[COFF] A couple thoughts about BASIC

[segaloco via COFF]

On Saturday, November 23rd, 2024 at 4:27 PM, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2024-11-23T16:07:15-0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> 
> > A couple decades later we had PHP for the web, which did almost
> > exactly the same thing: made the barrier to entry, for getting stuff
> > you wanted to see on the screen actually show up there, really low.
> 
> 
> PHP was what I had to deal with for my first paying gig during the
> golden age of "e-commerce". Even as naïve as I was back then (some
> say I am still), I recognized a language that was dangerously sloppy.
> 
> Regards,
> Branden

I did some volunteer PHP work for a local non-profit for a while, was my first and really only significant exposure to it.  The recurring phenomenon I found was that it seems that nobody agrees on best practices or canonical ways to do literally anything.  The educational resources and library components out there are such a hodge podge it's a wonder that there are any functionally adequate PHP-driven sites out there at all.  I gave up on trying to get a feel for what best practices cropped up in the community and instead just religiously studied the documentation instead.  That may have started my trend of foregoing secondary sources on programming and referring almost exclusively to reference manuals and my own intuition.

It's a shame because the idea behind PHP is obviously one that has stuck around, what with other languages also featuring weird mishmash HTML and structured procedural code, although nowadays with the popularity of doing almost everything in client-side scripting, I wonder how PHP is going to adapt in the coming decade or two.  Plus given the growing popularity of JS server-side engines, the playing field PHP enjoyed a wide berth in is becoming more crowded.

Just speaking as someone who did some PHP, didn't really have any major qualms with the language, but finds there is a lot to be desired in the quality of educational materials out there...  However, the same could probably be said about a lot of languages, especially those meant for "pick up and go" because that doesn't always translate to "pick up and go /correctly/".  I'm just glad I had so much programming experience under my belt before I touched PHP, it would be far too easy to pick up bad patterns and then carry those into other realms...

- Matt G.