Domain: ukuug.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ukuug.org.
Comments · 69
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Re:Ergo!
Linux isn't POSIX-compliant
This varies based on the distribution. Linux-FT was POSIX.1 certified. http://www.ukuug.org/newslette...
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Re:PHP for mobile phones
You might find the following link more informative than the vitriol of the parent as I think it explains the bafflement that some developers with experience of a few other, saner, languages feel when they encounter PHP:
http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2002/papers/html/php/index.html
The trouble with PHP is really that it has outgrown its origins (a very simple templating language, for simple web pages), and yet has not been adapting fast enough to the new uses it is being put to. It still has a lot of legacy cruft which makes it unsuited to complex tasks like application development (IMHO), and some feel the design philosophy (exemplified by their use of three separate naming conventions for functions (under_score,jamtogether, and camelCase) and over 3000 functions in the main namespace) means it will never catch up with other scripting languages in terms of elegance or efficiency.
Here's an example of that cruft from the article:
PHP’s approach is rather different. Instead of making sure that database queries are valid, PHP chooses to ensure that the input can’t be invalid. When you enable the magic_quotes_gpc setting, PHP alters its handling of the CGI parameters, and actually inserts backslashes before ‘dangerous’ characters in the incoming data. (An astute reader might stop to wonder why this feature isn’t called magic_backslashes_gpc, but that’s rather a side issue.)
If you weren’t expecting this behaviour, the symptom is that PHP randomly throws backslashes into perfectly valid data — all in the name of not corrupting data! Lerdorf attempted to justify this in a recent interview as follows: “the worst that would happen is that someone would see an extra \ on the screen when they output the data directly instead of sticking it into the database.” I for one get rather concerned when I encounter such flagrant disregard for data integrity.
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The UK appears to be voting 'yes'It looks as if the UK is going to do the same, in spite of the technical committee being against it.
I sent the following yesterday to:
Mike Low <mike.low@bsi-global.com>
Jean Stride <Jean.stride@bsigroup.com
Adrian Stokes <Adrian.Stokes@cat-ltd.demon.co.uk>I have not received a reply.
UKUUG is seeking a member who will represent them on the tech advisory committee as our current rep no longer has the time.
**** email sent ****
I am writing is my capacity as Chairman of the UKUUG (UK's Unix & Open Systems User Group).
I was appalled to hear it rumoured that the BSI is intending to approve the fast tracking of the
Microsoft sponsored OOXML format (DIS29500) while there are still so many outstanding questions
about the draft standard. In this letter I make no comment about the long term suitability
of OOXML as an ISO standard, my main issue today is that fast tracking it is wrong.
An ISO standard should be well defined and capable of multiple independent implementations.
The whole point is to allow users of the standard to have products from different vendors
work together just as well as a product from a single vendor. If an ISO standard is
insufficiently precise to allow this then the reputation of ISO as a standards setting
body will suffer severely; with a consequential effect on International trade.
With this in mind, if BSI approves the fast tracking of OOXML it will do severe damage
users' confidence in standards in general and to the reputations of those organisations
who have approved this broken standard: BSI and ISO.
Technical people will regard standards less highly leading to a long term
erosion of use of standards. Do you personally want to be responsible for this ?
I thought that BSI meetings were open, but now find that they are secret. I find this
astounding, it makes me wonder what really happens in those meetings. Will you publish
unedited minutes and allow independent observers in the future ?
The last time that this was aired in public, I remember a BSI member commenting that the number
of comments about this was unprecedented. This shows that there is a great public interest
in this issue and that fast tracking would not meet public approval; people will wonder
who you represent and whose interests you serve.
On the standard itself: I am aware that some of the problems have been addressed, but that
there are large numbers of other ones that are still contentious. There are many parts
that are not properly defined. For these reasons OOXML is not fit for purpose as it stands.
It is possible that these problems may be fixed by the standard being fully discussed,
IE the fast tracking is not appropriate for OOXML.
