On Thu, Mar 6, Levi Pearson wrote: > I think you're making a false equivalence here. Just because all > software has bugs doesn't mean that the number and severity of the > bugs is the same between languages. Furthermore, the main selling > point of PHP seems to be that it's *easy*, but in fact that's a huge > lie made more treacherous by the fact that it makes *bad* programs > easy, but only starts to become reasonable when you are taught to > ignore all the tantalizing "easy" bits and follow a discipline that > runs counter to the "path of least resistance" in the language. By > the time you've been redirected to the more modern bits of PHP and > learned all the things you must avoid and the various gotchas and the > disciplines that provide some semblance of sanity, you might as well > have started with a reasonable language, something like Python > perhaps, to begin with.
It occurs to me that this cuts to the heart of PHP. Its basic design takes people who have just been messing with HTML, and lets them do a bit more. Some of them then progress to the point where they either become or hire real programmers. Most of the time, they don't really mean to start a web application, unless they already happen to know PHP from some other experience. By the time they get to the point where a more reasonable language would be appropriate, they're often entrenched. Consider also that until PHP, the canonical language for web scripting was Perl. As much as PHP has its warts, I still find it much easier to maintain. How much has that transition done to make the web more interactive? Would my jobs have existed without that exposure? > Static analysis tools are great, as long as they're actually used. > How many PHP programmers on this list use static analysis tools to > check their PHP code? I've tried, but PHP's inclusion semantics got in the way. They're probably better on a smallish set of scripts than on something that uses a framework. Sadly, the framework users are more likely to use a tool. - Eric /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
