Ever heard of the concept "one click and you're guilty?" Users of this feature who unknowingly perform a search that returns results containting offensive/illegal content may find themselves being prosecuted by local, state or Federal authorities...
Proof of concept: Google caught in anti-Semitism flap. Replace "anti-semitism" with "child pornography" and you'll understand what I'm getting at...
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check.
Why does everybody use the stupid "Hello World" example to "demonstrate" how "inferior" java is? Real Java Projects are lot more than repeated calls to System.out.println()
Try reading the code of a major web site written in perl vs. one in java that uses Tag Libraries (JSP+Struts, JSF, Tapestry, etc) and you will see what I'm talking about!
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed response.
I was wondering if you could expand upon the issues surrounding copyrights and code licensing.
One of our candidate firms is advocating development with their proprietary java libraries, as the libraries' use will "ensure quality and speed development." It seems to me that this would incur a substantial risk. I.e. if we contract this firm, a larger firm might acquire them and immediately start charging us a licensing fee for the code for which we don't have a copyright/license (unless we obtain such a copyright). Is this a correct reading of the situation?
I am already convinced that CSS layouts is the way to go. I hate working with HTML tables, and was "wowed" but the power & flexibility of the approach from an article I saw on A List Apart:
However, I am concerned that only a minority of web developers out there will be experts in using CSS layouts. Further, I know first-hand that most web programmers are acustomed to laying out database query results, forms, etc. with plain old HTML tables.
Thus, we might be severely limited in our selection of web designers, potentially leading to crisis situations if we need site layout/content updated quickly. What has been your experience with such issues?
Also, anybody who has tried to extract data from documents in HTML format (either local or on the web) knows that there is an immediate advantage to XHTML compliance. Five years from now, when Management tells me they want the 500+ pages from the old web site migrated into the new web site/database/what-have-you, I will be thankful that each page is also a valid XML document.
Yes, PHP is better for prototyping because you can create something faster. But have you ever worked on a PHP application that has been around for a few years? PHP applications rapidly become maintenance nightmares after a few hands work on them. Java can be that way too, but the language 'semantic perfection' makes maintanable code a bit more natural. In the long run that translates to lower costs over the life of the project.
But Donald Knuth is probably the ultimate Comp Sci academic and he wrote TeX. I've had more than one self-taught "hackers" tell me that his books on Programming are the only "real" books on the subject.
Finally, the shorter a program is, the more comprehensible it is!
You must be a perl coder :)
I love that part in Learning Perl where the author asserts that *theoretically* every program could be reduced to a single line of code.
You know what? Never mind. You're missing the forest for the trees. The PHP4 "library" is a mess, the interview I linked to was meant to show how PhD's think that well-designed languages have specific features that enforce code consistency - of which PHP has none - ASP.NET uses compiled code, not the scripting of "classic" ASP - so that statement of yours is wrong - and finally I left the exercise of finding specific, academic criticisms of PHP itself to The Reader (you).
However, you don't have to Google at all - just read the rest of this thread. It seems like just about everyone else is agreeing that PHP has major design problems, including people who use it for a living and including, apparently, the PHP internals developers.
I can't hold you by the hand and lead you everywhere - you're going to have to do some work for yourself if you really have an open mind.
Designing a good programming language isn't just a matter of throwing together a set of features; it's a matter of establishing important principles that the programmer can rely on. It's important to follow those principles as a language is extended. Sometimes the principles themselves can be extended, but only with great care. Here are four examples of important principles in the Java language: local variables are private, you can't violate the type system, the evaluation order goes from left to right, and the "equals" method is symmetric and transitive.
PHP has very few rules that the programmer can rely on. Googling up academic criticism of PHP's "design" is left as an exercise to the reader.
You talk about variables serving "quadruple duty"; that claim can be levelled at any dynamically-typed language.
But even perl distiguishes between types of data structures with $scalar @list and #map. PHP code is very unscannable because it lacks such a feature. Even if the coder uses strict naming conventions, the variable could still end up doing "quadruple duty."