I call on BSI to act in the interests of the UK public and say 'No to fast tracking of OOXML'.
If I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Regards
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Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears.
I want to first state that I value your comment on this board. It is well thought out and provides constructive, informative links. But I do dispute the overall message that PHP manages to do less with more.
I just want to comment on one of the articles you have linked, Experiences of using PHP in Large Websites:
"Oversimplification and pandering to less experienced developers hurts the language as a whole."
I do not find any of its examples convincing. Most of the examples are just decisions, PHP could have done it like PERL, or they could have done it like JAVA, or hey... they could do it like PHP does.
For example, quoting from the article about global variables...
The rationale for designing the language in this way was that it would prevent inadvertent changing of global variables. This strikes me as an extremely good example of how designing the language for surface simplicity in fact leads to a great deal of underlying complexity.
This just goes on about something he doesn't like. The reason, it is too complex? Even though it attempts to address a valid issue of inadvertently changing a global variable? PHP can't win!
The list of gotchas that are in the article are just so amazingly simple to understand that only a "noob" programmer would fall into the mistakes.
I would like to posit my own theory about the general complaints levied at PHP. I believe there is a trait that is inherent in programmers where they believe they are brilliant, where they believe they can figure anything out, and that they are superior to most people because they can figure things out. (figure out very difficult to understand things). PHP encroaches upon their holy domain due to its popularity, so they retreat back to their more obscure, more elite language, with its syntactical purity.
In the end, it is all subjective. -
Re:Close your eyes and plug your ears.Roughly, because PHP manages to do less with more.
Two articles:
Experiences of using PHP in Large Websites: from 2002, but the basic PHP philosophy hasn't changed since then (although some specifics have). Oversimplification and pandering to less experienced developers hurts the language as a whole.
PHP in Contrast to Perl. From the table of contents:- Arguments and return values are extremely inconsistent
- PHP has separate functions for case insensitive operations
- PHP has inconsistent function naming
- PHP has no lexical scope
- PHP has too many functions in the core
- PHP lacks abstraction and takes TIMTOWTDI to bad extremes
It's not that PHP is that bad. VB, COBOL and PL/1 were all much worse. It's that there are better languages out there that people never learn because they learned PHP as "n00bs" (you can almost detect a PHP developer by his use of that word) and are complacent with it.
Incidentally, I think it's a lot more mind-expanding to learn two programming languages than to learn one. I see single-language people all the time confusing possibility with possibility in a particular language, or confusing overall algorithms and data structures with particular idioms from their pet language. It's sad. -
Re:Some people shouldn't code production systems
Case in point: PHP's hybrid list/dictionary structure makes many otherwise-common cases tricky.
See http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2002/papers/html/ php/#section_5 -
Lousy virtualization, Happy users...
Go the FreeBSD way!
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility
Source: UKUUG
Tags: ukuug, presentation, freebsd, jails, poul-henning kamp
Slides (2.7 Mb)
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility by Poul-Henning Kamp (phk@FreeBSD.org) -
Lousy virtualization, Happy users...
Go the FreeBSD way!
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility
Source: UKUUG
Tags: ukuug, presentation, freebsd, jails, poul-henning kamp
Slides (2.7 Mb)
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility by Poul-Henning Kamp (phk@FreeBSD.org) -
Lousy virtualization, Happy users...
Go the FreeBSD way!
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility
Source: UKUUG
Tags: ukuug, presentation, freebsd, jails, poul-henning kamp
Slides (2.7 Mb)
Lousy virtualization, Happy users: FreeBSD's jail(2) facility by Poul-Henning Kamp (phk@FreeBSD.org) -
Re:So old...
