Well, php|tek is over. It was a great conference and I’m really glad I went. This was my first PHP conference.
One of my main goals was to meet some of the folks at php|architect. I’ve been writing the Test Pattern column for them for over a year now. I was finally [...]
php|tek Slides
May 19th, 2007Let Your Properties be Properties
May 8th, 2007There is a coding pattern that I see (and have used) in PHP code that defines generic methods on a class for setting and getting properties.
function set($name, $value);
function get($name);
Google code search for examples
Some times there are some ancillary methods to deal with unsetting, checking for existence, setting via an array, or dealing with references in [...]
On the Perils of Inline API Documentation
April 13th, 2007Travis Swicegood has a post questioning the value of the docblock. I have a deep sympathy with this sentiment.
Even on projects with extensive generated documentation, I find that kind of documentation to be of extremely low value. The problem with inline API documentation is that there is no sense of priority. Developers [...]
The Problem with Markup Languages
March 14th, 2007Chris Shiflett has a post today, Allowing HTML and Preventing XSS. The problem is how to allow users to format their contributed content without introducing security vulnerabilities. The answer is usually some sort of markup language or filtering and sanitization of HTML.
BBCODE was designed for this purpose. There is no actual standard, [...]
Delphi for PHP
February 23rd, 2007I have to comment on this week’s annoucement of Delphi for PHP. I was a Delphi programmer for about 5 years before taking up PHP about 6 years ago. What a convergence.
I have a great fondness and respect for the old Object Pascal based Delphi. Delphi’s VCL has been influential, inspiring the [...]
OOP is Mature, not Dead
January 7th, 2007I ran across an interesting series of blog posts by Karsten Wagner claiming that OOP is dead (part 2 and part 3). The premise behind these posts is that OOP has failed to deliver and that it is on the decline in favor of more functional or meta programming techniques. Maybe its true [...]
php | architect back issue bargains
January 6th, 2007I’ve been writing the Test Pattern column in php | architect for a few months now. I’ve been enjoying it because it lets me explore topics in more depth than I could here on my blog. Although, its more challenging and writing is not easy for me.
So far I think my best two [...]
Looking forward to 2007
January 4th, 2007Well, I’m finally back in town after the holidays. Let me tell you, I’m glad to be home. Between multiple holidays and taking my grandma to her cancer treatments in Ann Arbor, I was gone far too much of last month.
My Grandma is doing well. They used an experimental new procedure called [...]
PDO versus MDB2
December 26th, 2006I was just putting together a small test program and I thought I would try using PDO. I really haven’t done anything serious with PDO, just try it a couple times. After recompiling PHP to include the mysql driver for PDO, I coded up the first version of my test program:
$db = new [...]
Why is PHP Code Considered Hard to Maintain?
November 9th, 2006Tobias Schlitt describes Tim Bray’s talk at the International PHP Conference. (PDF slides) Tim compares PHP, Java, and Rails along several dimensions. One of those dimensions is maintainability. Tim ranks PHP as least maintainable, Rails in the middle, and Java as most maintainable.
This is not a surprising ranking. [...]