[GRLUG] sysadmin job opening

[Michael Mol]

On 2/1/2010 11:02 AM, L. V. Lammert wrote:
> At 10:43 AM 2/1/2010 -0500, you wrote:
>
>> Etc.  Leading to the question,  if PHP is so bad, why is it so prominently
>> used?  Why are so many willingly using garbage?  Or,why is it that some
>> think it's good?
>>
>> So why PHP?  Is there something unique that only it does?  Or is it maybe
>> that finding  people that know something about it is easier than finding
>> people who know something about a better approach?
>
> Many reasons:
>
> 1) It runs on all web platforms, even, gasp, Windoze;

A decent point, but also true of Java, Python and Perl.

>
> 2) It requires no overhead (i.e. no compiler like C or assembly, no module
> files like CPAN, no external library modules for the base install, ..).

(I'm going to assume you mean external support infrastructure, not 
execution-time overhead.)

PEAR.  And there are plenty of extensions you likely already need, if 
they aren't already compiled into the runtime.  Things like SimpleXML, 
PDO and others.

>
> 3) The syntax is fairly simple, and close enough to C for a newbie to use
> previous programming knowledge.

Certainly; It's easy to learn enough to be dangerous, and then learn 
enough to write passable code.  As someone else pointed out, the type 
conversion system can bite people, but that's also true with another 
mainstay of web development: JavaScript.

>
> 4) You can get anything you want as a project already - projects such as
> Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Silverstripe,&  phpMyAdmin make thousands of
> hours of functionality readily available.

And I use MediWiki for a production site. There are also such things 
available for Perl, Python and Java.

>
> et al
>
> PHP is not bad in itself, *some* projects or implementations are just known
> to be poorly maintained or badly designed; if there IS a problem with PHP,
> it's that there is no structure to force good programming practices.

You can't force bad programmers to be good programmers; You can only 
make it easier for others to read and fix their code.