• Crash (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    I feel I need to step in and defend PHP and Flash. As a PHP developer by trade I feel it's a great language (sure, strict datatyping - among other things - would probably weed out the crap developers from the good ones but PHP is what it is) that can be picked up easily. What people do with it is a different story. I've seen much WTFery but that says more about the developer than the language.

    Flash gets a bad name because of the horrible use and misuse of it. Flash, too, has its merits and, if done correctly, can be a huge asset to a company or website. A friend of mine works in Flash and can make highly stable, elegant, and organized AS3 interactive elements. My chief arguments against flash were navigation (you couldn't use browser forward/back buttons) and its speed (or lack thereof). He proved me wrong on both counts and showed me that a properly implemented flash movie is much like properly implemented AJAX; highly functional, very elegant, and less linear - more application-like. When Flash is misused, much like JavaScript, it can turn a website into a horrible mess.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    There's really only one match on amazon for a PHP book with a Gary as co-author.

  • Redled (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    That line was copied directly from the submission. I don't know the context either, but having seen similar code in the past, I find it quite plausible.

    In what context have you seen this ?

  • (cs) in reply to Redled
    Redled:
    In what context have you seen this ?

    I've seen complete nonsense code like that in all sorts of projects. A lot of times, it comes back from offshore teams, but I've seen so-called "experts" generate Javascript code that's so nonsensical that I couldn't even guess as to what they were trying to do.

    Seriously, are you trying to say no one has ever handed you code that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever? You obviously haven't handled much of other people's code in that case.

  • (cs) in reply to blunder
    blunder:
    Not knowing recursion is inexcusable. Why the "recursion is ivory tower" thing pops up on here every week (unless I'm being trolled?) just makes me weep. It's first week stuff. That there are even people out there in the profession who are so intellectually lazy to have avoid recursion for years and years explains pretty well why a site like TDWTF exists in the first place.

    Actually, it's common on Embedded Systems to avoid recursive code; there is typically only a small amount of memory available, and there aren't enough spare CPU cycles to do the type of bounds checking necessary to avoid a stack overflow.

  • (cs) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    Actually, it's common on Embedded Systems to avoid recursive code; there is typically only a small amount of memory available, and there aren't enough spare CPU cycles to do the type of bounds checking necessary to avoid a stack overflow.

    Only if your compiler doesn't do tail call optimization. Which it should.

    //I'm lookin' at you, .NET.

  • Gary (unregistered)
    echo if(isset($bob + 1000))
    OK, first of all I work in many languages, so you hacks who only bothered to learn one can't relate.

    I was getting errors pointing to a line that said, essentially, "$fred = $bob + 1000" (I name my variables after my enemies) so I put in a debugging statement. In most sane languages, an "if" in a string context will return "TRUE" or "FALSE" and I wanted to echo that to my screen.

    Just then the boss interrupted me and I never got to try it. Forgot about it and never removed it. Luckily that module never even gets called.

    Was that so hard to understand? Geez, morons.

  • Redled (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    I've seen complete nonsense code like that in all sorts of projects. A lot of times, it comes back from offshore teams, but I've seen so-called "experts" generate Javascript code that's so nonsensical that I couldn't even guess as to what they were trying to do.

    Seriously, are you trying to say no one has ever handed you code that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever? You obviously haven't handled much of other people's code in that case.

    I have already seen code which I didn't catch the meaning. But I have never seen a code which had no meaning. If someone wrote it, then it had some sort of meaning for him. Most of the time, weird solutions to imaginary problems.

    Rarely 6 various syntax errors in the same 20 bytes with random keywords and operators in it...

  • (cs) in reply to Gary
    Gary:
    echo if(isset($bob + 1000))
    OK, first of all I work in many languages, so you hacks who only bothered to learn one can't relate.

    I was getting errors pointing to a line that said, essentially, "$fred = $bob + 1000" (I name my variables after my enemies) so I put in a debugging statement. In most sane languages, an "if" in a string context will return "TRUE" or "FALSE" and I wanted to echo that to my screen.

    Just then the boss interrupted me and I never got to try it. Forgot about it and never removed it. Luckily that module never even gets called.

    Was that so hard to understand? Geez, morons.

    Really, "Gary"? A branching statement returns a value? Doesn't sound very sane to me.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Cygnus:
    One of the worst programmers (though a very nice person) I ever worked with went on to publish several programming books. I thought about purchasing one or more out of curiosity but I didn't want to waste my money. Strange how those who "can't do" seem to think they can teach.
    Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

    Those who can't teach, become politicians.

  • Jan (unregistered)

    My LinkedIn profile looks worse than Gary Mailers. I use it to keep track of my consulting jobs. Poor Gary.

  • somedudenamedbob (unregistered) in reply to Gary
    Gary:
    echo if(isset($bob + 1000))
    OK, first of all I work in many languages, so you hacks who only bothered to learn one can't relate.

    I was getting errors pointing to a line that said, essentially, "$fred = $bob + 1000" (I name my variables after my enemies) so I put in a debugging statement. In most sane languages, an "if" in a string context will return "TRUE" or "FALSE" and I wanted to echo that to my screen.

    Just then the boss interrupted me and I never got to try it. Forgot about it and never removed it. Luckily that module never even gets called.

    Was that so hard to understand? Geez, morons.

    What language does that work in, Gary?

    Maybe you think you know many languages, when you actually don't. You do know what once you pick one language for one file, you have to stick to that language, right?

