Scott Meyers wants to bring default zero-initialization to C++, mentions TDPL for precedent

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 21 November 2015 at 07:20:07 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> PHP scales. This is why people use it. And this is why people 
>> will continue to use it. This is why Facebook, wikipedia, 
>> Baidu, wordpress and many others are using it. There is always 
>> a reason, and if you don't understand it, you are doomed to 
>> miss the point.
>
> Whut?  PHP scales?!  If you simply mean that it is easily coded 
> by lowest-common denominator programmers, so it's easy to throw 
> a bunch of those low-skilled coders on the job, then perhaps 
> that's why you end up with monstrosities like this:
>

Yes PHP sclaes. PHP scales like crazy? PHP scales better than 
whatever modern framework you'll present me. There is just 
nothing that came up with the same execution.

You can say whatever you want about the languages (and there is a 
lot to say !) but it gets its execution model right for scaling, 
while everybody gets it wrong. And apparently, getting your 
execution model right is more important than all the quirk you 
pour into the language.

Actually, that's not surprising, Rasmus Ledorf is a specialist of 
the web, while he doesn't knows much about PL both theoretically 
and practically (by his own admission). As a result, you get a 
passable language, but you know what ? That's not the important 
part.

> http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-the-facebook-ios-application-is-so
> http://www.darkcoding.net/software/facebooks-code-quality-problem/
>
> Potshots at your employer aside- ;) I could have done the same 
> for Wikipedia and Wordpress, don't know much about Baidu- I'd 
> honestly like to know how you think PHP scales, because it's 
> success has always been a perfect example of Gresham's law to 
> me:
>
> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2015-06.html#e2015-06-14T09_17_33.htm

You can go for it, I've read these article already. Yet, Facebook 
as the strongest engineering team I've worked with, and not by a 
thin margin. Maybe some of the people writing on the subject have 
a strongest team, but statistically, it is very improbable that 
more than a ridiculously small fraction of them actually do.

Nobody cares about what some guy on reddit think about the number 
of classes there is in the iOS app. What matter is delivering 
value to users and customers. And as a matter of fact half of the 
top 10 apps are Facebook owned. This is not a one time lucky 
shot, this is just a working methodology that delivers.

Just from the comment this one is delicious : "This kind of 
attitude is so anti-user." Yeah sure, Facebook is anti users. It 
has just more than a billion of them, how many do your app has ?

As to Gresham's law, it's kind of defeated by the move to hack 
(http://hacklang.org/) isn't it. But let's not get the facts get 
in the way of a good story.

Long story short, nothing reach the level of usage PHP, Node.js 
or other techno has at random. You can only go so far not knowing 
what you are doing. When you see something that big, and when it 
has obvious flaws (I mean, it is not like it is difficult to find 
problems in Node.js or PHP), it is really need to take step back 
and wonder, what did they get right ? Because obviously, they got 
something right. In fact they got something SO right that it can 
get over flaws on other aspects. These are lesson in delivering 
value to users. One should learn from it rather than dismissing 
it.

Node.js is used at linkedin, paypal, ebay, netflix, uber, and who 
know else. Realistically, what is the probability that all these 
companies are staffed by morons and still succeed at the scale 
they do ? Negligible.

Get over your proudness. Node.js and PHP answer actual needs that 
is what matters. It doesn't matter how much inconsistency there 
is in the languages when no alternative does better.