MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-07-22 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] School Technology
|
On 2003.07.21 22:57 Sunny Dubey wrote:
>
> On Monday 21 July 2003 08:40 pm, Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS wrote:
>
> > Perl allows, as most people who took my classes know, a broad background
> > in general programming skills, and computer science that is not possible
> > with many other programming platforms. One of those platforms is PHP.
>
> I think it is safe for me to say that PHP/MySQL is the most popular
> language/database combination on the internet.
That is STRONGLY doubtful, as JSP is probibly more deployed on the internet.
I strongly doubt PHP/MySQL is even larger than mod_perl deployments and would
challenge you to show the data and the studies to back up this statement.
Not that this matters.
>
>
> > We have already developed a very solid ciriculum with Perl to teach
> > programming basics.
>
> I think there is a fundamental flaw with NYLXS.
What - JUST ONE FLAW!!!
Whoa!
We are now a zillion times more perfect than all other groups anywhere!
> The fact that NYLXS members
> will advocate or use some technology, only because they are experienced of it
> even if they are aware of other perfectly sound solutions.
Now - I'm not sure what your talkign about but I oversaw a project management team which
did NOTHING but PHP, and produced over 90 K lines of PHP code under my oversight, DESPITE my
pleading that the project was too complex for PHP, and in the end, after I left, all the PHP guru's
indeed ran against the wall with project control and debugging.
In a word, it became impossible to debug. In any event, I hope your not referring to me in terms
of a lack of experience in PHP, because I can, and have taught PHP, Perl, C and Shell scripting
when needed to professional.
The inadequacies of PHP to reach our goals is not an issue of dogma, and I will not be drawn into
a PHP versus Perl Flame war, you can do that on your own time.
They are completely different technologies. They are so different, that the whole argument is a useless
discussion.
> I've noticed this
> particularly with how NYLXS often uses SuSE, when there are other 100% free
> distributions.
Now who is Dogmatics. Your 100% free version of GNU/Linux in Debian is functionally far less pollished
than SuSe. Hell - they distributed GNOME without a logoff button.
>
> If we are to advance free software, we must advocate whatever we have.
STOP
Have you READ the educational goals of NYLXS yet? First read it, and then we can pick up on this
conversation again with the same base reference.
> Simply bashing a particular technology (PHP) is not the way to go. Especially
> when someone else who we are to service has requested it.
Show me where I bashed it? The hysteria around PHP is nearly laughable. I for one, couldn't care less about
PHP one way or the other. But unless you can claim 4 years of educational experience, plus the professional
oversite of a large enterprise us PHP and Perl, I need more than hysteria to back up claims. BTW, NYLXS is not
in the Quartermaster of all Free Software requests in the Metro NY Region. We do things for our own reasons and
to achive the goals we've set out to accomplish. If you can explain to me how we can achive the specific goals
that we've laid out for Education, please refer to the specific goals and corlate them to the PHP features which
accomplish those goals. That would be a useful constuction in the discussion, and it's the kind of professionalism
which will be needed if your going to learn how to lead others in a positive direction in any serious field.
> Of the 7 reasons, 6 had nothing to do with PHP at all. The first six could be
> applied to just about any course teaching any material. (non computer
> courses as well.)
That's not true. The basic lack of built in programming tools for the enforcement and documentation
of standardized programing interfaces made the Beekman project a giant eagles nest of clugged coding which
was impossible to impliment within other institutions outside of providing web services to other institutions.
Furthermore, the use of PHP as the introudction langugue for children will not contribute to an integrated kind of
cross-pollonation which is needed to break the stranglehold of propreitary systems in which our current educational
system is gripped by.
>
> Additionally I think PHP is a great language because it isn't complex as C/C++
> but at the same time it allows for an understand of basic programming
> structure which is similar to C/C++.
No it doesn't. It is NOTHING like C or C++. There is no means, for example, to make a pointer, or
a reference to a union or a stuct to be objectified, or to even be passed between name spaces or scopes.
And in fact, in many regards, PHP is more complex than C, especially ANSI C. It has an endless stream of
built in functions with long names, limited database connectivitiy, and non-standardized function interfaces.
In fact, PHP makes the C string library look nearly rational. This is not how you want to teach people
to program.
In fact, C and C++ are entirely differnet from each other. And who said that teaching C and C++ is an
end goal in of itself. In fact, the principles of C and C++ are very difficult to teach with PHP because
of it's lack of real references, it's lack of a true runtime enviornment, it's non-existant namespace
implication, and so on.
>
> Such comments really do tarnish the NYLXS name, and show a general sense of
> ignorance on the topic at hand.
Perl IS faster to code up than PHP.
As for your comments on Perl, I'm not in the least bit interested in such a useless flamewar.
Your entitled to your opinion. But you have not given a single shread of evidence to substantiate any of the points.
Please substantiate your opinion with actually data, genuine example, or provable hypothesis.
In fact, PHP has some very useful features, but you haven't mentioned ANY of them.
Ruben
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