PHP Refugees

[u-Bob]

50 ways to do things in perl

[brentbacardi]

No offence but a lot of coders do have sticks stuck so far up their ass. Just because code may be sloppy as fuck and far from elegant doesn't mean it sucks! The person on the front end would never know the difference, so for people running their own sites, its not such a big deal as long as it makes sense to them. Yet I have spoke with a few programmers who are like "Oh its sloppy, you suck balls"... doesn't matter if it does something really fucking cool or not.

That being said it is better to be efficient and neat etc for many reasons but jeez... just sayin.

[2012]

[Paul]

Bookmarked

[brentbacardi]

Yes! Exactly like that! lol

[raymor]

Just because code may be sloppy as fuck and far from elegant doesn't mean it sucks!

Very well put. Wrong 90% of the time, but very well phrased. Reminds me of a certain president. Well, wrong 50% of the time - only for publicly accessible web sites or code used more than once. Seriously, sloppy normally means you can't be sure what the code will do in edge cases. What if that list you're working on happens to be empty? Sloppy, far from elegant code will probably break on an empty list. (Ex. code to modify a password file that happens to be empty because it's a new site, or code to find the middle of a file that happens to be empty.)

Further, show me any sloppy code that isn't vulnerable to an evil null attack. Sloppy coders probably don't know what an evil null attack is, and therefore don't know they've just allowed the bad guys control of the server. It may well be fine for you own personal one-time use. Half the code I write is like that - use once and throw away. That's a very different standard from creating a professional product that's on a public web site exposed to the hackers' bots.

[mafia_man]

No offence but a lot of coders do have sticks stuck so far up their ass. Just because code may be sloppy as fuck and far from elegant doesn't mean it sucks! The person on the front end would never know the difference, so for people running their own sites, its not such a big deal as long as it makes sense to them. Yet I have spoke with a few programmers who are like "Oh its sloppy, you suck balls"... doesn't matter if it does something really fucking cool or not.

That being said it is better to be efficient and neat etc for many reasons but jeez... just sayin.

Time, Money, Good Code. Choose 2.

The only excuse for sloppy code is if there's not time and money to create good code.

I was talking to a guy that was creating a program in COBOL for some university project. He told me he was copying and pasting code instead of creating functions because it was easier than figuring out parameters and return values.

He's an engineer not a dev but he didn't seem to understand why his compile time was rising exponentially.

[Jakez]

I guess PHP is kinda like the Model T of programming. Made it easy and accessible to the masses.

What if that list you're working on happens to be empty? Sloppy, far from elegant code will probably break on an empty list. (Ex. code to modify a password file that happens to be empty because it's a new site, or code to find the middle of a file that happens to be empty.)

If it's going to be a product then yeah you should have all that kind of checking, otherwise what is the point of checking if say a MySQL database of referrers is empty when the only time it was and ever will be empty was when it was first created?

[uniquemkt]

Don't blame the language. Among other things, I'm a Zend certified PHP developer, and the ubiquitousness off the LAMP stack means I can write code and expect it to run almost anywhere with minimal fuss. I can run a high performance Development environment on my Netbook, try doing that with Weblogic... PHP had a shitty start, but obviously there was a need for it at the time, or it wouldn't have taken off the way it did and become so pervasive. These days its a grown-up language with grown-up features, many of which you can choose to not use.

Seems like its fashionable to rag on PHP for allowing non-programmers to write code. Why can't we go back to hating Perl for being a write-only language?

[maylow]

A lifetime PHP wrangler, I hate the language. RoR (Ruby On Rails) is the best choice you can ever make if you want to keep your sanity.

[newb102k]

i really want to learn what i can use for my client and business

but now im decided most of my client used php backend and this also what i want to provide for my web apps development and maybe used my cousin skills in c# and .net for desktop and web

[livexxx]

PHP & Symfony , although MVC might be outside of most peoples range IMHO. Scrum for the team as well with a bit of Kanban if they like. Still not 100% sold on Propel ORM but everything seems good so far.

[edgeprod]

No offence but a lot of coders do have sticks stuck so far up their ass. Just because code may be sloppy as fuck and far from elegant doesn't mean it sucks!