Quit with this "no such thing as a bad programming language, there are bad developers" bullshit. If a language encourages bad practices with an inconsistent, badly designed library and dubious features, then it is the fault of the language. Add in the poor tutorials (including most of those in printed books and on Zend's own website), and you've got a bad language made worse by ignorance. You ask where the articles are about good PHP apps and programmers. They don't exist, as most large scale web apps are written in Java - see this UKUUG paper for some reasons why. PHP lowers the barrier for getting a simple web app up and running, but it simply should not be used for anything large scale. The language is poorly designed, and poorly implemented (check out the number of vulnerabilities on bug tracking sites that are attributable to PHP itself rather than just the apps written with it).
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Re:That's an easy one
PHP was tailor-made for this sort of thing
No, it wasn't. PHP was made for writing quick little bits of code in Personal Home Pages. And for that it was perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately it became very popular (probably because it was easy to install on Windows) and since then it has been extended and had all sorts of modules added with little or no change to the core language. Many people are now discovering just how bad it is to use PHP on large projects. It's just a mess.
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This Thursday evening in LondonIf you are in London tomorrow evening can I encourage you to turn up at this meeting that I am chairing:
MEETING TO DISCUSS UKUUG INVOLVEMENT IN LOBBYING
All are invited to an informal meeting on
THURSDAY 19 OCTOBER 2006
18:30 - 20:30
Tudor Room, The Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BB
The purposes of the meeting are
- To continue the discussion following the AGM prompted by Leslie Fletcher's presentation, to allow members more time to give their views and ask questions on what has been done so far and what is planned. An extended version of the presentation is available at http://www.ukuug.org/events/agm2006/leslie.pdf
- To confirm, or not, the impression that members want UKUUG to be involved in lobbying and advocacy and are happy to see their membership dues spent in support of it. Council is looking to decide within the next month whether this is an appropriate activity for UKUUG to continue with so members views are crucial
- To discuss a possible role for UKUUG in coordinating the response of the UK FLOSS community to UK and EU funding, promotional and marketing opportunities. There is concern that this is being compromised by dissension and disorganisation within the community.
Speakers will be Leslie Fletcher and Eddie Bleasdale.
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Re:5 of first 7 comments trolling
Apart from a google search for "PHP sucks", here's a few I have bookmarked:
- Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites - PHP suffers from "oversimplification leading to excessive complexity".
- What I don't like about PHP - a general shopping list of complaints.
- "PHP IN CONTRAST TO PERL" - How PHP is a mess and Perl does more with less.
- List of PHP's shortcomings from perl.advocacy
- Re^2: Is Perl a good career move? on PerlMonks
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A nice song about it
See here
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A sorry situation
The fact that PHP and MySQL are the most deployed tools for web development is a rather sorry situation, given the deep shortcomings of both tools.
See these articles about the many PHP warts:
Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites
You will be happier with a more mature and complete dynamic language like Python, or even (gasp
;-) ) Ruby.Similarly, see these other articles about the many MySQL warts:
Compare the last one with the one for PostgreSQL:
Finally, an in-depth comparison between MySQL and PostgreSQL on Slashdot itself:
Comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL 2
Finally, recall that both MySQL's transactional backends are now controlled by Oracle:
Avoid both PHP and MySQL as much as you can, I say. There's better stuff out there.
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One useful article
... on when and when not to use PHP: Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites (Aaron Crane, UKUUG Linux Conference 2002).
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Re:This was featured at OpenTech
Yup:
Photo of Pandora innards
Event Photos
Event Recordings (Audio currently available; video of sessions available once editing and processing (and mirroring!) is complete.)
Cheers,
dwm -
Re:This was featured at OpenTech
Yup:
Photo of Pandora innards
Event Photos
Event Recordings (Audio currently available; video of sessions available once editing and processing (and mirroring!) is complete.)
Cheers,
dwm -
This was featured at OpenTechThis was supposed to have been featured at OpenTech 2005, according to their website.
OpenTech 2005 was featured in a Slashdot article a few minutes ago here
Did anyone go to OpenTech and see this thing?Although... it says there that it will record an entire week, not a month. So maybe that was this one's baby brother.
