any one really paid any attention to the entry line ... :-) Mark
>> normally uses some fancy stuff so I figure I check to see if he actually
>> paid any attention to that.  Well, I guess he does ;-)
>
>Ayup, I do.  :)  
>
>> Funny, this has been my experience with filePro code.  Can't remember how
>> many times I came across code and got better understanding of the term
>> the developers.
>
>I usually look at someone's code and go, "What the [BEEP!] were they
>-thinking-?!"  :)

I can look at my own code and think the same thing -- in spite of
the fact that I use lots of comments, meaningful names, etc.

>> It seems that you and I are on the same page here ... We just differ
>> in that PHP is not bad even if it is easy; I truly believe that the
>> developer bears the responsibility :-)
>
>Well, the developer always bears the responsibility.  The problem occurs
>when they don't realise that fact.
>
>> Python and Ruby are something I have wanted to look at.  But as it is the
>> case with you, if I do not have a financial gain in the horizon it makes
>> it tough for me to jump in and start hacking at it.
>
>Exactly.  Bill said he tossed 20yrs of Perl for Python.  I've only got 8yrs
>into Perl, but it's really a financial thing for me.  I've done the, "Oh, I
>just feel like learning it for the hell of it," thing with so many things,
>and I'm under tremendous time and financial constraints right now.  I just
>don't have the luxury of tossing over part of my toolkit arbitrarily when
>so much else is clamoring for my attention.  If I had limitless time and
>resources, sure, I'd be game.  That, or if someone's paying the tab.  :)

The impetus for me to learn python was that we started using Zope and
Plone, both written in python, and it is natural do do scripting in python.

Learning it wasn't something I did as a crash project, but as I had new
scripts to write, I did them in python.  It didn't take long to become
familiar with python syntax and libraries, and I converted my perl
utilities as I needed their functionallity in new scripts.

I found a book by Martin C. Brown, ``Perl to Python Migration'' fairly
useful as it compares the perl idioms to python.

I still do some perl, but mostly maintenance of existing programs or
debugging other people's perl code (e.g. webmin and usermin).

...
Bill
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