42 replies to this topic

[Dynamo_Maestro]

I am going to assume people are suggesting ASP.NET MVC and not ASP.NET WebForms when they say ASP.NET ;)

[tstrimple]

I am going to assume people are suggesting ASP.NET MVC and not ASP.NET WebForms when they say ASP.NET ;)

There is only one kind of ASP.NET development and that's MVC. Just like the Star Wars prequels, WebForms does not exist.

[azonicrider]

You're also wrong on the HTML5 front. Many modern website developers are using it quite successfully for enhancing website experiences for users on the latest browsers, while also providing a graceful failure for browsers that do not support it.

By redirecting them to the download page of the latest version of Firefox?

But seriously, I couldn't live without the new HTML5 tags. They're so useful with laying out websites, instead of just using div tags everywhere.

[superman3275]

Well, I just got a 95 on my HTML online quiz (w3schools.cm) and a 90 in CSS. I'm reading about asp.net and JavaScript now, and I really like it. I recently used HTML5's new structure tags (Nav, article, section, aside) and div's combined with CSS to make a website with a "wooden" feel. It's pretty awesome.

[heavycat]

"How about PHP?"

"It's awful. Community sucks. Toss it."

"Flash?"

"Crap. Bloated. Everybody hates it."

"Why?"

"Because it works."

"What about basic HTML?"

"HTML5 is better."

"So the right answer is to throw out 100,000 man-years worth of working technology in favor of this new thing? What happens when HTML5 is widely used?"

"We'll toss it and start over. Just like we've been doing since 1961. What, you think everything being broken all the time is by accident?"

If we built buildings the same way we build software the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
-- Gerald Weinberg

Edited by heavycat, 10 December 2012 - 11:56 PM.

[tstrimple]

~crap~

You sound like someone who doesn't like or understand learning new things. There are objectively better ways of doing things now than there were 10 years ago, and to suggest that we should stick with something just because a lot of man hours have been put into it is idiotic. Just like why houses aren't built out of brick and mortar any more, there are cheaper, more efficient ways of doing things now.

There are also plenty of reasons to not want to run Flash...

Lack of Flash Gives MacBook Air Two Extra Hours of Battery Life
Flash Player : Security Vulnerabilities

If we built buildings the same way we build software the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
-- Gerald Weinberg

This is also ridiculous. We have woodpeckers and worse in the software world. We have people actively trying to compromise systems and while it causes problems for some, it's hardly catastrophic to the industry as a whole.

Edited by tstrimple, 11 December 2012 - 12:15 AM.

[way2lazy2care]

You sound like someone who doesn't like or understand learning new things. There are objectively better ways of doing things now than there were 10 years ago, and to suggest that we should stick with something just because a lot of man hours have been put into it is idiotic. Just like why houses aren't built out of brick and mortar any more, there are cheaper, more efficient ways of doing things now.

You know they still build a lot of houses out of brick and mortar...

I think through this thread you are jumping to some rather vast conclusions about what people are saying. There is a tremendous difference between adopting new technology when it is ready and mature and throwing away 100s of years of man hours at the slightest wind of change. The former is slow to adapt, but the latter will never see anything released because there is ALWAYS something new that changes the way you develop software.

You seem to be taking personal offense. I'm not a huge fan of that article either. It paints a gray issue as totally black and white. It also makes some rather bold assumptions that php's negatives, of which there are many, are not in any way balanced by it's positives, which are a very significant reason it's used so prevalently in the first place.

[SimonForsman]

You sound like someone who doesn't like or understand learning new things. There are objectively better ways of doing things now than there were 10 years ago, and to suggest that we should stick with something just because a lot of man hours have been put into it is idiotic. Just like why houses aren't built out of brick and mortar any more, there are cheaper, more efficient ways of doing things now.

You know they still build a lot of houses out of brick and mortar...

I think through this thread you are jumping to some rather vast conclusions about what people are saying. There is a tremendous difference between adopting new technology when it is ready and mature and throwing away 100s of years of man hours at the slightest wind of change. The former is slow to adapt, but the latter will never see anything released because there is ALWAYS something new that changes the way you develop software.

