4 ms·

Honestly, although phpBB's design leaves a hell of a lot to be desired (messy, table-based, complex, not pretty), the benefit I see from this as an open source

Honestly, although phpBB's design leaves a hell of a lot to be desired (messy, table-based, complex, not pretty), the benefit I see from this as an open source competitor is that it's Rails and MVC. This is a sight for sore eyes for someone who has to maintain a phpBB forum and its modifications (all of which, by design, require patching the source code with some bizarre XML-diff format). Even with no formal plugin architecture, the decision to choose Rails is massively beneficial.

martinced 14y ago
+1... It's also beneficial from a security point of view. Even if Ruby had a few security exploits recently, there shall never be as many issues as there have been with PHP. I'm a huge forum users and they're regularly brought down (2+2, one of the biggest forum on the planet, was taken offline for weeks due to a PHP exploit).
- Firehed 14y ago
  That's a bad code problem, not a PHP problem. Why does this meme continue to exist? This is a PHP bug: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/010511-php-floating-point-bug-crashes.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/010511-php-floating-po... Everything else? Bad code.
  - jules 14y ago
    When bad code happens because the language is a security minefield, blame the language.
    - kibibu 14y ago
      Such as when things like this happen? http://erratasec.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/rubygithub-hack-translated.html http://erratasec.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/rubygithub-hack-tra...
      - jules 14y ago
        The security vulnerability occurred because of Rails models' mass attribute assignment, which you wouldn't have in a less dynamic language. So yes, that's a problem at least partially attributable to the language.
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    Language influences both how much bad code you get, and how large consequences arise from typical mistakes. A larger than average proportion of bad code is a fault of the language, the design choices/compromises made for the language structure.
  - krapp 14y ago
    As much as I want to defend PHP a bit as a PHP coder who at least _tries_ and is kind of sick of the pile-on (while understanding the rationale), I'm reminded of the thousand odd reasons that PHP sometimes makes me just want to cry into my coffee. I think it's both bad code and PHP.. specifically bad code written on old versions of php on crap shared hosts where that's the only server-side language available. It should be harder to write insecure code with PHP but it isn't. A language whose entire purpose is to process requests and return content should have security baked into its core. I shouldn't have to wake up one day and find out that "oh, anyone who adds an ?-s flag to their queries can maybe read your source code or whatnot." Now granted, it wasn't that common, but it should never have existed. PHP may not be the great evil some claim it is but there are parts of it that jump out of the dark and bite you, no doubt.
- bradleyjg 14y ago
  PHP vs Rails for security is like cyanide versus hemlock for health.

martinced 14y ago

+1... It's also beneficial from a security point of view. Even if Ruby had a few security exploits recently, there shall never be as many issues as there have been with PHP. I'm a huge forum users and they're regularly brought down (2+2, one of the biggest forum on the planet, was taken offline for weeks due to a PHP exploit).

Firehed 14y ago
That's a bad code problem, not a PHP problem. Why does this meme continue to exist? This is a PHP bug: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/010511-php-floating-point-bug-crashes.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/010511-php-floating-po... Everything else? Bad code.
- jules 14y ago
  When bad code happens because the language is a security minefield, blame the language.
  - kibibu 14y ago
    Such as when things like this happen? http://erratasec.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/rubygithub-hack-translated.html http://erratasec.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/rubygithub-hack-tra...
    - jules 14y ago
      The security vulnerability occurred because of Rails models' mass attribute assignment, which you wouldn't have in a less dynamic language. So yes, that's a problem at least partially attributable to the language.
- PeterisP 14y ago
  Language influences both how much bad code you get, and how large consequences arise from typical mistakes. A larger than average proportion of bad code is a fault of the language, the design choices/compromises made for the language structure.
- krapp 14y ago
  As much as I want to defend PHP a bit as a PHP coder who at least _tries_ and is kind of sick of the pile-on (while understanding the rationale), I'm reminded of the thousand odd reasons that PHP sometimes makes me just want to cry into my coffee. I think it's both bad code and PHP.. specifically bad code written on old versions of php on crap shared hosts where that's the only server-side language available. It should be harder to write insecure code with PHP but it isn't. A language whose entire purpose is to process requests and return content should have security baked into its core. I shouldn't have to wake up one day and find out that "oh, anyone who adds an ?-s flag to their queries can maybe read your source code or whatnot." Now granted, it wasn't that common, but it should never have existed. PHP may not be the great evil some claim it is but there are parts of it that jump out of the dark and bite you, no doubt.
bradleyjg 14y ago
PHP vs Rails for security is like cyanide versus hemlock for health.