jmoiron.net

I probably should be sleeping right now, but instead I'm here (on my bed), struggling to think of something to write about. This isn't supposed to happen; I'm supposed to actually have something to write about. I do, indeed; but unfortunately I just can't seem to put any words down on the subject.

I made a few additions to the site recently and decided that it is at least time I make some recording of them. First, I wrote an rss generator (a simple task) and set up a news feed for this site. This would be useful, you know, if I ever update, which most often is not the case. The other thing I did was add a favicon, something that many of my capitalist friends might recognize.

That's right, its the soviet version of the hammer and sickle theme! Their version (the one on their flag at least) featured a star, which is a symbol of communism. The hammer and sickle itself signified the unity of agricultural and industrial workers; those who make up the proletariat. If I lost you in this paragraph, you should be ashamed of yourself; maybe you should put down your latte and go read a book or something.

Anyway, I've asked myself about this icon: "Self, you're not communist; you don't agree with communists, you even break with Marx on his theory that democracy eventually evolves through socialism towards an ideal communism; so what gives?" Nobody else has asked me that question; they just laughed and said it was pretty funny, which was kind of the reaction I was going for. If I can't educate people that my beliefs are different from that mockery of soviet republics, I might as well embrace this mistake and make light play of it.

The new Flesh CD came out; actually, the self titled debut to be exact. 10 tracks weighing in at less than 30 minutes; 3 tracks there I recognize from earlier EPs. I think I miss nightloop; but it doesn't fit in the theme of the album, which is dark, love & death emphatuated spy rock with Gabbie's (I wonder if I can call her Gabbie) psycho circus organ chugging along pleasantly. It's a good CD; I was hoping for more, but "Lonely Little Hunter", another Gab' singing track (Foes) and "Death Ship" definitely make it worth the wait. It's not quite epic, but it'l do.

I don't know what I did; but I suppose I found a way to get around my problem with sleep. I still have it, mind you, but now it no longer translates into a problem with waking up on time. This was really the important part. I had a week; last week; in which I got an immense ammount of things done that I really needed in order to add some semblence of organization to my life: I got going in the morning every day (a small but important victory), I built my chest of drawers, I cleaned up my room to its once, current, and future immaculate state, I worked on this page a little (and I have much more including a complete rehaul of the engine), and I finally got some money in the bank. I'm thinking that getting stuff actually done has put me a little at ease so my mind doesn't race so much at night; sometimes you just have to relax and watch a little West Wing.

Finally, I have had a chance to work with PHP5 at work recently, and will be working with it more in the future. This is not a glowing endorsement, in fact, I have quite a few problems with the language. As Marshal said, it's Pretty Horrible Programming, but considering that I've had serious gripes about it for some number of years, it's time that I address some I have with the latest, greatest version.

The first thing I read in the docs is the new object system, which was supposed to be sane. I had never worked with PHP4's object system, because it was ridiculously under-powered and wastefully syntax heavy. PHP5's seems similar to me, because I do not like things like sigils ($, @, etc) or necessary keywords (public, private, protected) for every single variable.

It's not like these choices are endemic to the particular version of insanity the zend authors have; Larry Wall seems to suffer them too. Thankfully he's on medication and is now publishing the illegible apocalypses (a fitting name for a language rapidly going down in flames) rather than filling the world with his PERL tripe. But, back to PHP, the authors decided to call the "::" operator "Paamayim Nekudotayim". Why? Because it means double-colon in Hebrew.

Now, while this is an etymologic, nomenclature gripe; why choose a language that will double the number of syllables and make everyone pause for longer than necessary? What's wrong with "double colon"? Would that be too complex for the internation community of coders (who apparently were able to learn 'int', 'float', or 'function')? When I make a language, I'll officially name the "." : "Boulder of Sisyphus".

If you would allow me to delve into the insanity further, I bring you this:

PHP reserves all function names starting with as magical. It is recommended that you do not use function names with in PHP unless you want some documented magic functionality.

Right. Then, PHP introduces static objects and class member constants, which cannot be accessed from an instance of the object. That's all well and fine, I suppose; except this means you need to keep the name of the class handy and use the double colon (I fucking refuse to use that other name) to make sure you pick the right scope. But, what if you want to access a constant within the class? This question must have been hard, because the bright guys at Zend HQ decided to do what they usually do, and that is polute their language with more garbage. This is the kicker; they introduce a keyword self that is like a "this" pointer but for the current class definition rather than the instance.

So I close like this; What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why introduce subtleties like these when everything can be simple? Why not do translation on constants (which are sigil-less, for some braindead reason, breaking all language conventions)? Why not, you know, move a little complexity to the interpreter as opposed to the language: that's what its there for. Computers can handle your decisions easily, no matter how stupid they are, as long as you give them a valid algorithm. Humans will just get sick of it and use something else; and if there was another language suitable for what PHP is good for, that wasn't ASP.NET; believe me I would be there already.