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As a PHP programmer the inconsistency of the string,array,regex,et al functions is an occasional annoyance blown way out of proportion, typically by developers

As a PHP programmer the inconsistency of the string,array,regex,et al functions is an occasional annoyance blown way out of proportion, typically by developers who don't even use the language. The horse is dead, continuously beating it is tedious and avoids the elephant in the room, mainly that for the tasks it was invented to handle it still (despite all it's innumerable and interminably cited warts) serves more pages than any other language with no real change on the horizon. You want to gripe about something? Let's talk about Drupal's internals, or better yet, JavaScript.

Tloewald 14y ago
I think trying to cast stones at JavaScript from PHP land is foolishness, but I agree with your assessment of the PHP string function situation. This project seems to produce PHP code that is an order of magnitude uglier than ordinary PHP. (No mean feat.) Why not simply implement a nice string class wrapped around ordinary strings with consistently parameterized chainable methods? The resulting code would be cleaner and more idiomatic (in a good sense). I don't think the "win" from doing this is worth the bother (unless maybe UTF8 support were managed as well).
- knieveltech 14y ago
  Written much JavaScript without the benefit of jQuery?
  - plaguuuuuu 14y ago
    jQuery seems more like an API to talk to the DOM than an extension or wrapper around Javascript itself. JS simply doesn't reach the same depths of madness and ineptitude as PHP does at the most fundamental levels of the language. Even if it's still fairly insane compared to languages that are actually kinda elegant.
  - apendleton 14y ago
    I have, actually, and straight Javascript actually isn't so bad for modern browsers, given document.querySelectorAll, etc. jQuery, at this point, is some pleasant syntactic sugar and a whole bunch of backward-compatibility hackery. But if you're asking about writing JS without jQuery and including support for old browsers (which I've also done), then fair's fair: you have to support PHP4 (which came out about the same time as IE6), and you don't get anything other than the standard library either. For a non-trivial app, I'm not sure which of those is less pleasant.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    Tons. I've also used JavaScript to automate Adobe's products, extend Cheetah 3d, build web apps in node.js, and develop games in Unity 3d. JavaScript is far from perfect, but it's a nice language. Note that jQuery is great for fixing problems in the DOM APi, but it doesn't fix JavaScript (which has its own problems but no more than any other useful language). Much of jQuery is obsolete in modern browsers — events are handled fairly well in most browsers, and QuerySelectorAll replaces jQuery for most lookups. I don't like jQuery's iterators, but writing better ones is quite easy. PHP's problems are with its libraries (themselves far more horrible than the DOM API) and also the language itself. I do find PHP useful but its problems far outnumber JavaScript's.

Tloewald 14y ago

I think trying to cast stones at JavaScript from PHP land is foolishness, but I agree with your assessment of the PHP string function situation. This project seems to produce PHP code that is an order of magnitude uglier than ordinary PHP. (No mean feat.) Why not simply implement a nice string class wrapped around ordinary strings with consistently parameterized chainable methods? The resulting code would be cleaner and more idiomatic (in a good sense). I don't think the "win" from doing this is worth the bother (unless maybe UTF8 support were managed as well).

knieveltech 14y ago
Written much JavaScript without the benefit of jQuery?
- plaguuuuuu 14y ago
  jQuery seems more like an API to talk to the DOM than an extension or wrapper around Javascript itself. JS simply doesn't reach the same depths of madness and ineptitude as PHP does at the most fundamental levels of the language. Even if it's still fairly insane compared to languages that are actually kinda elegant.
- apendleton 14y ago
  I have, actually, and straight Javascript actually isn't so bad for modern browsers, given document.querySelectorAll, etc. jQuery, at this point, is some pleasant syntactic sugar and a whole bunch of backward-compatibility hackery. But if you're asking about writing JS without jQuery and including support for old browsers (which I've also done), then fair's fair: you have to support PHP4 (which came out about the same time as IE6), and you don't get anything other than the standard library either. For a non-trivial app, I'm not sure which of those is less pleasant.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  Tons. I've also used JavaScript to automate Adobe's products, extend Cheetah 3d, build web apps in node.js, and develop games in Unity 3d. JavaScript is far from perfect, but it's a nice language. Note that jQuery is great for fixing problems in the DOM APi, but it doesn't fix JavaScript (which has its own problems but no more than any other useful language). Much of jQuery is obsolete in modern browsers — events are handled fairly well in most browsers, and QuerySelectorAll replaces jQuery for most lookups. I don't like jQuery's iterators, but writing better ones is quite easy. PHP's problems are with its libraries (themselves far more horrible than the DOM API) and also the language itself. I do find PHP useful but its problems far outnumber JavaScript's.