Survey: Is you filePro application online?

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This public service announcement was brought to you by Jose Lerebours:
> Actually, I will not turn down work but this is more of the leg work
> prior to attempting to embark into a venture to write-up some snippets
> and setup videos on how to do it.  A filePro developer I work with has
> asked me about doing something like that (I guess he has seen the newly
> released video fp2sql ???) and proposed we do something similar for PHP.
>
> Personally, I have almost given up on trying to sell anything to or
> service members of this list - they are too tough for me and sending this
> message is intended to prove a point (to my friend that is) :-(

What point are you trying to prove to your friend?

> Mark, if you hate PHP so much, why were you looking into JOOMLA?  Have
> you ever worked with Zen, CakePHP or any PHP framework?  Funny thing
> is that I know a number of perl developers that do not have such grant
> opinion about perl itself.

Who told you I was looking into Joomla?  I didn't know that was common
knowledge, unless I accidentally mentioned it in passing.

I was looking into it (still haven't made the time) because I haven't
really bothered with a CMS before, and I -thought- that it might make some
things easier than coding it from hand if I could just use an established
framework.  Turns out that, for what I want it for, all the solutions are
either buggy, commercial, or both.  And I just want it for something so
simple in theory.

Just because something's written in PHP doesn't mean I won't use it if it
serves my needs.  I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I use XP as my desktop.
Likewise, I use WordPress and SMF forums.  The only reason I don't bother
with perl alternatives is because I'd have to write one from scratch in
most cases, and I don't have the time or inclination.  The majority of the
things out there are now based in PHP, whether I like it or not.  I pick
the ones that are most stable, however.  You would have to pay me an
exceedingly high figure to use PHPbb.  However, both Vanilla and SMF are
pretty solid.  Wordpress has gotten better about their security since older
days.

Perl has some faults.  Most of them revolve around the relative obscurity
of ways of doing certain things, but they're not things you do on a daily
basis.  There are the zillions of modules on CPAN that were never actually
finished, as well...sifting through those can be "fun".  But by and large,
I've had no problems of it when it wasn't trashed and compiled by Red Hat.

> Me, I have always maintained that it has nothing to do with the language?
> It is all about the developer!  Heck, if PHP is easy, what can we say
> about filePro?  Talk about "too easy" and "too many self-proclaimed"
> programmers doing things they have no business doing in the first place
> (myself included!).

That's one thing Perl has going for it.  It has some fairly arcane aspects
that keep the inept from being bothered to do it very often.  Either they
learn the proper way to do it, or they fail pretty quickly.

Largely it is down to the developer, in the end.  But when you "subsidize
stupidity" (AOL, PHP, etc.), you're only enabling a trend of ignorant users
and developers, and thus making a bad name for yourself.  Sometimes "easy"
is not a good thing.  This is one reason I'm 570% against vendors trying to
make linux a "plug-n-play" Windows desktop replacement.  ANY flavour of
*nix requires specialised knowledge to be run correctly.  It can't be
treated with the cavalier attitude you give Windows.  Trying to dumb that
down generally tends to yield really, really disastrous results.  It's
actually worse to have an ignorant user on *nix than it is to have an
ignorant user on Windows, IMHO.

About the only exception I can see to this is Apple's OS/X.  I have mixed
feelings about it.  It proves that it can be done successfully, but I don't
think that most vendors would tend to do it properly.  Not many would sink
the required development time into doing it the way it should be done.
Apple more or less inherited NeXTStep when Jobs came back into the fold,
and much of that R&D was already done.  It's just gotten extra layers of
spit and polish, and a far more robust core.  But in essence, I think of it
as NeXTStep on steroids.

Anyway...

mark->
-- 
"I'm not subtle. I'm not pretty, and I'll piss off a lot of people along
the way. But I'll get the job done" --Captain Matthew Gideon, "Crusade"