A lot of that really depends on the kind of content you're talking about. For example, on a page with numerous large images one might consider inserting place-holder elements onto which a background image is set via css. By taking this approach you're able to avoid inserting the images directly and instead give css considerably more power in presenting your page to different media types.
That's a rather narrow-minded way to look at it. Far better to gracefully degrade if the user doesn't have Flash than to say "well someone people might not have it, so it's useless!".
I think you're making the same mistake that the numerous anti-Flash zealots make, and that is assuming that bad use of a tool equals a bad tool. Technologies like Flash and AJAX and all the other technologies surrounding and supporting them can add a great deal of value to a website, but only if done correctly.
Of course with the bar being set so low for getting started in website development it's no surprise that we see the horrible messes that we do today.
I can sympathise, I used to play Ragnarok Online, and while I enjoyed it I felt constant pressure to play which eventually meant it was no longer worthwhile to play. That's one of the main reasons why I've grown quite fond of Guild Wars, another MMORPG. Despite being that type of game it manages to avoid any monthly fee at all by selling a new standalone expansion every six months. The great thing is that there is no requirement to buy all or even any of the expansions, it's entierly optional, so if you just want to keep playing as you have been then there's no need to spend more and therefore no more guilt.
Thanks for providing a bit of insight into this project, always nice to hear from the actual people behind these stories, rather than relying on vague articles and clueless paranoid slashdotters comments:P
Don't let the idiots get you down, given the opportunity I'd probably be quite interested to work on a project like that, I imagine there were some very interesting technical challenges to overcome.
I like your suggestion as it would provide a wealth of information and content to the public domain, however I expect people hoping for such copyrights would be less enthused. So, perhaps two seperate tiers of copyrights could be allowed. First one would be a 10 year copyright which would require little to no opening of the software or whatever else it is you're seeking to copyright. Alternately, if you choose to disclose details such as source code for example or DRM-less music, then you would be granted a 25 year copyright as a sort of reward for your future contribution to the public domain.
I believe it's more than a wish. In fact I read previously that they had selected the APC opcode cache for integration with PHP, the main reason being that it had a compatible license with PHP whereas other opcode caches did not.
I don't know whether you're terribly misinformed or just a troll, but that article seems to be completely incorrect. One quick google search for '"Charlie Sheen" 9/11' and hitting the "I'm feeling lucky" button and I got this story.
I'd agree with that, my only issue with your previous comment was that you seemed to be saying that there were very few good applications for OOP which I disagree with, at least with respect to my own admittedly limited experience. If I misunderstood you then you have my apologies.
I can agree with your comments to an extent with respect to OOP being touted as a magic bullet and being pushed for uses in places where it doesn't actually suit. However regarding your comments about the fundamental aspects of OOP such as reusability and encapsulation, I have to respectfully disagree.
OOP isn't a magic bullet, it won't make any code magically better somehow. If you're a bad programmer who writes crap, then all OOP allows you to do is write more complicated crap. However, OOP can be a fantastic tool when used properly. Much like XML for example, many people get caught up in the hype and only learn how to use it, not when to use it, leading to many people trying to squeeze it into places where it just doesn't fit.
Re:Interesting approach, though I wouldn't use it
on
Going Dynamic with PHP
·
· Score: 1
Since I had to atttempt (unsuccessfully) to find out what OSQL is on wikipedia, I'd have to say no.
I'd be curious to know what it is however, and why it is you wondered if what I discussed in my earlier post was related to it.
While the approach in the article does appear to be quite good for rapid code generation, I personally wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole if I had a choice, though I was unfortunate enough to have to work with such a setup recently.
The problem with this kind of setup is that while it works well for simple work, the moment you try and do something more complex, you'll find you have to fight against the API, and the code will end up being a mess in order to do a task that should be quite simple.
Naturally I have a somewhat different approach that's somewhat weird, but I've enjoyed great success when using it. I have one database object called 'database' funnily enough;) Inside this database object there are four other objects, select, insert, update & delete. Now, each of these four objects aren't anything special, they're simply wrappers around methods of a particular type (select queries go into select for example).