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Where this article came from
If anyone's interested, this article was accepted after a complaint from the UKUUG's MediaWatch blog about the bias in a previous article. If you see any articles on news sites that you think are biased or ill-informed, let them know, or simply complain yourselves, and you might get to see your name in print.
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Where this article came from
If anyone's interested, this article was accepted after a complaint from the UKUUG's MediaWatch blog about the bias in a previous article. If you see any articles on news sites that you think are biased or ill-informed, let them know, or simply complain yourselves, and you might get to see your name in print.
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Open Tech 2005I guess this is a good time to link to Open Tech 2005 again - it's sponsored by backstage.bbc.co.uk. And the Need To Know peeps are involved as well as the UKUUG. Call for papers.
Here's the blurb from the NTK link above:
Sponsored by backstage.bbc.co.uk, Open Tech 2005 is an informal one-day conference about technologies that anyone can have a go at, from "Open Source"-style ways of working to repurposing everyday electronics hardware. So far, the line-up features: * Ted Nelson, inventor of hypertext, on where the web went wrong * The official launch of the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer network, opening up BBC content for you to play with * Plus: able to record an entire week of all Freeview TV and radio channels, probably the UK's largest (fridge-sized) PVR More speakers will be confirmed over the next few weeks - but, as the title implies, we're very much "Open" to suggestions. If you're reverse-engineering proprietary protocols, making useful information available in a way people couldn't get at before, pioneering unexpected methods of knowledge sharing - or (equally likely) doing something so cool we haven't even thought of it yet, then please get in touch via the submissions form at: http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2005/offer/
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Open Tech 2005I guess this is a good time to link to Open Tech 2005 again - it's sponsored by backstage.bbc.co.uk. And the Need To Know peeps are involved as well as the UKUUG. Call for papers.
Here's the blurb from the NTK link above:
Sponsored by backstage.bbc.co.uk, Open Tech 2005 is an informal one-day conference about technologies that anyone can have a go at, from "Open Source"-style ways of working to repurposing everyday electronics hardware. So far, the line-up features: * Ted Nelson, inventor of hypertext, on where the web went wrong * The official launch of the backstage.bbc.co.uk developer network, opening up BBC content for you to play with * Plus: able to record an entire week of all Freeview TV and radio channels, probably the UK's largest (fridge-sized) PVR More speakers will be confirmed over the next few weeks - but, as the title implies, we're very much "Open" to suggestions. If you're reverse-engineering proprietary protocols, making useful information available in a way people couldn't get at before, pioneering unexpected methods of knowledge sharing - or (equally likely) doing something so cool we haven't even thought of it yet, then please get in touch via the submissions form at: http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2005/offer/
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Re:My experience
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Re:OpenLDAP Schemas?
You are right about the lack of good material on schema design. I surveyed the web a few months ago and found very little (and some of what I did find was trying to treat LDAP as a relational database!).
As a result, I ended up presenting a paper on LDAP Schema Design at the UKUUG Winter Conference. The paper covers issues of tree design and also entry design, and explains why the examples used in X.500 and early LDAP documents are not indicators of good practice. The full paper is available from my own website in both HTML and PDF formats.
In answer to your question about existing classes and attributes, I suggest getting either GQ or jXplorer - both include schema browsers which can help you to understand the relationships between the various elements. GQ may be in your favourite Linux distro. jXplorer is Java-based and I have run it happily on both Linux and Windows. In both cases you need a running LDAPv3 server as the schema that they display is the "live" one.
Andrew Findlay, Skills 1st Ltd
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Re:I *like* the OO.
PHP is seductive because it does let relatively inexperienced users generate dynamic content without too much of a learning curve. But from the description you give I think you are part of a very small minority of PHP developers at the other end of the spectrum.
My own PHP experience is more like this. Perhaps that's because I had come from Perl, and as this comparison makes clear the two certainly don't have the same ideas about how builtin functions should be designed.
As it evolves, PHP isn't solving the higher-level problems. It is merely reinventing functions, object models, and syntax. Zend's focus on things that real users don't care about may reflect that as well.
