Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously
I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end
all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise
to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold
statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that
PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use
for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of
the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've
noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer
out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but
can use Perl if I have to.
Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of
both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable
website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl
took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP.
I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with
Perl.
The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk.
We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all
that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up
so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection,
reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under
the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems
limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the
later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl
though.
Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it
won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in
almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's
strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP,
but I can't think of any at the moment.
Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto
an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it
run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this
with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires
that much rewriting.
Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I
wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice)
its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a
substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library
of any kind.
Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure
you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse
Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely
limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you
can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and
because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks
pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user
pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data
structures.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl
coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in certain
cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
In hindsight I probably should've clarified that a bit more. How about: "Backdoors left in by developers seem to be on accident rather than intentional.
From your example, it sounds like the back door was put in on purpose.
Yes, it was put in intentionally for Onno (the creator of ircle) to do some testing with it. Unfortunately Onno then forgot it was in there when he released it.
I know of a couple of examples where backdoors were put in for QA purposes and then left in when the product was shipped. Indeed, waaaay back in the day, a Mac IRC client left in a/ctcp command that would let another user execute any command on another ircle user's box!
Doing things like/ctcp B1FF exec/quit made IRC almost unuseable for Mac users for a week or so.
Anyways, my point is that most backdoors put in by developers seem to be accidental rather than intentional.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio this morning. It seems that space probe Pioneer 10 was found dead in its distant space home this morning. Even if you didn't enjoy its photos of our planets, there's no denying its contribution to astronomy. Truly an engineering icon.
Now RMS is going to hunt you down and assassinate you for your insurance money! That RMS is like cat, or a ninja, or a ninja cat!
The Sims Online Promotes Communism!
on
Sim-Dud?
·
· Score: 1, Funny
This article is taken from this site. Perhaps this explains its failure to achieve success in our Capitalist society?:)
Until December Stalin's dream of socialism in one country had only been realized in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Late last year the theory took off, spreading into heretofore undiscovered nations named Alphaville, Calvin's Creek, Interhogan and Mount Fuji.
The Sims are now online. It's not just an irritating commercial.
The Sims, in its offline version, is an amusing little simulation of life in which you get to be the star, meeting new digital people, improving yourself and your job, accumulating wealth and a family, building a home and eventually a small community. If you always wanted to be an astronaut with a movie star wife and two kids, you can here. It was pokemon for adults, elegant and surprisingly fun. It's the best-selling video game of all time.
The online version is superficially similar. It looks the same, it sounds the same, it has neighborhoods, housebuilding, social interaction, and skills to improve. But it also has . . . other people. There's where the problems start.
The Sims is a solipsist's game. It has no multiplayer component and needs none, because the "people" who make up the game are really objects, to be moved around at will and cast in a story the player writes. With thousands of other people, some things (chattting, social interaction moves) have been gained, but more has been lost. With a crowd comes a need for the game's creators to control people, and the result is a collectivist's dream. But the Sims Online proves that socialism doesn't work.
Want proof that the Simcity flag is red? Try this: In the Sims Online, your Sim spends her entire life in one city. She is never allowed to leave it. While the promise of building a home is given with one hand, it is taken away with the other. Your Sim starts with a pathetic amount of cash and no ready means of acquiring more. If she builds, her home will be a postage-stamp sized hovel, with insufficient space, poor lighting, no entertainment, bad food, inadequate plumbing, cheap furniture (and not much of it), and little means for the Sim to grow her skills to improve her lot. To have a nice home, she must join a collective. She has to squat on a vacant lot with up to 7 strangers, and only then will the State provide sufficient land on which to build, and enough money pooled to build something worthwhile. If the Sim ever tries to escape this collective, she must leave her investments behind.
You never see a child here. The nuclear family is dead. Online Sims seem to be grown in vats a la Brave New World or The Matrix. They enter the game as fully formed adults. Fully formed in body, but not in mind. Most of these vat-grown Sims are bred to be idiots (perfect proles for the all-powerful state), unable to make adult conversation. My Sim has searched the city for a commons where intelligent discussions can be had, and came up dry in all but two places. But if you want witty banter like "i think U R hot!" or "This place is gay!" or "sucky my meat!" well, you're in luck. In the Sims Online, spelling classes are taught by Prince, and conversational style is dictated by Cartman.