To give an example, where the author in the example wrote
This method will return a result object, from which I can retrieve the id simply by typing
$book_result->fetch_insert_id();
Now how does the internals of this work? I won't say, simply because it doesn't actually matter, which is the whole point of this kind of setup. It provides a very simple API, so that in the back I can make it work however I want, allowing me to easily switch in different databases, or if I wanted to I could make it work with flat text files. This way I keep all my messy SQL contained in one area and I don't see it anywhere else, making it much easier and cleaner than the method offered in the article. However, my method will require more work to setup initially, and naturally it won't automatically adapt to changing database tables... though I have to wonder about the quality of a project wherein the tables are changing frequently, that's the kind of thing one should have planned out from the beginning.
That said, I'm sure there is some value in setups like the one mentioned in the article, and my own database abstraction code is hardly perfect as I'm still something of a beginner at programming in many ways.
I very much doubt that any professional PHP developers would touch projects like phpBB or phpNuke unless they were paid a great deal for their time. Why? Because the code base for those projects is appallingly bad. I have nothing against the projects themselves, infact I respect them for the popularity they have gained and the fact that they do work reasonably well, but honestly the codebase is terrible and really should be heavily refactored/rewritten from scratch.
So often I've seen people on slashdot saying how inevitable it is that google will be evil since it has to at the end of the day make money for shareholders. While that is true, it does have to make money for shareholders, the fact that 'Do no evil' is in the google charter does ensure that it doesn't have to choose evil if given a choice between evil with profits or good with losses.
*sigh* I'm getting really tired of seeing this kind of bullcrap spouted all over slashdot whenever Google gets mentioned. Believing point blank that google is evil because they now have a china specific version of their search engine is ludicrous.
Firstly the chinese specific portal was created because the experience delivered by their worldwide portal was less than adequate (whether this is the result of filtering thanks to the great firewall of china I don't know). As a result people in china now have a search engine that works. Does it filter out some content? Yes, but it clearly indicates when it has. As a result people in China now get a search engine that lets them know clearly that information is being censored (which may spur some to try and find what that is), and they are being given a resource which cannot possibly filter out everything, there will undoubtedly be holes through which the chinese people can educate themselves.
Ultimately the chinese people see a gain from Google opening its china specific search, which is what it's really about isn't it; the good of the chinese people.
Code is like a foreign language - you either know it or you don't. Comments are for people who don't know it; and if they don't know it, they need to find another job or learn the language.
To take your analogy of code being a foreign language on step further then, writing a program is somewhat akin to writing a tale. I would therefore liken writing code without comments to writing a story with no naration. Yes, it can work, but a narator works well to expose the underlying purpose of the tale.
Quite frankly it's people like yourself and apparently many other slashdotters who are wrong with the computer programming industry. Good coding standards can only take you so far without good comments and documentation to back it up.
Does anyone know of a source for good downloadable Ruby documentation? I did look over the documentation section on the ruby website briefly, but what was offered there was far too web based for my tastes, and I'd personally prefer something closer to a downloadable.chm file like the PHP documentation. Can someone please provide a link to the closest equivalent?
It does work in IE, just so long as you have a doctype (tested with 4.01 tranisitional and XHTML 1.0).
You're right though, a great deal of the CSS spec is counter-intuitive, and though I wouldn't dare go back to table layouts now that I'm used to CSS, it could have greatly helped my progress if it were better designed (and supported).
No, I'd most definitely give an answer reflecting why I'm doing what I'm doing, as I can easily make the assumption that the person asking me is well aware what it is I'm doing, and infact wishes to know why I'm doing it.
You might of course explain what it is you're doing if the task were of sufficient complexity that it was reasonable to assume the asker would have trouble understanding it. However, when applying that to coding it means either of two things. 1. Your coding style needs work and you should attempt to refactor it to improve readability, or 2. Your task is extremely complicated and impossible to break down into a more readable fashion.
Realistically 2. should be a very very rare occurence, one you should minimise wherever possible. Certainly I will agree it is sometimes necessary to comment on what it is your code is doing, but commenting should never be used as a crutch for a poor coding style, which more than anything is something I believe the original poster was arguing against. Certianly you should never comment what even the simplest things are doing, e.g. //Defines an int named 'integer_one'
int integer_one
is completely useless.
