Since you've asked my my opinion I'll be honest with you, I'm not terribly impressed.
For a start, your project website is built using tables. This is enough to turn away most experienced web developers straight away (as it was for me the first time I visited your site several days ago).
My second criticism would be that your project is not set up with upgrading in mind. If I were to use your code for a project, I would expect regular security updates to the core code with a clear upgrade procedure. In most cases for PHP frameworks this just involves extracting an archive into the proper directory and writing over any files that need to be updated. However in the case of your code that would mean writing over the config file, erasing my project's settings. I am aware that it's simple to backup a file before upgrading, but that's not the point. The point is that I shouldn't have to modify any core code to use your codebase in my project.
My third criticism would be code quality. Even in the brief reading of your code I found a bug (line 70, application_header.php) and I found that your files have closing php tags which in my experience is very bad practice.
All of these are criticisms of the code itself, and ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to Drupal: community. Drupal is in its 7th actual version. Experienced web developers have re-designed that project 6 times, keeping the successful concepts and replacing the ineffective ones with better solutions. There are scores of community maintained modules already available, some of which themselves are on their 4th or 5th version. Security updates are released regularly, as well as bug fixes and feature updates.
Even if your project were superior in quality, it would take a mammoth effort by a large group of people to make it more "efficient" to start a new project with your code than Drupal.
Kudos for putting the effort in, but you have a long road ahead of you and a large number of competing PHP frameworks that many people are already familiar with. If you are really keen to help people you might consider shifting your efforts to contribute to an existing PHP project? Just a suggestion, and coming from someone who has actually taken the time to look at your project.
I have to disagree with your assessment of Drupal. The example you describe, changing the look of a web form, is incredibly easy using Drupal hooks. The fact that you have to create an "entire" module (which is probably all of 20 lines of code) to achieve this is actually one of Drupal's strengths, as it doesn't require any hacking of core code whatsoever. And since you are probably already developing a module to provide whatever custom functionality your client needs, you can just include the ONE function required to achieve this in your existing module. If you aren't developing a custom module for your client, it's likely that Drupal wasn't the best choice of CMS for the project.
In my experience Drupal is an incredibly flexible starting point for a medium/large web project. However, to take advantage of the major features of Drupal there is a significant learning period required as the system is designed differently from any other PHP framework I've had experience with. Whether you consider this learning period wasted time or a knowledge investment I suppose is a matter of opinion which will differ from web developer to web developer.
Personally I found it a very worthwhile "expenditure", and now use many Drupal concepts even in completely custom PHP projects where Drupal isn't a practical choice.
Actually, it's not a case of tomato/tomato (pronounced in an ENGLISH accent, French people say 'tomate'). When two languages are functionally equivalent then other factors must be taken into account when deciding which language to use for a project.
In the case of C# it has very similar syntax to C++ (and by extension Java), which means that many experienced developers will be familiar with the basic syntax. All that can be said of VB.NET is that existing VB 'developers' will be comfortable with the syntax.
So honestly, from which group would you rather your developers come from?
The only reason to choose VB.NET for a project is if the project is ALREADY IN VB.NET.
I think you might be missing the entire point of what he's trying to say. Of course we, as consumers, want the things we spend money on to be "good". He's saying that the press shouldn't go into the review process with too many expectations, because that will affect the way they review the game.
Imagine a movie critic visiting the set of an action movie and looking at the storyboards for an awesome looking upcoming action scene (which AFAIK would probably never happen). This is a similar scenario to a game journalist being shown a rough scene from a game and being told about "features" that haven't even been implemented yet. Now imagine that the film runs into budget / time constraints and has to drastically cut the action scene and the special effects for the film. The film critic would have all these awesome images and ideas in their head about what the movie is going to look like, but when it comes time to watch the actual film all that stuff is missing. Their review is going to pan the shit out of the movie, even though there may be plenty of other great things about it.
Ultimately the ones that suffer will be the audience and the game maker. The audience will probably be dissuaded from buying a game that might still be really fun to play, and the game maker gets panned becasue their products isn't what someone thought it would be. If game journalists were objective and critical instead of basically being fanboys, we'd get much more balanced reviews that might give us realistic impressions of the games themselves. This is true regardless of whether you consider games an art form.
BTW Most professional film makers would consider film an art form (even action films!). Just because you don't recognize the details and intricacies of great games doesn't mean they aren't there for others to enjoy. A lot of great games are art, even if they're really fun to play.
Federal income tax is unconstitutional, and illegal. The Federal income tax that was introduced in 1913 was struck down by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions, as it is neither a direct or indirect tax as set out in the Constitution. The only entities that should pay income tax are businesses, but somehow the wealthy bankers that own the Federal Reserve Bank (yes that's right, its a privately held bank) have managed to ignore that for almost the last hundred years. There is no federal law anywhere that requires you to pay income tax to the government.
In fact, 100% of federal income tax goes straight to paying interest on lonas to the government from the Federal Reserve Bank. It does not go to public services, it does not go to education or maintaining roads or anything else. It goes into the pockets of the already disgustingly rich owners of America.
Simple solution: just stop paying it. If the IRS takes you to court, simply point out that the IRS tax code is not based on or empowered by any law. After all, for you to be committing a crime, you have to be breaking a law.
There is a very badly made film that raises some very interesting points along those lines called America: Freedom to Fascism. There are also many other sources of information readily available on the web, both for and against this argument. I am not a tax expert/law expert/terribly intelligent individual, but this is all very interesting if true.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you've asked my my opinion I'll be honest with you, I'm not terribly impressed.