The economy is a basket case. The money, called by the dubious name of simoleans, is worthless. It can't be converted to dollars any hard currency, and there's not much on which it can be spent (a lot of the objects from the original Sims aren't here yet).
There are no real jobs. Where offline Sims could climb the ladder from office boy to mogul of finance, their online cousins are given makework jobs no different from digging and filling holes. To earn their keep they have to carve wooden gnomes, paint portraits of purple zombie women, make telemarketing calls, bake pizza after pizza, solve pointless codes, or bash open pinatas for no apparent reason. Once again, the collective is the model. Sims get more money for carrying out these degrading tasks together. It's not uncommon to see a dozen Sims at identical workstations, filling jar after jar with apple jelly that no one will ever eat. This "cottage industry" model was tried during the Great Leap Forward, when millions of Chinese peasants were ordered to smelt steel in backyard furnaces. The result, as in the Sims Online, was a vast national effort to produce piles of useless scrap.
There is no rule of law, but Sims cannot defend themselves. They are a disarmed populace who cannot own guns. A Sim who builds his "body" skill can bully other Sims mercilessly, performing "piledriver" after "piledriver" on his smarter but scrawnier peers. The victims of these steroid-monsters cannot call on courts or police, as they are unreliable and never respond. The only choice is to run away and be cornered, or to leave the property. It's no wonder there are houses full of Sims working on Nautilus machines in team exercise drills. It took Colonel Colt to make all men equal, but he never heard of Simcity.
Finally, the government endlessly promises that our sacrifices will be rewarded in the future, but it never delivers in the present. The game's creators issue pronouncements that in the future we will have casinos, more land and bigger lots, better clothes, and new ways to enjoy ourselves. But in the here and now, we must continue with mass gnome-carving, collective bodybuilding, and living with strangers in cramped quarters, lest utopia never come.
This is an excellent action on the part of the US government. Open Source software has a few bright spots (Apache, BSD) but its overrun with too many amateur, half-finished programs - a quick look at sourceforge will reveal as much. By doing this, the American gov't is simply saying they want proven, reliable code. Unfortunately this tends to mean closed-source code. I hope one day that most OSS goes thru as rigorous quality control that most major closed-source programs do.
Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but can use Perl if I have to.
* Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP. I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with Perl.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection, reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
* Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data structures.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in most cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
I seem to recall way back in the day of the Microsoft anti-trust trial that MS agreed to donate products to impoverished places & schools. Unfortunately many Open Source advocates pressured the courts into rejecting this offer. Because of this, Microsoft was unabel to help out those in need, such as America's poverty-stricken schools, and third world countries like South Africa.
Thus Open Source advocates created a self-fullfilling prophecy: Deny third-world countries like South Africa from having access to MS products and then express smug satisfaction when said countries are forced to use Open Source materials!
Although I support OpenSource software (OS X is amazing!) and I'm thrilled to see a government give it full backing, I'm less than thrilled to see that South Africa is the one doing this.
Speaking from a publicity standpoint, South Africa seems to have little credibility in the world these days. I'm sure you all remember their government denying that HIV causes AIDS in a desperate bid to avoid having to take responsibility for South Africa's terrible AIDS crisis. Additionally, South Africa unfortunately has a huge problem with rape. It seems that the country is barely able to govern itself, and is perilously sliding towards the chasm of anarchy.
Obviously none of this is the fault of Open Source software. However, I think that if/when South Africa collapses, this will taint whatever good using Open Source has done. All I can say is that I hope another, more stable country, does something similar so that when South Africa implodes, its failure doesn't taint the Open Source community.
I'm a firm believer that while Apple is more expensive, its products do tend to be better. Sure a Ford will get you around town as well as a Mercedes, but you'd never mistake the quality of the Mercedes for that of the Ford.
Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but can use Perl if I have to.
* Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP. I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with Perl.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection, reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
* Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data structures.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in certain cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
I sure hope this doesn't take away from their ability to make curries and naan. I swear I've never had better food in my life than Indian food. Mmmm....tandori
What about the Great Underground Empire?
on
Games of the Year
·
· Score: 2
If I was voting, I'd still write in Zork. Few adventure games have ever bettered this Infocom classic.
PHP resolves some shortcomings of Perl
on
Professional PHP4
·
· Score: 2
PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about PHP.
The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.)
Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in most cases. File handling and regex come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice!) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl is an excellent language. However, in certain cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
Thank you,
ET
I've been working with PostNuke on a site of mine and I'm having so much frustration in getting it to do what *I* want. I'm probably just going to roll my own, you said.
However, I think thats true of any web content program no matter what language its programmed in. I've seen Scoop/Slashcode frustrate people as much as PHP-based programs.
However, I think PHP works outstanding as an abstraction layer between SQL and the web for smaller sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows that cigarette smoking did. At least that's what Gary Larson has hypothesized.
Smooches,
Chesh
Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but can use Perl if I have to.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in certain cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
Thank you and God bless,
Egg Troll
An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!
I wonder if they're going to combine this laser with some Pink Floyd...
In hindsight I probably should've clarified that a bit more. How about: "Backdoors left in by developers seem to be on accident rather than intentional.
Yes, it was put in intentionally for Onno (the creator of ircle) to do some testing with it. Unfortunately Onno then forgot it was in there when he released it.
Doing things like
Anyways, my point is that most backdoors put in by developers seem to be accidental rather than intentional.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio this morning. It seems that space probe Pioneer 10 was found dead in its distant space home this morning. Even if you didn't enjoy its photos of our planets, there's no denying its contribution to astronomy. Truly an engineering icon.
Now RMS is going to hunt you down and assassinate you for your insurance money! That RMS is like cat, or a ninja, or a ninja cat!
This article is taken from this site. Perhaps this explains its failure to achieve success in our Capitalist society? :)
Until December Stalin's dream of socialism in one country had only been realized in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Late last year the theory took off, spreading into heretofore undiscovered nations named Alphaville, Calvin's Creek, Interhogan and Mount Fuji.
The Sims are now online. It's not just an irritating commercial.
The Sims, in its offline version, is an amusing little simulation of life in which you get to be the star, meeting new digital people, improving yourself and your job, accumulating wealth and a family, building a home and eventually a small community. If you always wanted to be an astronaut with a movie star wife and two kids, you can here. It was pokemon for adults, elegant and surprisingly fun. It's the best-selling video game of all time.
The online version is superficially similar. It looks the same, it sounds the same, it has neighborhoods, housebuilding, social interaction, and skills to improve. But it also has . . . other people. There's where the problems start.
The Sims is a solipsist's game. It has no multiplayer component and needs none, because the "people" who make up the game are really objects, to be moved around at will and cast in a story the player writes. With thousands of other people, some things (chattting, social interaction moves) have been gained, but more has been lost. With a crowd comes a need for the game's creators to control people, and the result is a collectivist's dream. But the Sims Online proves that socialism doesn't work.
Want proof that the Simcity flag is red? Try this: In the Sims Online, your Sim spends her entire life in one city. She is never allowed to leave it. While the promise of building a home is given with one hand, it is taken away with the other. Your Sim starts with a pathetic amount of cash and no ready means of acquiring more. If she builds, her home will be a postage-stamp sized hovel, with insufficient space, poor lighting, no entertainment, bad food, inadequate plumbing, cheap furniture (and not much of it), and little means for the Sim to grow her skills to improve her lot. To have a nice home, she must join a collective. She has to squat on a vacant lot with up to 7 strangers, and only then will the State provide sufficient land on which to build, and enough money pooled to build something worthwhile. If the Sim ever tries to escape this collective, she must leave her investments behind.
You never see a child here. The nuclear family is dead. Online Sims seem to be grown in vats a la Brave New World or The Matrix. They enter the game as fully formed adults. Fully formed in body, but not in mind. Most of these vat-grown Sims are bred to be idiots (perfect proles for the all-powerful state), unable to make adult conversation. My Sim has searched the city for a commons where intelligent discussions can be had, and came up dry in all but two places. But if you want witty banter like "i think U R hot!" or "This place is gay!" or "sucky my meat!" well, you're in luck. In the Sims Online, spelling classes are taught by Prince, and conversational style is dictated by Cartman.
The economy is a basket case. The money, called by the dubious name of simoleans, is worthless. It can't be converted to dollars any hard currency, and there's not much on which it can be spent (a lot of the objects from the original Sims aren't here yet).
