Post #225,585
9/20/05 9:48:44 AM
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Biggest criticism I've seen of PHP
It makes it too easy for people who don't know what they're doing to do something really stupid.
Second biggest is that various related functions don't necessarily use the same syntax or argument list/order. That part is really frustrating. After several years of use, I still needed to consult the docs regularly to get the argument lists right.
Otherwise it seemed pretty straightforward to me. But then I "get" formal logic. I wouldn't assume that of e-biz majors.
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Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,589
9/20/05 10:42:49 AM
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Re: Biggest criticism I've seen of PHP
It's an improvement over the suggested environment from the text, which includes FrontPage Express.
Haven't dug into PHP very deeply yet, but it looks okay so far and my students who work with it seem to like it.
I take your meaning re: e-biz majors, but in their defense they have had programming and database courses prior to this. Now the question is how much were they paying attention.
Word on the street (i.e. from my PD) is that these kids are pretty sharp and they're aching to learn PHP and some Web coding.
Plus of course now they have me.
Tom Sinclair
Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh." -- Magic armour is not all it's cracked up to be. (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
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Post #225,591
9/20/05 10:52:55 AM
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Word from your Police Dept? What kind of students are these?
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Post #225,602
9/20/05 11:42:28 AM
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Haven't met them yet
But, according to a colleague who has taught a class with them, the ones I'm getting are pretty sharp but a bit bored due to lack of challenge.
Tom Sinclair
Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)
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Post #225,600
9/20/05 11:30:15 AM
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I'd definitely vote for it over Front Page
The biggest problem with FP being[1] code that only IEx will render as expected. As a teaching tool, my complaint would be that it abstracts so much of what it's doing that I question how much you're really learning. Everything I've ever learned in a Microsoft IDE was only useful in that IDE.
[1] Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven't used it in a while. But based on Microsoft's history, I'm still pretty confident saying it.
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Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #225,604
9/20/05 11:53:52 AM
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My thoughts as well
I try to push for open, cross-platform solutions as much as allowed. My PD has told me that I have a lot of leeway in how I run this class. So far he likes my ideas.
Now I can justify the use of Apache based on Netcraft stats, but I want to sell them on PHP as well. I note from the stats that it's the most popular Apache module but I'm looking for numbers on its popularity in general as a CGI language.
I've got [link|http://www.php.net/usage.php| this ] from php.net and [link|http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200508/apachemods.html| this ] showing how PHP compares to other Apache modules (it's way out in front).
Tom Sinclair
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants *really quickly*. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
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Post #225,606
9/20/05 12:04:50 PM
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Personal Dictator? Professional Druid? Practical Devil?
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Post #225,616
9/20/05 12:29:11 PM
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Program Director
Although Personal Dictator works as well. (He's a benevolent one, luckily, and he actually has some technical background as well as good people skills.)
Tom Sinclair
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
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Post #225,679
9/21/05 12:28:09 AM
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Agreed.
If you've done the hard yards and have the experience to know What Not To Do, then PHP is quite good and you can push it a long long way in most directions before you start hitting boundaries. If you don't have the experience to build library layers, then PHP makes it awfully easy to shoot yourself in the foot. To which the only solution is usually quite extensive re-factoring.
However, that's not a criticism peculiar to PHP. Any full-featured, orthogonal language you could setup for web-programming will have that problem. Like C, it doesn't have any native structures to make you program better.
Wade.
d-_-b
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