For a start, your project website is built using tables. This is enough to turn away most experienced web developers straight away (as it was for me the first time I visited your site several days ago).
My second criticism would be that your project is not set up with upgrading in mind. If I were to use your code for a project, I would expect regular security updates to the core code with a clear upgrade procedure. In most cases for PHP frameworks this just involves extracting an archive into the proper directory and writing over any files that need to be updated. However in the case of your code that would mean writing over the config file, erasing my project's settings. I am aware that it's simple to backup a file before upgrading, but that's not the point. The point is that I shouldn't have to modify any core code to use your codebase in my project.
My third criticism would be code quality. Even in the brief reading of your code I found a bug (line 70, application_header.php) and I found that your files have closing php tags which in my experience is very bad practice.
All of these are criticisms of the code itself, and ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to Drupal: community. Drupal is in its 7th actual version. Experienced web developers have re-designed that project 6 times, keeping the successful concepts and replacing the ineffective ones with better solutions. There are scores of community maintained modules already available, some of which themselves are on their 4th or 5th version. Security updates are released regularly, as well as bug fixes and feature updates.
Even if your project were superior in quality, it would take a mammoth effort by a large group of people to make it more "efficient" to start a new project with your code than Drupal.
Kudos for putting the effort in, but you have a long road ahead of you and a large number of competing PHP frameworks that many people are already familiar with. If you are really keen to help people you might consider shifting your efforts to contribute to an existing PHP project? Just a suggestion, and coming from someone who has actually taken the time to look at your project.
I have to disagree with your assessment of Drupal. The example you describe, changing the look of a web form, is incredibly easy using Drupal hooks. The fact that you have to create an "entire" module (which is probably all of 20 lines of code) to achieve this is actually one of Drupal's strengths, as it doesn't require any hacking of core code whatsoever. And since you are probably already developing a module to provide whatever custom functionality your client needs, you can just include the ONE function required to achieve this in your existing module. If you aren't developing a custom module for your client, it's likely that Drupal wasn't the best choice of CMS for the project.
In my experience Drupal is an incredibly flexible starting point for a medium/large web project. However, to take advantage of the major features of Drupal there is a significant learning period required as the system is designed differently from any other PHP framework I've had experience with. Whether you consider this learning period wasted time or a knowledge investment I suppose is a matter of opinion which will differ from web developer to web developer.
Personally I found it a very worthwhile "expenditure", and now use many Drupal concepts even in completely custom PHP projects where Drupal isn't a practical choice.
My thoughts EXACTLY! K17 will never be the same...
Actually, it's not a case of tomato/tomato (pronounced in an ENGLISH accent, French people say 'tomate'). When two languages are functionally equivalent then other factors must be taken into account when deciding which language to use for a project.
In the case of C# it has very similar syntax to C++ (and by extension Java), which means that many experienced developers will be familiar with the basic syntax. All that can be said of VB.NET is that existing VB 'developers' will be comfortable with the syntax.
So honestly, from which group would you rather your developers come from?
The only reason to choose VB.NET for a project is if the project is ALREADY IN VB.NET.
... on their iPhone 4, which for some reason they appear to have left at the bar...
I think you might be missing the entire point of what he's trying to say. Of course we, as consumers, want the things we spend money on to be "good". He's saying that the press shouldn't go into the review process with too many expectations, because that will affect the way they review the game. Imagine a movie critic visiting the set of an action movie and looking at the storyboards for an awesome looking upcoming action scene (which AFAIK would probably never happen). This is a similar scenario to a game journalist being shown a rough scene from a game and being told about "features" that haven't even been implemented yet. Now imagine that the film runs into budget / time constraints and has to drastically cut the action scene and the special effects for the film. The film critic would have all these awesome images and ideas in their head about what the movie is going to look like, but when it comes time to watch the actual film all that stuff is missing. Their review is going to pan the shit out of the movie, even though there may be plenty of other great things about it. Ultimately the ones that suffer will be the audience and the game maker. The audience will probably be dissuaded from buying a game that might still be really fun to play, and the game maker gets panned becasue their products isn't what someone thought it would be. If game journalists were objective and critical instead of basically being fanboys, we'd get much more balanced reviews that might give us realistic impressions of the games themselves. This is true regardless of whether you consider games an art form. BTW Most professional film makers would consider film an art form (even action films!). Just because you don't recognize the details and intricacies of great games doesn't mean they aren't there for others to enjoy. A lot of great games are art, even if they're really fun to play.
Finally, I can smoke crack and play GTA at the same time.
Federal income tax is unconstitutional, and illegal. The Federal income tax that was introduced in 1913 was struck down by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions, as it is neither a direct or indirect tax as set out in the Constitution. The only entities that should pay income tax are businesses, but somehow the wealthy bankers that own the Federal Reserve Bank (yes that's right, its a privately held bank) have managed to ignore that for almost the last hundred years. There is no federal law anywhere that requires you to pay income tax to the government.
In fact, 100% of federal income tax goes straight to paying interest on lonas to the government from the Federal Reserve Bank. It does not go to public services, it does not go to education or maintaining roads or anything else. It goes into the pockets of the already disgustingly rich owners of America.
Simple solution: just stop paying it. If the IRS takes you to court, simply point out that the IRS tax code is not based on or empowered by any law. After all, for you to be committing a crime, you have to be breaking a law.
There is a very badly made film that raises some very interesting points along those lines called America: Freedom to Fascism. There are also many other sources of information readily available on the web, both for and against this argument. I am not a tax expert/law expert/terribly intelligent individual, but this is all very interesting if true.
IM IN UR PS2 CORRUPTIN UR KIDZ!! Someone call Jack Thomson!