Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Releasepackaged

Hello Paul,

On 21-May-00 18:55:14, you wrote:

>>Joe Webby, a paid Web developer rushes into his boss office:
>>
>>- Hey boss, look, PHP 4 final is out and guess what: it is capable of
>>   generating Shockwave Flash output dynamically!
>>
>>- Really?  I don't believe that.  It's too good to be true for some free
>>   Web programming language. Show it to me, I want to see some examples.
>>
>>- Hold on, I am going to find a sample page to show you.


>At this point, I think we say that Joe Webby has made a fool of himself,
>but not because of PHP.  Joe Webby has failed to do his research before
>rushing into the boss's office.  Hasn't Joe Webby given even a little
>bit of thought into anticipating the questions that the boss will ask,
>and to coming up with answers to those questions?

You are right, but guess what:  There are plenty of Joe Webby's out there
that behave like that.

You know, due the severe lack of better qualified and mature developers,
there are lots of developers that have been hired despite they don't have
such a great experience.  Many of them are just graduated or yet to
graduate students that are enthusiasts of free software.

Despite for many bosses, free software is synonym of prudence, those
developers often don't hold themselves and keep on trying to persuade their
bosses to jump on the free software bandwagon.


>You're right that writing documentation is a problem, because most
>programmers would rather be programming than writing.  However, I
>doubt if your suggestion that PHP developers be "obligated" (your word)
>to supply documentation for functions is going to fly.  I'm not sure
>that's always such a bad thing, at least if other people come along
>to take up the slack.

I think it is a fair requirement that should be enforced for the sake of
PHP credibility and consequent wide spreading.  Contributors already have
to comply with discipline rules like conforming to the coding standards
document.


>Programmers aren't always the best writers, so it's not always the
>case that the programmers make the best documenters.  If someone who
>can write comes along and contributes to the documentation, you'll
>have *better* documentation in many cases than if it's written by
>someone who really doesn't want to be writing documentation.

Right, it doesn't have to be the actual programmer to document the
contributed material.  I think the way it could work is that new features
are only accepted when somebody enters the relevant documentation. That
could be written by someone else, but until it is done the feature would
not ship.


Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/[email protected]
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