Designing a consistent language is *very* hard

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Guillaume Chatelet" <chatelet.guillaume at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:vwpzirpppabcgylmvpsx at forum.dlang.org...
> Sorry for the noise but I think a few language designer out there might 
> like this one :
> http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
>

"PHP: a fractal of bad design" is the absolute most perfect summary of PHP 
anyone could ever possibly make. It is the world's worst still-living 
non-joke language, period. Although, I genuinely cringe at calling it a 
"non-joke" language. Or "living" - PHP is like one of those botched 
homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist, writhing around in an unholy 
half-existence. Even if you use something like Haxe-compiled-to-PHP to 
escape the language itself, you've still only escaped part of PHP's gruesome 
hell.

His sections "An Analogy" through "Core Language" are absolute spot-on 
perfection.

One of my (many) favorite quotes here is "PHP is a community of amateurs". 
So very, very true. Speaking of which, the fact that they botched the 
PHP4 -> PHP5 transition so completely, when there were obvious trivial ways 
to handle it sensibly, has always been my personal favorite evidence of 
PHP's extreme amaterishness.

I couldn't bear to get even as far as half-way through this tome, but I do 
have this to say about it: I hope I *never* end up knowing anywhere near as 
much about PHP as this guy is cursed to know.

With each passing day, I grow more and more convinced: The true measure of a 
web developer is how much they hate PHP. (Note: Not intended 
self-referentially - No narcissism implied.)