You seem to be taking personal offense. I'm not a huge fan of that article either. It paints a gray issue as totally black and white. It also makes some rather bold assumptions that php's negatives, of which there are many, are not in any way balanced by it's positives, which are a very significant reason it's used so prevalently in the first place.

Indeed, there are still some very valid reasons to use PHP, third party code being the big one. (Extending Joomla or Wordpress using a language other than PHP is a rather painful exercise for example), There isn't much positive to say about the language itself though. That it somewhat resembles C (and thus looks familiar to most programmers) might possibly be its only advantage (And back when the alternative was to use classic ASP with VBScript it was a huge advantage). Things have improved slightly in later versions but once you compare it to the alternatives the language is just a disappointment.

My personal favourite by far is python+django, any webdeveloper who hasn't tried it yet should take it for a test drive, i can almost guarantee that they'll fall in love with it.

[tstrimple]

You know they still build a lot of houses out of brick and mortar...

And they are more expensive, slower to build and far less energy efficient. What's your point?

You seem to be taking personal offense. I'm not a huge fan of that article either. It paints a gray issue as totally black and white. It also makes some rather bold assumptions that php's negatives, of which there are many, are not in any way balanced by it's positives, which are a very significant reason it's used so prevalently in the first place.

PHP's positives are also negative as well. It has a very active community. The majority of it's community however are amateurs. It's very much a case of the blind leading the blind and occasionally someone sees the light and realize how bad PHP is as a language and moves on to something else.

I used PHP for years. It was my first back end web development language and like most other PHP developers, I wrote some terribly designed websites. When I realized there was something wrong with having my SQL inline next to my HTML, I started looking for better ways of writing applications in PHP so I turned to frameworks like Cake and Symphony. They managed to make things better for a while, but it was certainly refreshing to be able to jump ship and work on an intelligently designed language like C#.

I won't say don't use PHP. There are sometimes instances where that is the best business choice to make, such as if you have a team of experienced PHP developers with no experience outside of PHP. Use what they know! Don't waste cycles trying to learn on top of building a new product. Anything you can do with one backend technology, you can do with another. It's just a matter of how much you have to fight the language you're working on to get things accomplished.

What I'm saying is, if you're new to web development and looking to learn, stay away from PHP. It's a black hole of poor language design, lousy management and amateur users.

[tstrimple]

Indeed, there are still some very valid reasons to use PHP, third party code being the big one. (Extending Joomla or Wordpress using a language other than PHP is a rather painful exercise for example),

It's pretty painful with PHP as well ;)

I agree with this for prototyping or standing up a simple content website which requires minimal coding changes.

[way2lazy2care]

You know they still build a lot of houses out of brick and mortar...

And they are more expensive, slower to build and far less energy efficient. What's your point?

They're more expensive, but it really doesn't take that much more time to build these days and they're more energy efficient than a lot of new houses these days. The point is you're generalizing an old methodology as a bad methodology. Just because it's old doesn't mean it does not have situations where it is better.

PHP's positives are also negative as well. It has a very active community. The majority of it's community however are amateurs. It's very much a case of the blind leading the blind and occasionally someone sees the light and realize how bad PHP is as a language and moves on to something else.

This is the same with pretty much every community. I have seen tons of bad C++ code. I have seen tons of bad Java code. I have seen tons of bad javascript. The problem isn't that most php developers are amatuers; the problem is that most people are amatuers. Maybe php's nature of being friendly to novice coders amplifies the voice of novices in communities, but I wouldn't say by any means that php is in isolation in having a large base of amatuers.

What I'm saying is, if you're new to web development and looking to learn, stay away from PHP. It's a black hole of poor language design, lousy management and amateur users.

This might be what you're trying to say, but it is coming across more like, "PHP SUCKS. YOU SUCK BECAUSE YOU THINK IT HAS REASONABLE USE CASES. YOU ALL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WEB DEVELOPMENT. LEARN TO USE A REAL LANGUAGE SCRIPT KIDDIES." It may not be quite how you intend to come across, but you're being very abrasive toward people who hold differing viewpoints and outside of some semantic errors the points being made by them are at least worth voicing.