ASP has a similar problem when coded with VBScript. Well, that's why Microsoft chucked it for.NET
I'm not inclined to trust your conclusions because you state that PHP doesn't have a standard library - a completely false claim
Not a false claim. PHP5 has a standard library. PHP4 and earlier has a big mishmosh of functions that you might call a library. I wonder how much of the installed PHP code has been refactored to use the PHP5 Standard Libraries?
That has about as much to do with computer science as studies about the paint color on cars have to do with vehicular engineering.
Ummm wrong analogy. "Finite mathematics, algorithms, graph theory, computability theory" are equivalent to laws of thermodynamics and combustion. But when you need somebody to fix your car, do you call a physicist? Programming lanuages are the implementation of the comp sci theory you refer to, just as a car engine is the implementation of internal combustion theory.
One common complaint by employers has been that Comp Sci grads lack practical programming skills and now little about writing readable, maintainable code. So (suprise, suprise) many Comp Sci depts (as indicated by the linked Bibliography) are doing research to learn more about coding technique in an empirical manner - and then pass that onto their students.
Again, I'm just reporting what's actually going on, not crowing my own opinion.
*SIGH* My point was that for some reason PHP is the only language I've learned that makes a big deal over "Magic Quotes." Either the PHP authors are onto something that it happens nobody else has caught onto after 5+ years (yeah, right) or they have introduced a feature that just confuses everybody and 99% of the time gets turned off anyway.
How about instead of making coders puzzle over Magic Quotes related issues, we instead make them read an informative article on preventing cross site scripting / SQL injection. "Teach a man to fish..." etc.
I'd also hardly say that no visual cue for what type a variable is represents a serious issue. It wasn't mentioned in that article you linked to, either. What makes it an issue is the easy and automatic typecasting, and lack of a decent structure in most php.
Erm I didn't link to an "article." I linked to a bibliography - list of the many volumes of research that have been done in the last 20+ years to build empirical evidence for code reading and comprehension. There has been a lot of scientific research done to quantify exactly how people of different levels can read and comprehend code of different styles - so it's not "just a matter of taste and experience."
You're not disagreeing with me - your disagreeing with the guys who earned PhD's in this stuff!
PHP Geniuses come up with "Magic Quotes" and then pat themeselves on the back with how smart they are.
You know, a few years ago I bought PHP & MySQL Web Developement, and spent a lot of time to the 3-5 pages they spent explaining the importance of "Magic Quotes." Huh? If Magic Quotes are such a big deal, how come I never heard about them while learning JSP / ASP / Coldfusion / mod_perl / what-have-you ?
I have to ask the same question. It seems to me that PHP gained popularity as an *nix/c-Syntax alternative to Microsoft's ASP. Like ASP - quick, dirty, cheap, and not-compiled. But for all its faults, ASP at least had Option Explicit.
However, the language seems lend itself to a lot coding flaws - explicitly defined variables, variables that can do quadruple duty as scalars, arrays, maps and references with no visual cue as to what they're for, abuse of global variables, no standard library resulting in 5+ functions that do the same thing - that result in unreadable, obtuse and convoluted code.
If you re-read my comment, you will notice that I didn't "whine" about Palm's paltry warranty.
Rather, I made an observation that - based on specific language I found on their web site - Palm's strategy appears to be focused on having customers to buy a new device every 3-6 months (rather than, say, manufacturing quality hardware).
Based on the same language, it seems that the genius MBA that developed this winning strategy doesn't want people going to third-party vendors for replacement parts, either. Compare with other tech companies that actually recommend third-part parts vendors.
If Palm believed in the quality of their hardware, then they would at least offer a reasonable warranty period (one year), don't you think?
Unfortunately, it seems that PalmOne's current strategy isn't to innovate, but to make crappy devices that need to be replaced after 9-12 months.
I bought my Tungsten | E less than a year ago (April 2004). After less than three months, the chrome had completely chipped off the "down" button, last week its stereo jack stopped working, and the battery is on its way to dying.
I went to the Palm website to see about at least getting my TE's stereo jack fixed. Turns out the warranty only spans 90 days(!), after which repairs cost a $125 flat-fee(!!). Coincidence that this is almost as much as some new Palm handhelds? The support section of their website offers the following "advice:"
palmOne does not provide replacements for lost or out-of-warranty parts and accessories. If the warranty has expired for your accessory, we recommend you purchase a new one (palmOne Store).