Commenting sparingly where appropriate is crucial. Commenting excessively can be as harmful or even more harmful than not commenting at all
You've completely misunderstood what was meant. I'll show you, for your example psuedo code, if I were to comment it saying what the code does, it would look like this.
//Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar, etc. Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar,...
If I were to describe why the code does what it does, it would look like this
//Combine various ingredients to make a cake Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar,...
You're wrong to say that what the code does is hard to tell from the code alone, because I can clearly see that what it is doing is combining a series of ingredients. Why it is doing that is a job for the comments if the code itself doesn't make it immediately obvious.
Furthermore, I'm tired of people whining about ID not being falsifiable. It is falsifiable, come up with a model that shows how life can happen on its own.
You're wrong, ID is not falsifiable. Even if we can prove ways that evolution could have happened, such that it doesn't seem as unlikely as it does now, it would do nothing to dispel the notion of ID. Until science can prove that evolution did happen (which is likely impossible), ID cannot be dissproven, we can only prove that evolution could have occured. It's a fine distinction, but it does mean that ID is not falsifiable, that's the best thing about it for those that cling to it, they can simply say this is how it happened without having to worry about annoying little details like evidence.
...are articles like this getting posted on the frontpage (or at all)? All the article comes down to is a rant from an idiot who appears frustrated with their ineptness at being able to use image editing programs.
Personally I quite like the idea of AJAX, that of being able to dynamically update web pages, however I'm not sure I'd consider it revolutionary in enabling that. However there is one thing I am curious about is why I should use AJAX over an alternative such as a hidden iframe? Certainly, the AJAX approach will likely be cleaner, as working with iframe's can be a pain to put it lightly, but in doing so I would sacrifice some browser compatibility, not necessarily a vast amount, but enough to cause me some degree of consternation for products I would hope to sell.
I'd like to hear opinions from web developers who have worked with both as to what you view the pro's and cons to be, as I'm unfortunately still quite inexperienced in these matters, having only started training in web development this year.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of that really depends on the kind of content you're talking about. For example, on a page with numerous large images one might consider inserting place-holder elements onto which a background image is set via css. By taking this approach you're able to avoid inserting the images directly and instead give css considerably more power in presenting your page to different media types.
That's a rather narrow-minded way to look at it. Far better to gracefully degrade if the user doesn't have Flash than to say "well someone people might not have it, so it's useless!".
I think you're making the same mistake that the numerous anti-Flash zealots make, and that is assuming that bad use of a tool equals a bad tool. Technologies like Flash and AJAX and all the other technologies surrounding and supporting them can add a great deal of value to a website, but only if done correctly.
Of course with the bar being set so low for getting started in website development it's no surprise that we see the horrible messes that we do today.
I agree, if they insist on a real diamond then you have to wonder what it is they're really interested in.
Congrats on nabbing yourself a great woman, I swear there aren't enough of them out there.
I can sympathise, I used to play Ragnarok Online, and while I enjoyed it I felt constant pressure to play which eventually meant it was no longer worthwhile to play. That's one of the main reasons why I've grown quite fond of Guild Wars, another MMORPG. Despite being that type of game it manages to avoid any monthly fee at all by selling a new standalone expansion every six months. The great thing is that there is no requirement to buy all or even any of the expansions, it's entierly optional, so if you just want to keep playing as you have been then there's no need to spend more and therefore no more guilt.
Thanks for providing a bit of insight into this project, always nice to hear from the actual people behind these stories, rather than relying on vague articles and clueless paranoid slashdotters comments :P
Don't let the idiots get you down, given the opportunity I'd probably be quite interested to work on a project like that, I imagine there were some very interesting technical challenges to overcome.
I like your suggestion as it would provide a wealth of information and content to the public domain, however I expect people hoping for such copyrights would be less enthused. So, perhaps two seperate tiers of copyrights could be allowed. First one would be a 10 year copyright which would require little to no opening of the software or whatever else it is you're seeking to copyright. Alternately, if you choose to disclose details such as source code for example or DRM-less music, then you would be granted a 25 year copyright as a sort of reward for your future contribution to the public domain.