For example, PHP makes it trivially easy to insert dynamic content here and there into a page. If you want to separate business logic from presentation, which is almost manditory on a large site, you will want some sort of templating package. You will have to write your own. This is a common need, why shouldn't the core language address it? Because they are too busy reinventing object oriented programming? -
Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux
I think DTrace is available on Linux. It's called DProbes, and was invented by IBM. I have only read the Sun DTrace technical manual the once, but I think there are strong similarities. IBM's DProbes have been around for ages, too - since 2000, according to the ChangeLog, but I didn't hear about it until Richard Moore did a presentation at the UKUUG conference in Manchester in 2001.
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Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux
I think DTrace is available on Linux. It's called DProbes, and was invented by IBM. I have only read the Sun DTrace technical manual the once, but I think there are strong similarities. IBM's DProbes have been around for ages, too - since 2000, according to the ChangeLog, but I didn't hear about it until Richard Moore did a presentation at the UKUUG conference in Manchester in 2001.
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Atlas
I wish they'd listed more of the hardware they're having problems getting hold of or getting working. I found this about the Atlas, and I actually remember the Sinclair ZX-80. Sure enough, as the site says they're sometimes sold on e-bay. Someone want to tell the library to get their bid in?
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Re:other training materials here...
I think you missed the point of the article I linked to. You're talking mostly about the use of a language and its users. Of course a good/bad coder can write good/bad code, that's what makes them good/bad! The point, as I see it, is that PHP is really a very simple language that has been extended and hyped beyond its capacity. Of course there are places where it is well suited. Mostly simple homepages. Even Yahoo! is switching to it, but only (as I understand) as a template language. The underlying logic will be written in something else and will then throw variables at a PHP template. PHP is unsuitable as a general-purpose language, especially in large projects, because it lacks namespaces (hello global variables!) and has many ugly idiosyncrasies. The most insightful part of the linked article is on Oversimplification Leading to Excessive Complexity:
PHP 2 was probably a reasonable solution: it was a minimal scripting language for adding dynamic behaviour to webpages. Unfortunately, PHP has since outgrown itself. PHP is nowadays a programming language simplified to the point where the available abstractions and concepts just aren't sufficient to express the programmer's intent.
I have looked at PHP code from time to time and it has never impressed me. To me it always looks like a poor impression of Perl done by a VB coder. It's a language designed by a large group of coders who seem to have none of the insight into language design of the Perl crowd. Part of that comes down to history and experience. Perl 5 alone is almost 10 years old while PHP started only about 5 years ago. Maybe PHP5 and beyond will finally pick up the loose ends, but only time will tell.
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Re:other training materials here...
Powerful it is not. In fact, it's a fricking mess. The only thing it has going for it is that it's popular and available on almost every web host.
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Re:There's something I don't get...
"That's why AT&T had no choice but distribute early versions of UNIX at a nominal costs to universities and research centres." I call bullshit. You, sir, have no idea of what you are talking about. Please back up your BS with references.
My primary source of information on the history of Unix is a book "A Quarter Century of UNIX", by Peter H. Salus. On slashdot, "reference" usually means a hypertext link, so if you insist, here's the one that describes it quite like Salus does in his book. -
there are a few 3.1s floating around./
i just picked up the 12 3.1 sarge fiscs form the debian stand at this weekends http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2004/. cool huh?
havent installed them yet i think i lost cd 1 d'oh!
anywayys. -
Re:In the UK
Last years UKUUG conference in Edinburgh was the best conference I've been to. I'm not able to afford the costs of flying to the US or Canada so it's good that we've got an event of our own.
The nights out are also good too. About 200 of us went to an open air pub on the Friday night, the first time I bet that place has been taken over by Linux geeks. Also had other social events planned too. -
In the UK
In the UK we have the UKUUG Linux 2004 conference. This years event will be in Leeds between 5th and the 8th August. Not as big as those events over the water but there's still usually a good turnout. The Register has a reader offer for those who want to attend.