(I ended up opening up the Tungsten myself and soldering the headphone jack connections back into place. There was barely any solder on them to begin with. Hmmmmm....)
Now don't get me wrong, I like my TE and I use it a lot. It's just too bad that Palm designed a device that isn't meant to be used that much!
For $200 + shipping, you'd think they could give me something a little more sturdy.
Wired Magazine prominently features Blake Ross on the cover of their Feb '05 issue for their lead story, "The Firefox Explosion."
Wired Mag doesn't have the cover online yet, meaning I probably got it from a newstand that put it out early (the 34th St PATH Station newstand in NYC, for those interested).
The issue also features an "interesting" piece: a fake memo from the future...written to one Bill Gates from newly-hired employee Linus Torvalds - concerning Winux, Microsoft's next-generation OS.
[Apparently, Bill's "pitch" to Linus in this post-apocalyptic future was "come on Linus...infect the Mothership;^)" ]
Anyway, I hate to sound like a pitchman for Wired, but it's worth the look.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard of the concept "one click and you're guilty?" Users of this feature who unknowingly perform a search that returns results containting offensive/illegal content may find themselves being prosecuted by local, state or Federal authorities...
Proof of concept: Google caught in anti-Semitism flap. Replace "anti-semitism" with "child pornography" and you'll understand what I'm getting at...
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check.
*sigh*
s/$SUBJECT/Word/World/
s/$SUBJECT/that/than/
Why does everybody use the stupid "Hello World" example to "demonstrate" how "inferior" java is? Real Java Projects are lot more than repeated calls to System.out.println()
Try reading the code of a major web site written in perl vs. one in java that uses Tag Libraries (JSP+Struts, JSF, Tapestry, etc) and you will see what I'm talking about!
PS - Ever heard of "auto-completion?"
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed response.
I was wondering if you could expand upon the issues surrounding copyrights and code licensing.
One of our candidate firms is advocating development with their proprietary java libraries, as the libraries' use will "ensure quality and speed development." It seems to me that this would incur a substantial risk. I.e. if we contract this firm, a larger firm might acquire them and immediately start charging us a licensing fee for the code for which we don't have a copyright/license (unless we obtain such a copyright). Is this a correct reading of the situation?
I am already convinced that CSS layouts is the way to go. I hate working with HTML tables, and was "wowed" but the power & flexibility of the approach from an article I saw on A List Apart:
Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/
However, I am concerned that only a minority of web developers out there will be experts in using CSS layouts. Further, I know first-hand that most web programmers are acustomed to laying out database query results, forms, etc. with plain old HTML tables.
Thus, we might be severely limited in our selection of web designers, potentially leading to crisis situations if we need site layout/content updated quickly. What has been your experience with such issues?
Also, anybody who has tried to extract data from documents in HTML format (either local or on the web) knows that there is an immediate advantage to XHTML compliance. Five years from now, when Management tells me they want the 500+ pages from the old web site migrated into the new web site/database/what-have-you, I will be thankful that each page is also a valid XML document.
Is there anybody proposing using Spring, or some other lightweight framework?
Not yet. I myself have no practical experience with the frameworks, but I have read Rod Johnson's J2EE Development without EJB.
As a result, I've in fact been wondering if a AoP/IOC framework should be a requirement should we go with a Java-based solution.
Do you have any practical experience with Spring or other AOP/IoC frameworks and did you observe any performance hits in production?
Yes, PHP is better for prototyping because you can create something faster. But have you ever worked on a PHP application that has been around for a few years? PHP applications rapidly become maintenance nightmares after a few hands work on them. Java can be that way too, but the language 'semantic perfection' makes maintanable code a bit more natural. In the long run that translates to lower costs over the life of the project.
:)
What he said
But Donald Knuth is probably the ultimate Comp Sci academic and he wrote TeX. I've had more than one self-taught "hackers" tell me that his books on Programming are the only "real" books on the subject.