I believe it's more than a wish. In fact I read previously that they had selected the APC opcode cache for integration with PHP, the main reason being that it had a compatible license with PHP whereas other opcode caches did not.
I don't know whether you're terribly misinformed or just a troll, but that article seems to be completely incorrect. One quick google search for '"Charlie Sheen" 9/11' and hitting the "I'm feeling lucky" button and I got this story.
I'm fairly certain that it's rechargable.
I'd agree with that, my only issue with your previous comment was that you seemed to be saying that there were very few good applications for OOP which I disagree with, at least with respect to my own admittedly limited experience. If I misunderstood you then you have my apologies.
I can agree with your comments to an extent with respect to OOP being touted as a magic bullet and being pushed for uses in places where it doesn't actually suit. However regarding your comments about the fundamental aspects of OOP such as reusability and encapsulation, I have to respectfully disagree.
OOP isn't a magic bullet, it won't make any code magically better somehow. If you're a bad programmer who writes crap, then all OOP allows you to do is write more complicated crap. However, OOP can be a fantastic tool when used properly. Much like XML for example, many people get caught up in the hype and only learn how to use it, not when to use it, leading to many people trying to squeeze it into places where it just doesn't fit.
Since I had to atttempt (unsuccessfully) to find out what OSQL is on wikipedia, I'd have to say no.
I'd be curious to know what it is however, and why it is you wondered if what I discussed in my earlier post was related to it.
While the approach in the article does appear to be quite good for rapid code generation, I personally wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole if I had a choice, though I was unfortunate enough to have to work with such a setup recently.
The problem with this kind of setup is that while it works well for simple work, the moment you try and do something more complex, you'll find you have to fight against the API, and the code will end up being a mess in order to do a task that should be quite simple.
Naturally I have a somewhat different approach that's somewhat weird, but I've enjoyed great success when using it. I have one database object called 'database' funnily enough ;) Inside this database object there are four other objects, select, insert, update & delete. Now, each of these four objects aren't anything special, they're simply wrappers around methods of a particular type (select queries go into select for example).
To give an example, where the author in the example wrote
I would simply write
This method will return a result object, from which I can retrieve the id simply by typing
Now how does the internals of this work? I won't say, simply because it doesn't actually matter, which is the whole point of this kind of setup. It provides a very simple API, so that in the back I can make it work however I want, allowing me to easily switch in different databases, or if I wanted to I could make it work with flat text files. This way I keep all my messy SQL contained in one area and I don't see it anywhere else, making it much easier and cleaner than the method offered in the article. However, my method will require more work to setup initially, and naturally it won't automatically adapt to changing database tables... though I have to wonder about the quality of a project wherein the tables are changing frequently, that's the kind of thing one should have planned out from the beginning.
That said, I'm sure there is some value in setups like the one mentioned in the article, and my own database abstraction code is hardly perfect as I'm still something of a beginner at programming in many ways.
I very much doubt that any professional PHP developers would touch projects like phpBB or phpNuke unless they were paid a great deal for their time. Why? Because the code base for those projects is appallingly bad. I have nothing against the projects themselves, infact I respect them for the popularity they have gained and the fact that they do work reasonably well, but honestly the codebase is terrible and really should be heavily refactored/rewritten from scratch.
So often I've seen people on slashdot saying how inevitable it is that google will be evil since it has to at the end of the day make money for shareholders. While that is true, it does have to make money for shareholders, the fact that 'Do no evil' is in the google charter does ensure that it doesn't have to choose evil if given a choice between evil with profits or good with losses.
*sigh* I'm getting really tired of seeing this kind of bullcrap spouted all over slashdot whenever Google gets mentioned. Believing point blank that google is evil because they now have a china specific version of their search engine is ludicrous.
Firstly the chinese specific portal was created because the experience delivered by their worldwide portal was less than adequate (whether this is the result of filtering thanks to the great firewall of china I don't know). As a result people in china now have a search engine that works. Does it filter out some content? Yes, but it clearly indicates when it has. As a result people in China now get a search engine that lets them know clearly that information is being censored (which may spur some to try and find what that is), and they are being given a resource which cannot possibly filter out everything, there will undoubtedly be holes through which the chinese people can educate themselves.
