4 ms·

... and to think that my contempt for PHP couldn't be increased. Wow. This is the anti-Scheme. It's like they took everything good in language design and decid

• yeahbutbut 12y ago
  > "Let's make a function that has the side effect of introducing variables into scope. That's a great idea." And ``let'' is? ;-) Doing a (let [request] (check-auth ...)) would be equally dumb. Let's not blame the tools.
  • jsn 12y ago
    That's not not how 'let' works, you can't do that with 'let'. You most definitely should blame the tools here.
    • yeahbutbut 12y ago
      You're right, let is a macro so you can't pass binding forms from a variable, my mistake. But surely Scheme has some function for binding variables to the local scope... My point is that trusting user input is the error, not having the ability to play with the scope.
      • gdwatson 12y ago
        Scheme has forms that add bindings to the local scope -- local defines -- but they're similar in spirit to let. There aren't any such functions in standard Scheme, and I don't know of any major implementation that has any. It's not clear how they would interact with macros or macro hygiene, and they would do unpleasant things to lexical scope which is Scheme's original schtick.
• ars 12y ago
  > This is the anti-Scheme. Since when is Scheme the arbiter of what is good or bad? PHP lets you do this, or not do this, your choice. Like C, PHP doesn't tell you what to do, it's up to you. That's why people actually use it.
  • fleitz 12y ago
    Exactly, what's wrong with a double clawed hammer? Use it or not, if you don't like it you can smash stuff with the triblade screw driver. Or the 7 point socket wrench. PHP provides a wealth of very useful tools that you can choose to use or not. I don't know why people think my 7 point socket wrench is dumb, it works quite well to round the edges of 6 sided bolts and saves a lot of money on buying those special bolts that can't be removed once tightened.
    • ars 12y ago
      If this is the quality of the argument then I have nothing to concern myself with. Your post might be [slightly] humorous, but as an argument against PHP language constructs it fails miserably.
      • steego 12y ago
        It really doesn't. Especially when you see people pulling out the double claw hammers at your company. Features that have limited real benefits with lots of risk get abused all the time. They are the retarded tools of the world creating technical debt for everybody else and they should be retired. Extract is one of the stupidist language feature conceived precisely because it puts something so ripe for abuse into the hands of idiots. It even has a simple name that practically encourages its abuse.
        • fleitz 12y ago
          Yup, then you see people building sine wave roads for the square wheels they build last week. Or making critical parts of infrastructure work by a cron job that calls wget. For some reason PHP needs extract, because a dictionary just won't do. foo["var_x"] // for some reason needs to be: $var_x
• deleted 12y ago
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