Re: PHP on .NET DLR

On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 12:21:53AM -0400, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> Sigh. I said I wouldn't post again on this topic, but...

 That's ok. We haven't deteriorated to pure flame war yet. Yes, a lot of nonsense, but similar to 18th century speculative scientific works, I am sure that there might 1-2 gems in between. :-) 


> > bankrupt, because they tried to completely transition to 
> > .NET, and another competitor overtook them using PHP. These 
> > are all real world issues here, and lots of money and 
> > people's lives involved. You are talking in terms of an 
> > individual developer fooling around with technologies.
> 
> Point is, life throws you curve balls all the time. Quit whining and learn
> how to deal with it.  Nobody likes a complainer.

 Earlier I used to take the software and rewrite it to suit my needs. I had rewritten fvwm, lynx, elinks, vim, mutt, rdesktop etc to make them bend to my narrow requirements. That was when I didn't have to cater alone to more than 500 customers, or handle 100 emails per day. Now, what I do is: whine, complain and _sponsor_. Yes, instead of patching elinks, sharpe, and xming, I just decided to donate an amount to get what I wanted.

 I have passed that "I can fix everything stage". It was fun back then, but now my priority is my own applcations. Yes, whining IS the way to go here, because it is something that is competely out of my own domain.

 
> 
> >  Powershell is meant to replace VBscript. The latter is 
> > fundamentally different from the former. MS is making 
> > everyone learn everything afresh.
> 
> God I love you with your passive voice and "is to meant" comments.
> Wikipedia calls them "weasel words." [1] :)

 Powershell IS the replacement to VBscript. Isn't that so?
 

> 
> >  Yeah, tell that to GNU Hurd people, who are still trying to 
> > create a microkernel based operating system, and failing 
> > miserably. If done well, monolithic systems are better. The 
> > problem is that individuals are incapable of handling the 
> > kind of complexity, and then start touting simplicity as an advantage.
> 
> There is truth in both aspects, i.e. there is some value in monolithic and
> some value in modular. The difference is that I acknowledge both. :)
> 
> BTW, funny that you use the term "monolithic"; see: [2]

 You yourself has stated that getting drupal, wordpress to work together is impossible. That's exactly the problem. Many simple small stuffs are cool, so long as they are all indendent, but they generate more Entropy the instant you try to get them to work together.

> 
> >  Cathedral and the Bazaar? Does anybody quote it anymore these days? 
> 
> I just did.
> 
> >  For multiple commands, you have to use semi-colon, but 
> > anyway the point is moot. For all practical purposes, 
> > Powershell script (if it is written by me) looks like C.
> 
> If you say so, I guess it must be true regardless of anyone else's opinion.
> '-)

 It has braces exactly like C, semi-colon (optional). Is that pretty much how C is. Again, it looks like C to me.

> >  To me, web is a means to deliver services to the client, and 
> > the only advantage I have seen in practice is that the lack 
> > of a specific client. Now, you can indulge yourself in a lot 
> > of jargon to make it appear something more than it is, but I 
> > don't think you will convince me.
> 
> That's what I like, someone with an open mind who realizes that their own
> experiences are by a flyspec in the universe of all combined experience. ;-)

 Isn't client side computing the ideal? I mean, aren't you letting all the 1 billion PCs sit idle, while your single server takes all the load? Wouldn't the ideal situation be where the client did all the heavy work, and the server just stored the data? Architecture wise, I would say desktop is better. The only issue is: you have to download/install a software, which is something that people balk from.

 You should understand that DESPITE this severe drawback--that client has to download softwares--Destop is a thriving business. Despite Google's horde of cash, where is the Web equivalent of Word? Will we ever see a web alternative to Office? Is it even theortically possible? Maybe with Silverlight, but not if we stick with the current idea of printing crappy HTML. HTML is not programming. IN fact, in my own software, I have strict policy not to use separate CSS files too. They are meant for a web developers to cobble together some sites fast. Not at all meant for designing applications.  Web was NEVER meant for applications. Anyway, it is changing. Mozilla was touting a similar controls that can be manipulated via javascript.

> 
> > > Heh!  I'd challenge you to a bet for 10 years from now, but as with 
> > > most firmly-held ideologies you'll probably never acknowledge being 
> > > wrong even with evidence surrounding you so the bet would be futile.
> > 
> >  Please. Even your favorite language Powershell is exactly 
> > like C. 
> 
> Favorite language?  I like aspects of it. 
> EXACTLY like C?  No, you "please."

 It has semi-colon, has full braces. Or Maybe it is just that I have a tendency to feel that everything looks like C.

> 
> > Ok, it doesn't REQUIRE semi-colon, but it works fine 
> > with it too. And you will NEED it, if you want to put 
> > multiple commands on a line, which obviously you will always 
> > need at some point.
> 
> You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them think, can you?  As
> I've already explained, the existence of semi-colons in a language does not
> make it C.  Whether you choose to recognize it is another matter entirely.

 And braces. Don't forget the braces.