Ultimately the chinese people see a gain from Google opening its china specific search, which is what it's really about isn't it; the good of the chinese people.
Code is like a foreign language - you either know it or you don't. Comments are for people who don't know it; and if they don't know it, they need to find another job or learn the language.
To take your analogy of code being a foreign language on step further then, writing a program is somewhat akin to writing a tale. I would therefore liken writing code without comments to writing a story with no naration. Yes, it can work, but a narator works well to expose the underlying purpose of the tale.
Quite frankly it's people like yourself and apparently many other slashdotters who are wrong with the computer programming industry. Good coding standards can only take you so far without good comments and documentation to back it up.
Does anyone know of a source for good downloadable Ruby documentation? I did look over the documentation section on the ruby website briefly, but what was offered there was far too web based for my tastes, and I'd personally prefer something closer to a downloadable .chm file like the PHP documentation. Can someone please provide a link to the closest equivalent?
It does work in IE, just so long as you have a doctype (tested with 4.01 tranisitional and XHTML 1.0). You're right though, a great deal of the CSS spec is counter-intuitive, and though I wouldn't dare go back to table layouts now that I'm used to CSS, it could have greatly helped my progress if it were better designed (and supported).
No, I'd most definitely give an answer reflecting why I'm doing what I'm doing, as I can easily make the assumption that the person asking me is well aware what it is I'm doing, and infact wishes to know why I'm doing it.
You might of course explain what it is you're doing if the task were of sufficient complexity that it was reasonable to assume the asker would have trouble understanding it. However, when applying that to coding it means either of two things. 1. Your coding style needs work and you should attempt to refactor it to improve readability, or 2. Your task is extremely complicated and impossible to break down into a more readable fashion.
Realistically 2. should be a very very rare occurence, one you should minimise wherever possible. Certainly I will agree it is sometimes necessary to comment on what it is your code is doing, but commenting should never be used as a crutch for a poor coding style, which more than anything is something I believe the original poster was arguing against. Certianly you should never comment what even the simplest things are doing, e.g.
//Defines an int named 'integer_one'
int integer_one
is completely useless.
Commenting sparingly where appropriate is crucial. Commenting excessively can be as harmful or even more harmful than not commenting at all
You've completely misunderstood what was meant. I'll show you, for your example psuedo code, if I were to comment it saying what the code does, it would look like this.
//Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar, etc. ...
Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar,
If I were to describe why the code does what it does, it would look like this
//Combine various ingredients to make a cake ...
Combine an egg, some flour, some milk, some sugar,
You're wrong to say that what the code does is hard to tell from the code alone, because I can clearly see that what it is doing is combining a series of ingredients. Why it is doing that is a job for the comments if the code itself doesn't make it immediately obvious.
Furthermore, I'm tired of people whining about ID not being falsifiable. It is falsifiable, come up with a model that shows how life can happen on its own.
You're wrong, ID is not falsifiable. Even if we can prove ways that evolution could have happened, such that it doesn't seem as unlikely as it does now, it would do nothing to dispel the notion of ID. Until science can prove that evolution did happen (which is likely impossible), ID cannot be dissproven, we can only prove that evolution could have occured. It's a fine distinction, but it does mean that ID is not falsifiable, that's the best thing about it for those that cling to it, they can simply say this is how it happened without having to worry about annoying little details like evidence.
...are articles like this getting posted on the frontpage (or at all)? All the article comes down to is a rant from an idiot who appears frustrated with their ineptness at being able to use image editing programs.
Personally I quite like the idea of AJAX, that of being able to dynamically update web pages, however I'm not sure I'd consider it revolutionary in enabling that. However there is one thing I am curious about is why I should use AJAX over an alternative such as a hidden iframe? Certainly, the AJAX approach will likely be cleaner, as working with iframe's can be a pain to put it lightly, but in doing so I would sacrifice some browser compatibility, not necessarily a vast amount, but enough to cause me some degree of consternation for products I would hope to sell.
I'd like to hear opinions from web developers who have worked with both as to what you view the pro's and cons to be, as I'm unfortunately still quite inexperienced in these matters, having only started training in web development this year.