[GRLUG] sysadmin job opening

[Bob Kline]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:02 AM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> 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;
>
> 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, ..).
>
> 3) The syntax is fairly simple, and close enough to C for a newbie to use
> previous programming knowledge.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>         Lee
>

 Which is why some people when to ADA
and COBAL in the past.  Maintainability was
the key factor.  Programmers hate the
regimentation, which also gets to the heart
of the matter.  I doubt that a proliferation of
languages is helping much.  The issue being
whether a new variation on the same
functionality has any real payoff long term.

One could argue that whatever floats to the
top is best, but that can simply be a result of
what courses people take in school, the
instructor's take on what is good, and of
course what provides employment later on.
50 years ago what was best was what IBM
said was best.  Different forces for different
times.  Probably none more fundamentally
significant than the others.

    -- Bob
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20100201/e036ac62/attachment.htm