[tstrimple]

This is the same with pretty much every community. I have seen tons of bad C++ code. I have seen tons of bad Java code. I have seen tons of bad javascript. The problem isn't that most php developers are amatuers; the problem is that most people are amatuers. Maybe php's nature of being friendly to novice coders amplifies the voice of novices in communities, but I wouldn't say by any means that php is in isolation in having a large base of amatuers.

There is bad code and bad programmers in every language. What I'm talking about is the core community. The core ASP.NET MVC community for instance is very sharp and they are actively improving patterns and practices as well as having significant influence over the direction of the MVC framework itself. Same with node. The code team is not true of the core PHP community. They stubbornly defend every blemish and wart the language has, and lets be honest, there are a lot of them.

This might be what you're trying to say, but it is coming across more like, "PHP SUCKS. YOU SUCK BECAUSE YOU THINK IT HAS REASONABLE USE CASES. YOU ALL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WEB DEVELOPMENT. LEARN TO USE A REAL LANGUAGE SCRIPT KIDDIES." It may not be quite how you intend to come across, but you're being very abrasive toward people who hold differing viewpoints and outside of some semantic errors the points being made by them are at least worth voicing.

Fair enough. I'm okay with that. If I save even one developer from stumbling into the abyss that is PHP due to my dramatic arguments against it, I am happy. ;)

To be fair though, this thread is about a newbie wanting to get into web development. Not about choosing a web server technology from a business standpoint.

Edited by tstrimple, 11 December 2012 - 01:23 PM.

[Madhed]

php is cheap, available virtually anywhere, reasonably fast and has a huge existing codebase. That's about it. It's ideal to get started with web development and should be good for small to medium sized projects.
Is it a good language? No. But since the competition in this market is so strong it is often the best coice

[ChaosEngine]

This is the same with pretty much every community. I have seen tons of bad C++ code. I have seen tons of bad Java code. I have seen tons of bad javascript. The problem isn't that most php developers are amatuers; the problem is that most people are amatuers. Maybe php's nature of being friendly to novice coders amplifies the voice of novices in communities, but I wouldn't say by any means that php is in isolation in having a large base of amatuers.

The difference is you can write good code in C++, Java , javascript. Php is just broken.

Seriously, did you not read the article that was posted? And he's not alone either.

This is php.

php is cheap, available virtually anywhere, reasonably fast and has a huge existing codebase. That's about it. It's ideal to get started with web development and should be good for small to medium sized projects.
Is it a good language? No. But since the competition in this market is so strong it is often the best coice

So what? The same criteria can be applied to python or asp.net without the supermassive black hole level of suck that is php.
Only use it if you have a bloody good reason to.

[Shippou]

As of when I posted this:
IE ( 26% market share ) doesn't support 95% of HTML5
Chrome ( 37% market share ) doesn't fully implement HTML5

That means that over 70% of web browsers that click on one of my sites, will have issues ( Source: HERE )
"Failing Gracefully" usually refers to making some Java Script equivalent .... It takes 5 times longer to do this ..... also have to deal with browsers that do not have Java Script ....

Also, PHP has it's own stack trace when something goes wrong - I get all sorts of orange boxes on my testing server telling me exactly what broke, and were it is.

** Post a link to an anti PHP page that doesn't worship another language, and I may read more than the first paragraph.

Edited by Shippou, 11 December 2012 - 05:31 PM.

[tstrimple]

A of when I posted this:
IE ( 26% market share ) doesn't support 95% of HTML5
Chrome ( 37% market share ) doesn't fully implement HTML5
That means that over 70% of web browsers that click on one of my sites, will have issues ( Source: HERE )
"Failing Gracefully" usually refers to making some Java Script equivalent .... It takes 5 times longer to do this ..... also have to deal with browsers that do not have Java Script ....

Once again your ignorance is showing. You act as if all browsers have to support 100% of HTML5 features for any of it to be useful which is completely untrue. You are also implying that javascript is an alternative to HTML5 when in reality HTML5 relies heavily on Javascript and CSS.

