[Info-vax] OS implementation languages

[bill]

On 9/8/2023 2:05 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-09-08, bill <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/8/2023 10:03 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>> In article <km0l0iF8emlU3 at mid.individual.net>,
>>> bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 9/7/2023 9:18 AM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>> [snip]
>>>>> My moment of enlightenment was the day I was told I wasn't a "real
>>>>> programmer" since I didn't know or use PHP.  Guy didn't even know what
>>>>> assembly language was.  It's actually a bit scary.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm a real programmer.  I know PHP and that's why I don't use it.
>>>
>>> This seems apropos:
>>> https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
>>>
>>
>> That was good.  Even some stuff in there I didn't already know about.
>> But my biggest argument was how it works so very hard to make security
>> in the environment it is most used (the web) totally nonexistent.
>>
> 
> Unfortunately, I _do_ have to use PHP sometimes.
> 
> It didn't take me long to establish some solid rules, such as strict
> comparisons at _all_ times, and to use a monitor library I wrote that
> has the allowed error level turned all the way down so that things
> which PHP normally allows through generate an error instead.

I had to support it at the University because we had a professor
who insisted on teaching it, using it and making his students use
it.  No matter how many time I showed him the security holes he
just insisted I was wrong and that it be available  and wide open.

> 
> |PHP is built to keep chugging along at all costs. When faced with either
> |doing something nonsensical or aborting with an error, it will do something
> |nonsensical. Anything is better than nothing.
> 
> It is a horrible, horrible, language that like Javascript has been
> turned from something used for writing little scripts into something
> used to write mission-critical and highly sensitive applications,
> which neither of them are suitable for.

And it is one of the most convoluted languages ever created.
We had a system to handle registration for a High School
Programming Contest run by  one of the professors.  It was
written as a "project" for credit by one of the students. At
one point an upgrade to PHP had been applied and the whole
thing stopped working.  And neither the professor or the student
who wrote it could decipher the original code to figure out
what was wrong.  After about two weeks they had it running
again but I am fairly certain the student started from scratch
and re-wrote the whole thing.

They wouldn't use it but within 24 hours I had come up with a
replacement.  Two actually.  One in C-Shell and one in COBOL.

>bill