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Rachel
Rachel
2:00 AM
@psr lol no, turns out they had their facts wrong. The software provides a programming API, but to use that we have to create our own interface. They were thinking I could just plug a control into a page, but it doesn't actually work like that. I was just blowing off steam :)
 
 
1 hour later…
user20683
3:27 AM
@YannisRizos These people...they do not learn
 
Jae
Jae
10:35 AM
@ChrisF @YannisRizos would you mind looking at my programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=reputation
rep page. I can't see how I just randomly lost 12 rep.
 
ChrisF
ChrisF
10:55 AM
You've lost a net 5 today due to deleted posts.
16 points in all. One upvote, 3 edit suggestions plus a down vote returned.
Have you ticked the "show removed posts" option at the bottom of the reputation page?
@Jae See above
 
Jae
Jae
11:14 AM
@ChrisF Yes I ticked it. Thanks for that
 
ChrisF
ChrisF
You should have seen at least a reference to the deleted posts.
 
 
2 hours later…
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
1:15 PM
Hey @Jae, sorry that was me doing some housecleaning... Deleted 100+ closed questions that where scored < -1, weren't duplicates, didn't have answers > 2 and were older than a month.... And I'm thinking of attacking the -1 today or during the weekend.
 
 
3 hours later…
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
4:32 PM
Blog - Stack Exchange: More Notes on Contest Format
Lauren Gundrum on April 20, 2012

A few months ago, I outlined a contest formula called “Hot Topics,” which has become a staple in CHAOS’s site-promotion efforts. For those who missed that post, Hot Topics initially worked like this:

Pick a topic of the week, and enter everyone who asks a question related to that topic into a random drawing to win a prize. The number of entries a person gets is equal to the number of questions they ask about the topic of the week.

We now have a few variations on this contest format.

Variations on the Hot Topic Format …

 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
5:17 PM
@michaeldurrant Please don't do edits like this one, they are extremely minor and the answer would be wrong if there's a price change.
 
user20683
5:42 PM
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@WorldEngineer That's an amazing response to a rant... Absolutely brilliant ;)
 
 
1 hour later…
psr
psr
6:48 PM
When people rant about PHP, is there some sort of canonical rebuttal? Like arguing about why PHP is good (other than "lots of people use it"). Some sort of "PHP - the good parts"?
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@psr "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." - Bjarne Stroustrup
That's the only rebuttal a rant deserves, regardless of the language its targetting.
 
psr
psr
7:04 PM
I wouldn't describe that as a rebuttal - more of a tacit admission.
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
In a way it is... If you think about it no one is more well versed in the shortcomings of a language than those who actually use it. PHP suffers a bit more because it has a really low entry barrier, so the chances of stumbling upon really crappy code are larger than usual. But you can really screw up in every language...
 
psr
psr
Well, that's why I was wondering where one would find something considered canonical explaining PHP's strengths. Mostly what I've heard have to do with ubiquity, which no one disputes, and ease of learning, which most people accept as well. But I never really hear anything else on the "PHP is a good language" side. So I would like to hear that viewpoint from someone who can articulate it well.
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@psr PHP is not a good language. It's a great platform though.
 
user2334
7:31 PM
Never mind:
 
user2334
0
Q: Not Every Site Can Have a Contest?

Jae Any site that is receiving CHAOS attention is eligible for a contest. That is a quote from the new blog post. So that makes me wonder: Can any site do a contest? I mean, it says if you have CHAOS attention your eligible, but what about the ones that don't? Does that mean they can't start a c...

discussion blog chaos contest
 
Jae
Jae
@MarkTrapp: Yup! Just making sure...
 
user2334
Another case of the CHAOS-rich sites getting richer imo
 
Jae
Jae
@MarkTrapp Honestly... I can't stand it.
 
Jae
Jae
7:49 PM
@YannisRizos Just saw the answer to my question on Meta.SO.. If you go by what you said, we can't have a contest. We don't have the support?
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
8:01 PM
@Jae That was a generic network wide answer, if there wasn't a chance to get the contest I would have told you sooner (I'm a cruel bastard, but not that cruel). Although I have no way of knowing if SE will fully support the contest, there has been interest, so fear not.
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
8:15 PM
@Jae I changed the answer a bit and you should also take a look at the comments to it...
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
8:52 PM
2
Q: Can we change the name of the chat room?