    That echo if statement can work in perl, but perl doesn't have echo, it only has print. Then, isset can only accept a variable in PHP, so you can't do isset($bob + 1000). If you did mean it to be in perl, you could have done defined($bob + 1000), which would be allowed in perl but would always return true.

  • (cs) in reply to Chopper
    Chopper:
    I once worked in a team which hired the self-proclaimed "best Perl programmer in the country"... the code he handed over was so screwed up that it wouldn't even compile.

    Naturally, since Perl is an interpreted language.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Utter rubbish, 11 jobs in less than 11 years just reeks of incompentence. I wouldn't dream of even offering this guy an interview.

    So "important" you hide behind an alias of "Anonymous" and jump to conclusions like this. Why not try technically testing people? Not that doing even that will define who is likely to work well on a large-scale project. I got 17/20 in a PHP test after just reading a book on it. No way could I call myself a proficient programmer in the language although given time and the manual I could probably come up with something that works adequately.

    I counted the jobs on my CV in the last 10 years and the count also came to 11. 6 month contracts used to be very very common. I've also had 3 jobs in the last year due to them all being WTF jobs... well the last one would have been a great place to work 8 years ago when the development was actually done. In another one, for a well known media company, I was asked by the team-leader to write them a test system with a very loose spec, and the team-leader promptly left and the remainder of the team didn't really know what I was doing, and were surprised it wasn't exactly the way they'd have done it. I also got yelled at by a junior developer there who made himself my senior for daring to write in the documentation that some code was portable.

    Presumably you never came from the "contract" era that was the late 1990s. Subsequently the jobs did get a bit shorter but there has occasionally been the WTF job pop up that just didn't work out. Perhaps read this board a bit more to see the kinds of environments we have had to work under at times.

  • Kef Schecter (unregistered) in reply to Maurits
    Maurits:
    Chopper:
    I once worked in a team which hired the self-proclaimed "best Perl programmer in the country"... the code he handed over was so screwed up that it wouldn't even compile.

    Naturally, since Perl is an interpreted language.

    Yep. It interprets bytecode. And what's the name for a tool that converts source code to bytecode?

  • Charles O. Ward (unregistered)

    In case you forgot, Gary's resumé now boasts "15 years experiance in the industry", as well as "prolific author and speaker".

  • suscipere (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Strings and arrays aren't really needed in LISP. And quote, quasiquote aren't syntax- they're functions that have an optional syntactic sugar. You could remove the sugar without changing the language.
    Yes, and we could all program in assembly. Yet strangely, we do not.
    Remy Porter:
    But mostly, I love LISP because I secretly love parentheses.
    That's pretty much the only reason for loving it in its current (user-visible) syntax..
  • suscipere (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Anonymous:
    Cygnus:
    One of the worst programmers (though a very nice person) I ever worked with went on to publish several programming books. I thought about purchasing one or more out of curiosity but I didn't want to waste my money. Strange how those who "can't do" seem to think they can teach.
    Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

    Those who can't teach, become politicians.

    No, they become priests. Those who fail the morality requirements become politicians.

  • sulu pop (unregistered) in reply to epsalon
    epsalon:
    From the book:

    [image]

    Stupid spam filter thinks my comment is spam! Well, it isn't!

    It is with that font size. And when using images containing only text.

  • Deavon (unregistered) in reply to Crash

    Is the guy in question Gary Mailer? from "Beginning PHP, Apache, MySQL Web Development"

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Cbuttius
    Cbuttius:
    Anonymous:
    Utter rubbish, 11 jobs in less than 11 years just reeks of incompentence. I wouldn't dream of even offering this guy an interview.
    <snipped a load>
    I still wouldn't offer him an interview and I sure as hell wouldn't lose any sleep over it. The hiring pool is far too rich around here to warrant giving an interview to someone with such a dubious CV. Sorry but keep looking and you'll find something eventually. Something befitting of your lousy CV.
  • DeGustibusNonDisputandumEst (unregistered) in reply to Crash

    I think vulputate means "to cut off your fox" or something.

  • caper (unregistered)

    "A branching statement returns a value? Doesn't sound very sane to me."

    Ruby can. Its cool.

  • (cs) in reply to Crash
    Crash:
    Guess who's missing from the the updated version of the book...

    http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Apache-MySQL-Development-Programmer/dp/0764579665/ref=sr_ob_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270562131&sr=1-1

    The newer newer version has less people on it: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-PHP-Apache-MySQL-Development/dp/0470391146/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270765797&sr=1-3-spell

  • DjangoMan (unregistered) in reply to Crash

    Wow. I remember that PHP book. It sucked... Hard.

    I also know a fail Java guy who has several publications and a fail security chick who has a litany of publications.

    I guess those who can, do, and those who can't co-author crappy books.

  • Mary Galier (unregistered) in reply to suscipere
    suscipere:
    Jay:
    Anonymous:
    Cygnus:
    One of the worst programmers (though a very nice person) I ever worked with went on to publish several programming books. I thought about purchasing one or more out of curiosity but I didn't want to waste my money. Strange how those who "can't do" seem to think they can teach.
    Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

    Those who can't teach, become politicians.

    No, they become priests. Those who fail the morality requirements become politicians.

    Actually, I think it's the other way around.

  • Redworm (unregistered)

    Oooh, I think I might know the real "Gary". I tech-edited a PHP book co-authored by a Big Expert who mostly seemed to go around giving talks at conferences.

    And by tech-edited, I mean re-wrote his chapters and his code. Which were laughable. The Big Expert seemed to have learned some C code once, decided PHP was the more or less the same, and bloviated from there.

    He still got the book credit, though.

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