> >  I am an application vendor. I write applications. I cannot 
> > create a platform on an operating system in which I have no 
> > experience. That's simply not possible. 
> 
> It is possible, you just choose not to. But don't make your choice everyone
> else's problem.

 I wrote this: http://demo.lxadmin.com:7778 this http://demo.hypervm.com:8888 and http://client.lxlabs.com .Alone. They are fully distributed, cross platform, and are not prototypes and large. They are pure php, and no frameworks or libraries involved. And I answer more than 100 messages per day here: http://forum.lxlabs.com . I am simply not capable of taking on a completely different project in a completely different domain.

> >  The language suffers, there is no doubt about it. And I have 
> > explicitly stated the reasons why _I feel_ it may not be good 
> > for Zend either, and even then, I have qualified all my 
> > statements by clearly saying that it is my opinion. 
> 
> Zend are big boys, I think they can take care of themselves.  And in my
> world I find it less offensive when people literally prefix phrases like
> "short sighted business decisions" with something like "from my perspective
> it appears these are." But maybe it is just me.

 Yes. Zend is big, which is one of the reasons why I had stuck with PHP. But I need PHP on .NET, or at least some guarantee that it will be there before all the VB devs gets a chance to start churning out software in Silverlight. I do not know whether Silverlight will be big or not, but I don't want to miss out on it.

> 
> > I have not made any pronouncements which I had expected 
> > to be taken as literal truth merely because I said it. 
> 
> You've made tons of pronouncements here, about business decisions and C
> language and monolithic complexity being superior et. al. Are we now just to
> assume that even though you said them you see no truth in your own
> statements?  I'm confused.

 Yes. But I have also explained in detail why _I feel_ each opinion I stated is true. Isn't that the sane way to argue?

> 
> 
> So Ruby is the one to demonize?  I guess everyone has to have an enemy.
> Heck, Java was Ruby's enemy. Looks like PHP is becoming collateral damage!
> LOL. :)
> 
> BTW, what Zend decision backfired?  Is this still your conspiracy theory?
> Heck, if you want to talk conspiracy theories, let's talk 9/11! 

 Yeah. That's the impression I got from the press-release. I genuinely hope I am wrong. This is one of the few arguments where I really want my theories to be _proved_ wrong. But you have to prove it though.


> 
> > > Microsoft pays atttention to developer interest. Show them interest 
> > > (in the form of code, not petitions, MS don't respect petitions [3])
> > 
> >  MS cares about Developer interest in writing programs WITH 
> > phalanger, not writing phalanger. There was no Ruby Code at 
> > all, yet, MS managed to get it done in a couple of months. 
> > You are still repeating an argument that I had consistently disproved.
> 
> So you now know what the non-existent collective consciousness of Microsoft
> prefers?  Please.   And just exactly how have you "disproved" this argument?

 Because Phalanger is there. IronRuby was not. But now we have IronRuby, but no phalanger. Simple.

> >  Of course, MS alone is not run by Evil spacemen from Mars. 
> > They all are the same monkey evolved human species, and they 
> > all show the same characteristics. But you can contrast them 
> > to google, which at least in theory has a 'don't be evil' policy.
> 
> Google vs. Microsoft and their (don't) be evil policy? LOL!!!!  See [4].
> 
> Over time, people become what they most despise [5]. Google already has more
> power than MS ever did, and we will all be lamenting that reality soon
> enough.

 I am sure a hard corporate policy by the founders can indeed make a difference. I am not saying Google is the saviour--I mean, in that case, they would donate all their profit to the starving children, and anything less that is not acceptable--but I am sure they won't be like MS.

 Take the DRDOS lawsuit. It seems Windows 3.1 had an explicit instruction to check if the PC was running DRDOS, and give error messages, trying to create an impression that there was an incompatibility. 

 http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts/caldera/Default.htm

 That has to have had approval of Bill Gates himself, and that actually says something about the corporate culture inside MS.
 
> 
> > I have no experience with 
> > SQL, but if the DB supports stored procedures, then it also 
> > should support if/then.
> 
> How can you have no experience with something yet claim you know enough to
> make blanket pronunciations like you do?

 I am making informed estimates. + I have google. And I read indescriminately. I use elinks and I just start from one corner of the web and keep following links. 


> >
> > RSS is not a language. And is still not present in the list 
> > you have supplied. lisp/sql--with stored procedures--/assembly are 
> > real languages. RSS is not.
> 
> Okay, I guess RSS is not a language and none of the experiences of history
> related to RSS can ever apply to languages with if/then.  At least it is so
> in K T Ligesh's world.

 You need control statements and an ability to create loops. That's a must. Even assembly has it, in the form of if/then/go-to. I am sure SQL would also have it. 


> 
> >  "Deriving simplicity from complexity?" Wht does that mean?
> 
> It mean refactoring to derive at simplicity rather than to strive for
> maintaining complexity.


 You sift through your code removing REDUNDANCY. Redundancy is bad, but not complexity.