What are AST Macros?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:08:15 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:

> "retard" <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote in message
> news:i1i1se$ord$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>
>> Php is basically a toy example of a language.  Nobody uses it for  
>> serious
>> work. You just think your work is serious, but it isn't. Php shows what
>> the world would look like if it was created by an "intelligent  
>> designer".
>>
>
> I want to have that enlarged, framed and mounted on my wall.
>
> ("That's what she said!" Ha h..umm...no...sorry...)
>
> When I first read "Nobody uses it for serious work." I was about to hit
> Reply and object, but the next sentence hit the nail right on the head.
> *I've* used PHP plenty of times simply because I had to, but when you get
> down to it, none of that (and really no web app in general IMO) *really*
> qualifies as serious work. We may get paid to make it, but it's all just
> pointless dinky shit (and most of it's made by amateurs anyway).

Just for fun, how would you define a serious language?

1. Major major websites use it (facebook is one example, there are many  
more).
2. There are lots of books about it.
3. people make serious money doing it, not just play money.
4. major IDEs support it (I use netbeans, and probably would be lost  
without it).
5. The documentation is complete and well written.
6. It supports interfaces to many major technologies (many databases,  
apache, pdf, etc.)

I'd agree that php has some serious drawbacks, I can't tell you how many  
times I miss static typing when working on a daily basis (try forgetting  
to use $this when writing an object).  But it's just another language, one  
that works, and is well defined.  I'd also agree that there are lots of  
non-serious developers using it, which means the quality of any one piece  
of code has a better chance of being crappy than a piece of C++ code, but  
I've seen a lot of crappy C++ code too.

-Steve