[BangPypers] [OT] language fanaticism

[Sidu Ponnappa]

> many bitter experiences - security is a nightmare for php apps. Take a
> look at the number of security updates wordpress has per *month* - more
> than django has had in 6 *years*.
That is based on strong correlation between PHP applications and poor
engineering.

If we're having a philosophical debate, the question then is 'What if
there was a hypothetical, well engineered open source PHP
application?'

I'm torn. Purely philosophically, I would be fine dealing with it
assuming I had the time to spare to learn PHP idioms, and that time
was otherwise spent solving real issues and not problems caused by
rubbish code. Practically though, PHP as a language makes my teeth
ache, and from what I've seen well factored PHP programs spend a lot
of time working around the limitations of the language. It's turing
complete, but pretty much the only other language that I've used that
I like less is XSLT.

I'll happily do Java if I have IntelliJ, but not without. Ditto C# if
I have ReSharper, though having to use Windows might put me off -
Windows *really* slows me down in terms of productivity. Python, Ruby,
Clojure, C++, C, JS etc. I'd be very interested in (assuming a clean,
well factored and well tested codebase, of course).

I suppose this means that I value productivity over pretty much
anything - I prefer working with languages, libraries, tools,
platforms and codebases that help me stay productive and avoid me
having to deal with bad code or waste time dealing with regressions.

Best,
Sidu.
http://c42.in

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 4:17 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-07-13 at 15:51 +0530, satyaakam goswami wrote:
>> > django - I like to sleep at night. I use apps written in all sorts
>> of
>> > languages, but never have and never will use a php app - unless it
>> is
>> > set up and supported by someone else and is running on a system for
>> > which I am in no way responsible.
>> >
>>
>> why ?  any personal bad experience or some technical reasons?
>
> many bitter experiences - security is a nightmare for php apps. Take a
> look at the number of security updates wordpress has per *month* - more
> than django has had in 6 *years*.
>
> http://wordpress-security.net/wordpress-software-security-updates/
> <<<--- do you want to live on the edge like this?
>
> Most LUG sites run php, maintained by 'experts' - they are regularly
> spammed or cracked even when the most draconian lockdown/captchas are
> implemented. Volunteers just do not have the time to spend half their
> nights applying security patches.
> <quote>
> Important note about updating Themes:
> If you have made **any** changes to your theme (tweaking things in
> style.css or changes to the template files), the changes will be
> overwritten when the theme is updated. Be ready to re-do the changes
> after updating.
> <unquote>
>
> what fun!
> --
> regards
> Kenneth Gonsalves
> http://lawgon.livejournal.com/
>
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