Also, PHP has it's own stack trace when something goes wrong - I get all sorts of orange boxes on my testing server telling me exactly what broke, and were it is.

Every modern language supports stack traces. Not exactly a huge selling feature of PHP.

** Post a link to an anti PHP page that doesn't worship another language, and I may read more than the first paragraph.

I already did and you had trouble comprehending it.

[ChaosEngine]

IE ( 26% market share ) doesn't support 95% of HTML5
Chrome ( 37% market share ) doesn't fully implement HTML5

That means that over 70% of web browsers that click on one of my sites, will have issues ( Source: HERE )

Nothing fully implements HTML5. The standard isn't even due to be finalised until 2014.

But in practical terms there are plenty of sites using HTML5 right now, because the majority of it works fine. Chrome, for instance, supports more than 90% of the spec.
Safari, IE 10 and Firefox still lag behind, but they're getting there. Even IE9 has some HTML5 support.

Not to mention your stats are ignoring mobile browsing which is the fastest growing market segment.

[Shippou]

@ tstrimple

One of your arguments was that PHP has no debugging capabilities.

The story in question has a lot of ... code torture and off the wall statements - I can not take something that makes statements like this seriously.

3 random examples.

array() and a few dozen similar constructs are not functions. array on its own means nothing, $func = "array"; $func(); doesn’t work.

^^ No crap, you didn't declare $func as a definition or function. It was declared as a string.

@fopen('http://example.com/not-existing-file' 'r');

What will it do?

• If PHP was compiled with --disable-url-fopen-wrapper, it won’t work. (Docs don’t say what “won’t work” means; returns null, throws exception?) Note that this flag was removed in PHP 5.2.5.
• If allow_url_fopen is disabled in php.ini, this still won’t work. (How? No idea.)
• Because of the @, the warning about the non-existent file won’t be printed.

If you disable fopen in the config files, it won;t work - this is a no brainer ! If you disable the warning using "@", it won't be printed - this is also a no brainer

Global variables need a global declaration before they can be used.

No #### Sherlock. Almost all oo languages have global and local variables.

Edited by Shippou, 11 December 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[tstrimple]

One of your arguments was that PHP has no debugging capabilities.

Not no debugging, just bad debugging. There is no interactive debugger for example, and PHP's parsing error messages are often useless.

http://phpsadness.com/sad/44

array() and a few dozen similar constructs are not functions. array on its own means nothing, $func = "array"; $func(); doesn’t work.

^^ No crap, you didn't declare $func as a definition or function. It was declared as a string.

Apparently you don't even understand the language you're trying to defend. In PHP if you throw parens after a variable it will try to execute the string value as a function name.

http://php.net/manual/en/functions.variable-functions.php

The point the author was making was that php has a handful of things that look like functions, but are actually language constructs and behave differently than actual functions.

@fopen('http://example.com/not-existing-file' 'r');

What will it do?

• If PHP was compiled with --disable-url-fopen-wrapper, it won’t work. (Docs don’t say what “won’t work” means; returns null, throws exception?) Note that this flag was removed in PHP 5.2.5.
• If allow_url_fopen is disabled in php.ini, this still won’t work. (How? No idea.)
• Because of the @, the warning about the non-existent file won’t be printed.

If you disable fopen in the config files, it won;t work - this is a no brainer ! If you disable the warning using "@", it won't be printed - this is also a no brainer

Once again, you're missing the point even though he summed it up for you nicely right after.

"I can’t tell how this innocuous function call will behave without consulting compile-time flags, server-wide configuration, and configuration done in my program. And this is all built in behavior."

Global variables need a global declaration before they can be used.

No #### Sherlock. Almost all oo languages have global and local variables.

It's not the concept of globals that's the problem, it's how it implements globals. Most languages will default to the global variable unless you specifically say that you are creating a local variable. PHP does the opposite where it will automatically create a local variable unless you specifically ask to use the global version.

[ChaosEngine]

@tstrimple. Give up man, it's clear he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Frankly, after reading some of his posting history, I'm not surprised that he can only get work 4 months a year, despite his "technical certifications out the ###".