There are no real jobs. Where offline Sims could climb the ladder from office boy to mogul of finance, their online cousins are given makework jobs no different from digging and filling holes. To earn their keep they have to carve wooden gnomes, paint portraits of purple zombie women, make telemarketing calls, bake pizza after pizza, solve pointless codes, or bash open pinatas for no apparent reason. Once again, the collective is the model. Sims get more money for carrying out these degrading tasks together. It's not uncommon to see a dozen Sims at identical workstations, filling jar after jar with apple jelly that no one will ever eat. This "cottage industry" model was tried during the Great Leap Forward, when millions of Chinese peasants were ordered to smelt steel in backyard furnaces. The result, as in the Sims Online, was a vast national effort to produce piles of useless scrap.
There is no rule of law, but Sims cannot defend themselves. They are a disarmed populace who cannot own guns. A Sim who builds his "body" skill can bully other Sims mercilessly, performing "piledriver" after "piledriver" on his smarter but scrawnier peers. The victims of these steroid-monsters cannot call on courts or police, as they are unreliable and never respond. The only choice is to run away and be cornered, or to leave the property. It's no wonder there are houses full of Sims working on Nautilus machines in team exercise drills. It took Colonel Colt to make all men equal, but he never heard of Simcity.
Finally, the government endlessly promises that our sacrifices will be rewarded in the future, but it never delivers in the present. The game's creators issue pronouncements that in the future we will have casinos, more land and bigger lots, better clothes, and new ways to enjoy ourselves. But in the here and now, we must continue with mass gnome-carving, collective bodybuilding, and living with strangers in cramped quarters, lest utopia never come.
This is an excellent action on the part of the US government. Open Source software has a few bright spots (Apache, BSD) but its overrun with too many amateur, half-finished programs - a quick look at sourceforge will reveal as much. By doing this, the American gov't is simply saying they want proven, reliable code. Unfortunately this tends to mean closed-source code. I hope one day that most OSS goes thru as rigorous quality control that most major closed-source programs do.
Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use
for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've
noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but
can use Perl if I have to.
* Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable
website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP.
I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with Perl.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection, reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it
run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice)
its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
* Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse
Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data structures.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in most cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
Thank you and God bless,
Egg Troll
It sounds like the gay submarine looking for action on a Friday night!
Thus Open Source advocates created a self-fullfilling prophecy: Deny third-world countries like South Africa from having access to MS products and then express smug satisfaction when said countries are forced to use Open Source materials!
Speaking from a publicity standpoint, South Africa seems to have little credibility in the world these days. I'm sure you all remember their government denying that HIV causes AIDS in a desperate bid to avoid having to take responsibility for South Africa's terrible AIDS crisis. Additionally, South Africa unfortunately has a huge problem with rape. It seems that the country is barely able to govern itself, and is perilously sliding towards the chasm of anarchy.
Obviously none of this is the fault of Open Source software. However, I think that if/when South Africa collapses, this will taint whatever good using Open Source has done. All I can say is that I hope another, more stable country, does something similar so that when South Africa implodes, its failure doesn't taint the Open Source community.
Thank you and God bless!
Egg Troll
I'm a firm believer that while Apple is more expensive, its products do tend to be better. Sure a Ford will get you around town as well as a Mercedes, but you'd never mistake the quality of the Mercedes for that of the Ford.
This will fulfill the EUs mandate to send astronauts with God-awful teeth into space! Well done, England! Well done!
Hello Slashdot,
Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise
to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.
Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but can use Perl if I have to.
* Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl
took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP. I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with Perl.
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection, reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's
strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires
that much rewriting.
* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library
of any kind.
* Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data
structures.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in certain cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.
Thank you for your time,
Egg Troll
I thought everyone knew that the favorite gem of the Japanese was the Ruby!
What's the difference between using GCC to compile ones Java apps, and using GCJ?
I sure hope this doesn't take away from their ability to make curries and naan. I swear I've never had better food in my life than Indian food. Mmmm....tandori
If I was voting, I'd still write in Zork. Few adventure games have ever bettered this Infocom classic.
- The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.)
- Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl though.
- Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in most cases. File handling and regex come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP, but I can't think of any at the moment.
- Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires that much rewriting.
- Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice!) its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library of any kind.
Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl coders because Perl is an excellent language. However, in certain cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl. Thank you, ETHowever, I think thats true of any web content program no matter what language its programmed in. I've seen Scoop/Slashcode frustrate people as much as PHP-based programs.
However, I think PHP works outstanding as an abstraction layer between SQL and the web for smaller sites.