:)
Finally, the shorter a program is, the more comprehensible it is!
You must be a perl coder
I love that part in Learning Perl where the author asserts that *theoretically* every program could be reduced to a single line of code.
Hrm...I thought you meant that you were copying-and-pasting code. In my experience, abused like crazy in scripting.
. html
But you meant you were copy-pasting URLs to find PHP libraries?
BTW -
generating PDF's
http://www.lowagie.com/iText/
dynamic graphics
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/2d/spec
menus
huh? If you have a cms like http://opencms.org/, which you should use anyway - you got menus.
DB interfaces
http://hibernate.org/
You know what? Never mind. You're missing the forest for the trees. The PHP4 "library" is a mess, the interview I linked to was meant to show how PhD's think that well-designed languages have specific features that enforce code consistency - of which PHP has none - ASP.NET uses compiled code, not the scripting of "classic" ASP - so that statement of yours is wrong - and finally I left the exercise of finding specific, academic criticisms of PHP itself to The Reader (you).
However, you don't have to Google at all - just read the rest of this thread. It seems like just about everyone else is agreeing that PHP has major design problems, including people who use it for a living and including, apparently, the PHP internals developers.
I can't hold you by the hand and lead you everywhere - you're going to have to do some work for yourself if you really have an open mind.
yes.
:P
%hash
I always make that mistake think of # being the symbol for hash map because 1) # is called "hash" but some and 2) it looks like a table.
And the code reusability is awesome , once you have the framework any application is just a few copy paste links away .
For our other readers...
Code Reusability != "copy-paste"
*shudder*
Everyone always uses System.out.println() as the example...
However, System.out.println is rarely used in production code! Most output is going to go to Swing textboxes or pushed to a browser in JSP pages. Huh?
If it's really such a hassle, just add this static function to your HelloWorld class.
And for input, Java 1.5 now has java.util.Scanner
Regarding perl:
Perl has use Strict and my()
What is the PHP equivalent?
$GLOBALS
Your conclusions may or may not be valid, but they are certainly your own conclusions and not theirs.
Growing a Language: A Conversation with Guy Steele
From the interview:
PHP has very few rules that the programmer can rely on. Googling up academic criticism of PHP's "design" is left as an exercise to the reader.
You talk about variables serving "quadruple duty"; that claim can be levelled at any dynamically-typed language.
But even perl distiguishes between types of data structures with $scalar @list and #map. PHP code is very unscannable because it lacks such a feature. Even if the coder uses strict naming conventions, the variable could still end up doing "quadruple duty."
ASP has a similar problem when coded with VBScript. Well, that's why Microsoft chucked it for
I'm not inclined to trust your conclusions because you state that PHP doesn't have a standard library - a completely false claim
Not a false claim. PHP5 has a standard library. PHP4 and earlier has a big mishmosh of functions that you might call a library. I wonder how much of the installed PHP code has been refactored to use the PHP5 Standard Libraries?
That has about as much to do with computer science as studies about the paint color on cars have to do with vehicular engineering.
Ummm wrong analogy. "Finite mathematics, algorithms, graph theory, computability theory" are equivalent to laws of thermodynamics and combustion. But when you need somebody to fix your car, do you call a physicist? Programming lanuages are the implementation of the comp sci theory you refer to, just as a car engine is the implementation of internal combustion theory.
One common complaint by employers has been that Comp Sci grads lack practical programming skills and now little about writing readable, maintainable code. So (suprise, suprise) many Comp Sci depts (as indicated by the linked Bibliography) are doing research to learn more about coding technique in an empirical manner - and then pass that onto their students.
Again, I'm just reporting what's actually going on, not crowing my own opinion.
*SIGH* My point was that for some reason PHP is the only language I've learned that makes a big deal over "Magic Quotes." Either the PHP authors are onto something that it happens nobody else has caught onto after 5+ years (yeah, right) or they have introduced a feature that just confuses everybody and 99% of the time gets turned off anyway.
How about instead of making coders puzzle over Magic Quotes related issues, we instead make them read an informative article on preventing cross site scripting / SQL injection. "Teach a man to fish..." etc.