You're narrowly right, and widely wrong. When I'm doing rapid prototying (typically, with a client in an ICQ window waiting to see, or otherwise interactively), I only bother to indent. And I probably only indent because NOT doing so would take my brain LONGER at this point.

Once something moves beyond the prototype stage, however -- for example, if it even thinks about touching a production environment -- you'd better believe that it's done in Model/View/Controller style, and it's done right. Anything else would not only be irresponsible, it'd be borderline fraud when it comes to "work for hire," or anything you'd be selling.

I've committed the sin of sloppiness earlier in my career, but not learning from it would speak more about me as a person than me as a coder.

I think the "stick up the ass" grows over time, and is the result of people saying "close enough is good enough" and then guys like raymor, isteve, and myself having to clean up after them. It just grates on you after enough time.

It's actually to the point where if someone documents their code excessively, I look at them as a novice. See the "sample of my code" example on my blog for a great illustration of too much documentation, and sloppy code. It was written years ago, and I've evolved as a professional and as a programmer in the interim.

I'll give you an example: I'm working on some software right now to retrieve entries from a database. On the index page, I only need 8 pieces of data, so I query that specific data. The programmers we look down our noses at (or, I guess, get sticks up our butt about) will typically suck down all of the data, parse it in PHP, and spit out what they need to the page. Not only is this wasteful, sloppy, and a potential security risk, but it doesn't handle scale (read: additional traffic), and can actually bog down everything else that shares the MySQL server.

Another example ... inside of a search for a single data point, this is my query:

$this->set('models', $this->Vehicle->find('all', array('conditions' => array('make' => $value),
                                                       'fields' => array('DISTINCT (model)'))));

All I'm returning to the $models[] array is the distinct column names for 'model' where 'make' matches the $value I have passed to the method. In PHP's "amateur-hour-friendly" structure, I could have just as easily queried ALL of the data, then grabbed ALL of the values for 'model', then used PHP to sort by 'make' key, and finally grabbed the array_unique() of the resulting array.

Instead, I'm using a very narrow query to populate an array with ONLY what I need. Then, after checking if the array exists, I can build a search field with HTML form options that includes a list of the various models.

When I'm finished with it, the query will also include an 'order' parameter to return the results in alphabetical order, instead of using asort(), or a similar language-level sort. This is what separates those of us that SHOULD be doing your projects from the bargain-basement "code hackers" who put in penny-wise pound-foolish bids on jobs.

Sorry for the rant, but I wanted to make sure you understood, and that you weren't misleading people into thinking that sloppy is somehow "okay" because the end user doesn't "see" the code. That's like saying your mechanic can do a shitty job on your breaks because you don't ever have to look at them.

Great thread, Brujah. To answer YOUR question: Python (duh!), Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and I've extended the life of PHP somewhat by moving to the CakePHP framework for development (it makes it a lot like Rails for me).

[edgeprod]

My final (git commit'd) query:

$this->set('models', $this->Vehicle->find('all', array('conditions' => array('make' => $value),
                                                       'fields' => array('DISTINCT (model)'),
                                                 'order' => array('model' => 'ASC'))));

Ready to be loop'd into the iteration now, without having to have spaghetti PHP running around. Nothing to document in the code now, either, because the query is clear and when I reference it, it's just:

$models[$i]['Vehicle']['model'];

The need to "document" the method in the controller or its use in the view is now null, and should be non-documented. Its usage is now obvious.

[pornmasta]

url of this thread: http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1066601

[edgeprod]

url of this thread: http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1066601

Grin, I noticed that, too.

[adult-help]

php and jquery - all i need.

[grumpy]

usage of php
http://w3techs.com/technologies/hist...mming_language

78% of websites use php, 0,2 and 0.5% ruby / python
Case closed.

[seeme]

Personal choice is PHP, its easy to pick up and has plenty of support. If I was to learn another, I would look at Python.

[mafia_man]

usage of php
http://w3techs.com/technologies/hist...mming_language

78% of websites use php, 0,2 and 0.5% ruby / python
Case closed.

Yes if you are writing a commercial script use PHP.

[teg0]

Still do a lot of PHP work and like Codeigniter, but starting the switch to Python / Django