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Christopher Allen-Poole
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PHP's epic fail is not in language design on implementation. There are FAR worse languages out there (anyone know ActionScript? and apparently AppleScript is comparably bad). No, PHP's fail is that it managed to get to be ubiquitous. It is everywhere and there is copious legacy code which needs to be supported (and it is cheaper to support bad but working code than it is to rewrite from scratch). And, of course, because the legacy code is bad PHP, the new code also has to be in PHP to be compatible.
Personally, I prefer Python (or Lisp... I dream of a Lisp-1 world... sigh...), but so long as PHP is paying my bills, I will hold my nose and use it.
Commented Jun 29, 2012 on The PHP Singularity at Coding Horror
The PHP Singularity
Look at this incredible thing Ian Baker created. Look at it! What you're seeing is not Photoshopped. This is an actual photo of a real world, honest to God double-clawed hammer. Such a thing exists. Isn't that amazing? And also, perhaps, a little disturbing? That wondrous hammer is a de...
Recently, I've found the endless stream approach particularly bad if dealing with anything chronological. If I want to go to the very beginning of something and I have to scroll through umpteen thousand pages, it becomes a TERRIBLE user experience. If you're going "endless river" you should also give the user to "skip to record 5,678".
Commented Mar 28, 2012 on The End of Pagination at Coding Horror
The End of Pagination
What do you do when you have a lot of things to display to the user, far more than can possibly fit on the screen? Paginate, naturally. There are plenty of other real world examples in this 2007 article, but I wouldn't bother. If you've seen one pagination scheme, you've seen them all. The...
The reason most of my questions are < 5 is because by the time I've typed out the question, I've found an answer.
Commented Mar 13, 2012 on Rubber Duck Problem Solving at Coding Horror
Rubber Duck Problem Solving
At Stack Exchange, we insist that people who ask questions put some effort into their question, and we're kind of jerks about it. That is, when you set out to ask a question, you should … Describe what's happening in sufficient detail that we can follow along. Provide the necessary backgroun...
You know, I had always wondered why I liked my lamp placement so much (pointed directly behind my monitor).
Commented Nov 7, 2011 on Bias Lighting at Coding Horror
Bias Lighting
I've talked about computer workstation ergonomics before, but one topic I didn't address is lighting. We computer geeks like it dark. Really dark. Ideally, we'd be in a cave. A cave … with an internet connection. The one thing that we can't abide is direct overhead lighting. Every time the ...
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