What is so hard to understand about that?
I'd also hardly say that no visual cue for what type a variable is represents a serious issue. It wasn't mentioned in that article you linked to, either. What makes it an issue is the easy and automatic typecasting, and lack of a decent structure in most php.
Erm I didn't link to an "article." I linked to a bibliography - list of the many volumes of research that have been done in the last 20+ years to build empirical evidence for code reading and comprehension. There has been a lot of scientific research done to quantify exactly how people of different levels can read and comprehend code of different styles - so it's not "just a matter of taste and experience."
You're not disagreeing with me - your disagreeing with the guys who earned PhD's in this stuff!
PHP Geniuses come up with "Magic Quotes" and then pat themeselves on the back with how smart they are.
You know, a few years ago I bought PHP & MySQL Web Developement, and spent a lot of time to the 3-5 pages they spent explaining the importance of "Magic Quotes." Huh? If Magic Quotes are such a big deal, how come I never heard about them while learning JSP / ASP / Coldfusion / mod_perl / what-have-you ?
I have to ask the same question. It seems to me that PHP gained popularity as an *nix/c-Syntax alternative to Microsoft's ASP. Like ASP - quick, dirty, cheap, and not-compiled. But for all its faults, ASP at least had Option Explicit .
:-\
However, the language seems lend itself to a lot coding flaws - explicitly defined variables, variables that can do quadruple duty as scalars, arrays, maps and references with no visual cue as to what they're for, abuse of global variables, no standard library resulting in 5+ functions that do the same thing - that result in unreadable, obtuse and convoluted code.
(Before somebody flames me about such things being a matter of "taste" - there are academic studies out there regarding human comprehension of coding styles. These things are quantifiable. That's why it's called Computer Science - not Computer Art)
Yes, bad progammers can make even the best language suck, but PHP really gives you free reign to be more sloppy than most. Yeah, a lot of php apps look slick (phpNuke, phpAdmin, etc) but under the hood they're a mess.
Where's Michael?
If you re-read my comment, you will notice that I didn't "whine" about Palm's paltry warranty.
Rather, I made an observation that - based on specific language I found on their web site - Palm's strategy appears to be focused on having customers to buy a new device every 3-6 months (rather than, say, manufacturing quality hardware).
Based on the same language, it seems that the genius MBA that developed this winning strategy doesn't want people going to third-party vendors for replacement parts, either. Compare with other tech companies that actually recommend third-part parts vendors.
If Palm believed in the quality of their hardware, then they would at least offer a reasonable warranty period (one year), don't you think?
I bought my Tungsten | E less than a year ago (April 2004). After less than three months, the chrome had completely chipped off the "down" button, last week its stereo jack stopped working, and the battery is on its way to dying.
I went to the Palm website to see about at least getting my TE's stereo jack fixed. Turns out the warranty only spans 90 days(!), after which repairs cost a $125 flat-fee(!!). Coincidence that this is almost as much as some new Palm handhelds? The support section of their website offers the following "advice:" Huh? Why would I spend $499 on a "new one" when I can easily obtain spare parts from a third party?. I smell the work of a MBA.
(I ended up opening up the Tungsten myself and soldering the headphone jack connections back into place. There was barely any solder on them to begin with. Hmmmmm....)
Now don't get me wrong, I like my TE and I use it a lot. It's just too bad that Palm designed a device that isn't meant to be used that much!
For $200 + shipping, you'd think they could give me something a little more sturdy.
Wired Magazine prominently features Blake Ross on the cover of their Feb '05 issue for their lead story, "The Firefox Explosion."
;^)" ]
Wired Mag doesn't have the cover online yet, meaning I probably got it from a newstand that put it out early (the 34th St PATH Station newstand in NYC, for those interested).
The issue also features an "interesting" piece: a fake memo from the future...written to one Bill Gates from newly-hired employee Linus Torvalds - concerning Winux, Microsoft's next-generation OS.
[Apparently, Bill's "pitch" to Linus in this post-apocalyptic future was "come on Linus...infect the Mothership
Anyway, I hate to sound like a pitchman for Wired, but it's worth the look.