Custom Programming, Server-side Scripting
My work on a tool to migrate Drupal content to Wordpress’ eXtended RSS (‘WXR) led me into some dusty corners of the WordPress codebase, and I’ve been meaning to write a grumpy post about how much I hate PHP (in which Wordpress is written), but Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror beat me to it with his own PHP sucks lament. Like me, Jeff wonders at the success of PHP given what a dreadfully sucky software engineering tool it is, and scratches his head at the many major Internet properties (Wikipedia, Digg, and Wordpress among them) which are successful notwithstanding an implementation in a language a VB6 programmer might reasonable call “shit”.
Interestingly, though, Jeff and I arrived at two different conclusions on the matter. Jeff surmises:
Some of the largest sites on the internet — sites you probably interact with on a daily basis — are written in PHP. If PHP sucks so profoundly, why is it powering so much of the internet?
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Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those backward types who doesn’t see the point in unit testing, thinks object orientation is too complicated, and wouldn’t know a bad code smell from roadkill. I take the practice of software engineering seriously, and strive to build the best software I can within the constraints of our business. In this regard I’m more like the second stonecutter in Peter Drucker’s Three Stonecutters parable:
A favorite story at management meetings is that of the three stonecutters who were asked what they were doing. The first replied, ‘I am making a living.’ The second kept on hammering while he said, ‘I am doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire country.’ The third one looked up with a visionary gleam in his eyes and said, ‘I am building a cathedral.’
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Full article: http://apocryph.org/php_sucks
License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
Indexed in June 2008
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Custom Programming, Database, Free for Web, Server-side Scripting, Web Server
Lately I’ve been performing lots of fresh system installs, a result of testing my Ubuntu respin. Restoring my personal data after such an install is simple enough, but having to reinstall my Apache, MySQL & PHP set-up requires a little more effort. So, for future reference I’ve decided to record the process. By following the instructions below I should be able to get my development server up and running within minutes.
AMP install instructions
1. Open a terminal and issue the following command to install the three main packages:
sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server php5
This will install the following packages:
apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5
libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perllibplrpc-perl libpq5 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-5.0
php5 php5-common
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Full article: http://crunchbang.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK
Indexed in June 2008
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Custom Programming, Flash and Vector Graphic, Graphics, Server-side Scripting, Video in Web
Following a really interesting thread on the chattyfig Flashcomm list I have now been able to put together a simple video player which is capable of requesting and playing parts of a flv video file that have not previously been downloaded.
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Here’s the working example. You need Player 8 for this but that’s only because I encoded the video using VP6. The rest is compatible with Player 7.
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Full article: http://www.flashcomguru.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 England & Wales
Indexed in May 2008
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Client-side Scripting, Custom Programming, Server-side Scripting, Web Performance
Over the last 11 years I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to improve client websites with an eye for minimalist interface design and code. While the minimalist design esthetic is not the choice for every client the notion of less code and faster load times always goes over well. Today, many of web applications I design and code for have a plethora of Javascript and CSS files. Fortunately, there are many options to solve this rather simple problem. Compression, obfuscation and bundling are all great options.
Below you’ll find a list of the sites I’ve visited to learn more about Javascript and CSS compression.
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Full article: http://www.maxkiesler.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Indexed in March 2008
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Custom Programming, Server-side Scripting
PHP which is officially known as ‘Hypertext Preprocessor’ was released in the year 1995. Initially written as a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) in ‘C’, PHP was originally designed to replace a set of Perl scripts to maintain his Personal Home Pages (also known as PHP). PHP was originally designed to create dynamic and more interactive web pages. It is the most widely-used, open-source and general-purpose scripting language.
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Full article: http://www.articlesbase.com
License: Creative Commons License
Indexed in March 2008
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Custom Programming, Framework, Server-side Scripting
The folks over at Packt Publishing had a recent post where they were encouraging PHP developers/bloggers to read a new book and blog about it. I really appreciate opportunities like this - the didn’t request any positive or negative posting, just an honest review of the book they provide (at no cost).
The book I received is CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development, written by David Upton.
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Full article: http://www.douglaskarr.com/2007/11/10/codeigniter-book/
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Indexed in March 2008
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