Tom:
You've got a lot of good points through the whole message, so I won't quote
the whole thing.
First, I know that my "complaints" are probably going to be taken as an
ungrateful "us vs. them" attitude. Let me state up front that I think that
what all of the PHP developers/contributors have done is pretty awesome &
I'm thankful for their efforts. I want to make it clear that I am
appreciative of what they've done. That said, I would still respectfully
point out that the issues that have been raised can't just be given a pass &
should be given consideration.
Actually, I think that the installer works just fine & given that the ISAPI
module is not, in my opinion, ready for prime time, it is appropriate that
it installs the CGI module. Now one plus of PHP is that it's cross
platform. There is obviously a perceived advantage to developing API
specific versions such as the ISAPI module, and it's not unreasonable for
PCMag to test it - especially since one would expect better performance from
it than running in CGI mode. While I realize that PHP's heritage is not
Windows & the ISAPI module is unlikely to take priority, it's still
perfectly fair for PCMag's to ding them/us for ISAPI not running properly.
The problem of case sensitivity is not one of naming conventions and not
necessarily one of programming discipline. It is one of whether the tool
(PHP) helps the developer write clean code. I seriously doubt if there are
many (any?) developers out there who change the case of their
variables/functions from one instance to the next. If it does appear
differently, it would almost always be a typo. Without any warning that the
variable is undefined (the default way that PHP is installed), this can be a
key source of difficult to track errors. The two obvious ways to help
eliminate this kind of bug are a warning/error for undefined variables
(which is available within PHP - set error_reporting to 15 for those who
don't know about this yet), and switching to case insensitive
variables/functions.
To take advantage of case sensitivity to hack around something the language
is missing seems like a poor reason to implement it. If there is a
significant enough need to have multiple constructors, then that aspect of
the language should be addressed. Case sensitivity is not a nicety for
professional developers - it's just something that makes the
compiler/interpreter language parsing code easier to write. Making it
case-insensitive would help eliminate errors which I would think that all
developers, both professional & hobby, would welcome.
-- Greg
"Tom Mathews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Seeing as how we're having a full fledged 'discussion' about this, I'm
going to
> throw my boot in from a programmers perspective.
> I know that historically php was Personal Home Page, implying that it was
> designed for use on personal web sites, not very sophisticated, no
security
> necesary ... just something that was free and easy to use for anyone
wanting to
> make their site a wee bit flasher.
> That was ten years ago (or therabouts) and like all things it has evolved
> massively away from the original concept. This evolution is thanks
entirely to
> the efforts of the unpaid developers that see something missing and write
a new
> module, or read lists like this and see what everyone else is having
problems -
> and write a new module to address this.
> The US and THEM attitude that is becoming prevalent in sectors of this
list is
> not really helpful for anyone - remember that PHP is Open Source - if you
want
> something changing, raise the issue on php.net, or better still do it
yourself.
> If you want a better installer for Windows 9x (if you must use that as a
> development environment) then write one.
> Of course there will be niggles, generally caused by different people
wanting
> different things. I guess that that is why the boys at Zend are starting
to
> produce more commercially oriented versions of it, and part of this is to
provide
> what the industry expect as well as home users. Things like case
sensitivity in
> variable names and function names have been prevalent since the early days
of all
> the UNIX variants for workstation or PC. If you have a problem with this
sort of
> thing, then you should probably take a wee step back from coding for a few
hours
> and start a naming convention that you are happy with, and while you're at
it (by
> the way Tim, this is not intended as a dig at you, so please don't take it
> personally!) just spend a little more time thinking about your programming
> discipline in general, keep everything consistent - if there's a team of
you
> working on the same app, then make sure that everyone knows the rules...
> I personally think that case sensitivity in names is very important. I
would use
> it in the absence of overloading, and the same again for classes where I
want
> different constructors to be employed. Be careful when you put in
complaints
> against this sort of thing that you think about the bigger picture - Open
Source
> will only survive if it competes equally with the commercial tools out
there. If
> you remove niceties that 'professional' developers expect, then they will
be
> forced to do the dastardly and buy MS type tools, and the benefits that
these
> guys provide to the Open Source community (like exercising all the
codebase a lot
> harder than homies that just use the basic functionaliy) will instead go
to MS!
>
> When I get time I'll put together a coherent article to defend php against
Larry
> Seltzer and his buddies,a nd I'll post it here first for review, but until
then
> that's more than enough waffle from me!
>
> Tom
>
>
>
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