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Why the PHP bigotry?
Looking at the responses to this article with a low threshold is really disheartening. PHP is a powerful language/library set. But PHP has some core design issues that still need addressing. And every intelligent post that points this out gets modded as a troll.
I guess I shouldn't be suprised at this anymore here on slashdot. But I would not ditch other languages in favor of (non-free) compiled PHP until they address *ALL* the problems listed in these articles:
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Re:Why are they moving to Linux?
The POSIX environment is far better suited to the server market than Windows, and Linux seems to be the popular choice their.
I don't want to invalidate your point, but you have a complete misunderstanding of POSIX. Windows (from 2000 onwards) is in fact POSIX certified, whilst Linux is NOT. Check here: Microsoft compatibility. Linux is POSIX compatible yes, but AFAIK has not been POSIX certified except for a few small realtime Linuxes, like Linux-ft
Go to IEEE for more info on POSIX. -
Re:Well, it isn't
He once made a comment, "Windows NT is going to be so easy to use, all point and click, that it will be possible to hire sysadmins off the street!"
They're also currently using the 'Linux sysadmins are more expensive than Windows sysadmins' argument to promote Windows - however that's only going to have one effect - the more clueful of the Windows sysadmins will learn Linux skills in order to get paid more.
This eventually will mean there's no shortage in Linux sysadmins which will be a plus point for Linux but on the downside people will be earning less.
Therefore I think it's important that all Linux sysadmins who are knowledgeable to take this opportunity to improve their skills and be recognised as knowledgeable.
Therefore if you're in the UK I promote the UKUUG conference in my sig ;)
This wasn't going to be an ad, then I realised it fitted so perfectly into my reply! -
As a sometime PHP user, let me say...
...NOOOOOOOO!
As much as PHP might be a decent language for writing server-side web logic, PHP is Perl rewritten by people who don't grok Perl. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a webpage-embedded language that I like enough to replace PHP.
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Re:PHP
Sorry, I was thinking of one of the sections this web page and got mixed up. I'll quote some of it here just to be clear:
...However, you can also do things like this:
$a1 = Array(10, 'Anne' => 32, 11, 'Bob' => 28, 12);
$a2 = Array(1 => 21, 2 => 22, 3 => 23);
$a2[0] = 20;
Questions to consider:
- What index do we have to consult to get the value 11 out of $a1?
- What's the iteration order for $a2? Is it numerically-indexed or hash-style?
- What happens if you use PHP's $a2[] =
... construct to add a new element to the 'end' of the array? - Can numerically-indexed arrays have elements missing? If so, can you still trivially iterate over the values in index order?
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Re:PHP
It's been a number of years since I've programmed heavily in PHP. I had learned Perl first, and it eventually took over. If you do learn Perl I think you'll discover the language that PHP is trying to be. Which isn't surprising, considering that PHP originally started off as a perl CGI script. The problem with PHP is that there doesn't seem to have been a lot of thought put into the design of the language. A prime example is the way that Perl has seperate numrical and string comparitors (==/!= and eq/ne) whereas PHP has only the one (==). This recently came up in the story about the Perl periodic table of elements and I even gave my own answer on this problem. Just to rehash: Perl and PHP are loosely-typed languages so the programmer really needs to tell the interpreter how to compare the mixed numerical/string "scalar" type that both Perl and PHP use. But PHP tries to simplify at the expense of introducing ambiguity.
There are lots of other problems with PHP as well. Not to dwell on them too much, but this includes things like no namespaces (all variables are global? WTF?), modules have to be compiled into the interpreter (is this right? not even dlls/shared libs?), and using associative arrays all the time (leading to more ambiguity). The thing with compiled-in extensions is a big problem since PHP is so popular on cheap hosted web servers. You're entirely at the mercy of the host admin. I mentioned it in my previous post, and this is a very good web page about PHP's problems. PHP is a mess of a language. It really is.
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Re:Oh my sweet Jesus...
