2008 May - KillerPHP.com Blog

Archive for May, 2008

Ruby on Rails – a paper dragon?

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Hi,

I was going to start this off with some analogy on how Ruby is like dating some ‘hottie’ that turns out to be crazy .. but I just couldn’t make it work …

When Ruby on Rails started to gain some momentum a year or so ago, I decided to take another look at the Ruby language itself along with the Rails web framework.

ruby on rails logo

Before I get to the heart of this article, I have to tell you that I love the elegance of the language … it is fun to use.

But, being a nerd who’s has experienced disappointment in promising new technologies in the past, I decided to dig a little deeper into Ruby and Ruby on Rails before committing to use it in real projects. I did my research … and I’m glad I went with PHP instead.

… Let me just say that this Twitter news, only reinforces my own thinking from a year and a half ago.

Why did Twitter decide to move away from Ruby and Ruby on Rails?

Well according to TechCrunch, the boys at Twitter found that Ruby could not be made to scale.

Update:

Apparently this Techcrunch report was later refuted by the Twitter people. Nonetheless, the point of this article still holds true.

(more…)

Posted in Editorial | 23 Comments »

Angry self righteous tech-nerds

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

I’ve been involved in the tech business for many years. Though technology is constantly changing, there is a constant:

Angry self righteous tech-nerds.

Who are the angry-nerds?

Angry-nerds are those programmers, network administrators or any other geeks that have a major chip on their shoulders.

Typically, they are in their twenties, with little experience, and are just out of school … full of academic dogma and ritual.

It takes little to set these guys off …

When confronted with a tech idea they don’t agree with, or they find that a concept (or way of doing things) is ‘below’ them intellectually .. they become arrogant, hostile and their not so inner nerd-child appears.

Generally these twits are useless to have around … besides being annoying.

Angry-nerds like to attack beginners

One behavior that is consistent in the angry-nerd population, is their collective disdain for those trying to learn a new technology. If that wasn’t strange enough, they are even critical of those who would try to help beginners get on their feet.

Why?

I think angry-nerds are just looking to bully people they feel they can bully. A little payback I suppose …?

The classic arguments that bring out the angry-nerds (frothing at the mouth), include:

(more…)

Posted in Editorial | 7 Comments »

Why build all your web pages in PHP?

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I recently had this question put to me by a web designer who was considering the idea of using PHP pages in her websites:

“Why build all your pages in PHP … Why not use standard .html pages?”

She then expanded the question to:

“What I mean is…… what’s the benefit to building ALL sites in PHP?”

Note to uber-nerds: remember that this question is being put to me by a web designer who has never written software. As such the answer is tailored those who are new to programming.

I might tackle this question from another perspective if the question was put to me by an experienced developer.

PS: If you find my answer offensive to your nerd-sensibilities, you might want to read this.

The Answer:

By making all your web pages PHP pages from the start, you are basically leaving open the possibility of using PHP in your web pages at any time.

… You don’t want to (at some later date) have to go back and change your .html pages to .php. For example:

my-product-list.html
… becomes:
my-product-list.php

Beginners should note, that you need to have .php extension on any web pages where you want to use PHP. Check out my basic PHP videos for details.

PHP can do a lot more than just talk to MySQL. One very common use of PHP is to create ‘includes’ … this will allow you to insert snippets of code in your pages from separate files. This is kinda like using external CSS files. So you can use PHP includes to say create your page footers.

You can learn more about PHP includes in my free videos.

In the end, by making all your pages php pages from the start, you will just have a more flexible website to work with since you will be able to access PHP’s power.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Posted in Beginners PHP Articles | 9 Comments »