World EngineerOther Stack Exchange sites have interesting and descriptive names for their chat rooms while ours is just "Programmers". Would it be possible to change it to something more like those sites? Let's call a deadline of a week, we'll have to decide by Friday 27th @ 20:00 (UTC). That's a poll but I'v...

discussion featured chat
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
9:23 PM
6
Q: How to break the "php is a bad language" paradigm?

dukeofgamingPHP is not a bad language (or at least not as bad as some may suggest). I had teachers that didn't even know PHP was object oriented until I told them. I've had clients that immediately distrust us when we say we are PHP developers and question us for not using chic languages and frameworks such ...

php client-relations enterprise-development
 
psr
psr
9:37 PM
@YannisRizos - Almost everything is about "why mocking PHP is bad". But almost no "Why someone fluent in every language in the world might pick PHP for certain projects". Other than it's pre-installed a lot and it's easy to set up. Oh, it now has traits. Those are nice enough, but I don't really see a lot that would make me want to go learn it. All languages have downsides, but usually fans make more claims about the upsides (God programs in LISP, Ruby is elegant and dynamic,
Javascript, er, has strong functional language bones, C++ is insanely fast yet can play high-level, etc.). I guess for PHP you would say if you're careful it can be like Ruby? And the platform is great? (Not sure exactly what that means, since I don't do PHP, though it does sound plausible).
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@psr The platform includes the language, it's extensions, the documentation, and to an extend the community. The language shortcomings are easily forgotten when you compare everything you need to build an app to everything you'd need with another platform.
If you are looking for language design elegance in PHP, you'll not find it. What I love (most) about it is how extremely productive I can be with it. You have all the basics, and nothing of the clutter that more often than not just stands in the way.
btw I wouldn't call Ruby elegant by any definition of the word.
PHP has a very down to earth philosophy, that I'd summarize as: Just build the damn thing. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy more sophisticated languages, and have no problem in doing some Python /ASP (C# not that VB crap)/ Java once in a while, but if I can choose I'd choose PHP.
 
psr
psr
I was saying what I've seen people who like the language say. I don't always agree, and I haven't done enough Ruby to really say. My point is more that PHP seems different in that I don't even know what people who like it say (I've pretty much only heard that it's easy to learn, easy to get hosted, and it's not that bad). So I wanted to hear what people do say. So thank you for answering that.
 
Kempeth
Kempeth
9:53 PM
Hi. Can I ask a quick meta question? If I realize I forgot an important part of a question that extends it quite a bit. Should I ask a new one or edit?
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@Kempeth Preferably edit, unless you are completely changing the question and invalidating existing answers.
@psr Well every developer will like something different about their favourite language, for me it's mostly that it allows me to be quick and dirty when I want to. I have over 10 years of fooling around with PHP so any comparison I make will be biased, but generally I've found that it takes me a lot more time to get the same results in languages that I've also used heavily in the past (i.e. Java).
 
psr
psr
I wish I understood better what clutter PHP gets rid of for you. I am familiar with ASP.NET and it certainly does have a lot of clutter. The Java web frameworks are rather complex. Django is pretty complicated too, but there are some Python frameworks that are pretty straightforward and small.
 
Kempeth
Kempeth
@YannisRizos Thank you.
 
psr
psr
Yes, hard to be quick in Java in my experience as well.
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
Now quick is not always good, but after a while you get to be extremely fast without sacrificing quality (much).
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
10:23 PM
Let's argue about whether Haskell or Clojure is better while somebody else ships products using PHP and duct tape.
Tweeted by agentdero on February 29, 2012 at 9:11 PM
 
psr
psr
11:12 PM
Yes, I've seen that before. A guideline - if the argument can be used to justify any language then it isn't saying much for the language you are trying to defend. No language is so bad that it's more productive to argue about whether Haskell is better than Clojure than it is to program in that language.
 
Jae
Jae
11:48 PM
@YannisRizos Thanks for the support in the comments by the way. Just wondering what Abby meant when she said "fixed!"
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@Jae Nothing to do with your question, she was responding to my comment (and she did a small edit to her answer when she noticed who I was - silly name on MSO confuses everyone ;)
 
Jae
Jae
@YannisRizos Figured that... thanks again though.
 

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