You're thinking about strongly typed languages e.g C, C++, Java, C#. In those language variables are only ever of one type. When copying from one type to another, or comparing different types, there are strict rules of "promotion" (i.e we always promote to higher-precision types).
Perl is a weakly typed language. There's three main variable types: scalar, list (array), and hash (associative array). Scalars can be both numerical and text strings at the same time. This is the reason that Perl has different equality tests for numbers and strings. The run-time has to to be explicitly told which comparison to use. For an example of how not to handle this situation, just look at the way PHP does it. When a language is weakly typed, the interpreter/run-time loses information about how certain things are to be done with variables. That information loss must be made up somwhere. In this case, it's the operators.
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Comments about Python and Zope.
Also see the comment below: Python is great. Zope is well-written and badly documented.
From another comment below: PHP is horrible -- Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites
Eleven more reasons why Python is wonderful, from a comment below.
From a comment below: Major problems with Zope and Plone.
Correct link to Nuxeo's Collaborative Portal Server. Also, in French: CPS.
No active Zope development community? -
Re:Huh?
As someone else already pointed out good sides of Python... Here's my $0.25 about PHP:
"24 or so years" and "PHP - the language that seems elegant"... That's the best example, that even if you do something for a long, long time you can still be very, very wrong.
PHP is not elegant and has a very poor object model. Also, it is pretty impossible to implement some of design patterns in it because of that. PHP has inconsistent API, PHP has a long way to go before it could be considered a serious language. Popularity? So what. Windows XP is also widely used. -
Re:Perl's grammar is too big
You consider PHP more maintainable? What about the lack of namespaces for variables and functions? That's a real problem for use in teams. There are other interesting issues raised in this article.
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Re:Perl's grammar is too big
You're far underestimating an experienced perl programmer, who is smart enough to know about the tradeoff between tersity and readability. The short, unreadable syntax is meant for when you're doing those one-off scripts, or using perl like an old unix guy uses awk. As usual, the onus is on the programmer. Have you visited Perl Monks? We try to thelp perl developers create maintainable and descriptive code. Any experienced developer who creates really complex code in a project will at least put an explanation in the comments. Think about it: the same person who trys to look good (all developers are prima donnas:) by using unreadable perl code, is probably also mixing business logic with presentation in their PHP apps too. If you visit my home page or google my user name, you'll see my favorite.
My personal opinion (Flame on!): I am also unconfortable with the number of builtin functions, especially with extensions added. I feel PHP needs to focus more on quality, and less on features, and needs to support real namespaces, not just what's in the new OO system. Does PHP have a good, high-quality templating system bundled yet? I think it would be in their best interests, considering the web is its largest use.
In the interest of open discussion, would any PHP developers like to refute any of the ideas put forth in this document: Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites
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Novell & MySQL at UKUUG winter conference
Matt Asay, Director of Novell's Linux Business Office, spoke at the recent UK Unix Users' Group Winter conference, as did David Axmark, one of the founders of MySQL AB.
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Novell & MySQL at UKUUG winter conference
Matt Asay, Director of Novell's Linux Business Office, spoke at the recent UK Unix Users' Group Winter conference, as did David Axmark, one of the founders of MySQL AB.
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Novell & MySQL at UKUUG winter conference
Matt Asay, Director of Novell's Linux Business Office, spoke at the recent UK Unix Users' Group Winter conference, as did David Axmark, one of the founders of MySQL AB.
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Re:SCO maintains GCC on their platformsHe may very well have an arrangement made out
It would be a VERY good idea for the GCC people to follow up on this. Remember Christian Hellweg that worked for Caldera and is responsible for a lot of the SCO stuff inside Linux.
If no "agreement" exist now with SCO maintaining their portion of the GCC, this can be used to make a strong point for Helweg doing what his company wanted later. If they, as I suspect, sue Hellweg, at some point to make the point he is in collusion with IBM.
TheInquirer had a story yesterday about Caldera and Linux