Top all-time · #1897
Garfieldtech
Personal blog · garfieldtech.com/blogprogrammingweb
Garfieldtech is a personal blog at garfieldtech.com about programming and web. Since 2008, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “TMI About me [Harassment in the Drupal community]”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Larry Garfield's blog for his PHP and Drupal writing, including the MVC vs PAC comparison, the PHP 5 adoption push, and his account of the 2017 Drupal controversy.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- MVC vs PAC overview a 'good overview'; the blog's last posts 'a good read'; the self-outing post 'worth reading'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- TMI About me [Harassment in the Drupal community]9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-03-22
- Response to conversations about me5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-03-27
- Selfish AI4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-02
- MVC vs. PAC3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-08-10
- Deception and discrimination in Drupal2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-07-19
- /blog/go-php-5-go2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-30
- Getting off the island in 20132 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-12-31
What Hacker News says?
To be fair, it took about as long for PHP 5 to gain traction. PHP 5.0 was released in 2004, but it wasn't until PHP 5.2's release in 2006 that PHP 5 really became viable and PHP 4's EOL in 2008 that people started pushing for the widespread adoption of PHP 5 (via the GoPHP5 movement[1]). Arguably, it wasn't until the release of PHP 5.3 in 2009 with its namespace support that really spurred people to take a PHP 5-onl…
Comment linking /blog/go-php-5-go
on “About Python 3”Submitted Response to conversations about me as a story · 75 points
HN discussionThere was a massive push from the community for PHP5. They had a similar site to the Python3 WOS and large projects such as Wordpress and Drupal announced PHP5 only major updates. I would link it, but the domain has apparently been left expire and replaced with e-cig spam. So here's some link to comments about the announcement: http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/go-php-5-go , and then a post about its impact and a des…
Comment linking /blog/go-php-5-go
on “Extend Python 2.7 life till 2020”Submitted TMI About me [Harassment in the Drupal community] as a story · 46 points
HN discussionEr, your accusations about Acquia here are both incorrect and offensive. For the record, Acquia was only marginally involved in getting the new database API into Drupal 7 in the first place (probably 95% or more of the work and technical direction for this particular feature was contributed by non-Acquians). Also, given that we (Acquia) own a MySQL-based Drupal website hosting business (and don't really have MSSQL o…
Comment linking /blog/database-tng-lands
on “The Drupal Crisis”Submitted Programming language trade-offs as a story · 11 points
HN discussionhttps://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-3 TL;DR : The Drupal leadership hasn't accused Larry of a code of conduct violation publicly or privately but they're happy to imply that a secret violation exists so they can cover up the fact that they ousted him because his lifestyle is icky and bad for PR.
Comment linking /blog/tmi-part-3
on “Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter”Submitted Selfish AI as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSome context: Garfield's statement: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing Executive Director's statement: https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from-the...
Comment linking /blog/tmi-outing
on “Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter”Submitted Drupal's audience priorities as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDrupal actually has a different paradigm than what most other CMSes atleast pretend at - PAC ( http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/mvc-vs-pac ) The fact that modules break, etc. imho is a Good Thing - in following the rule of "failing fast". Since, you dont need to change/hack the drupal core to do anything complex, if a module is breaking it is typically highlighting incompatibilities with other modules (99.99% of the…
Comment linking /blog/mvc-vs-pac
on “WordPress has left the building”Submitted MVC vs. PAC as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAbsolutely. The dams of NIH have begun to break down. (I've started to see teams use things like Compass instead of conclude "But I have to install Ruby?") People are collaborating on actually finally decent solutions (Composer, PHPSpec2, Behat). I see people relying less and less upon PHP's bloated, arcane and mostly dangerous standard library, instead building reusable chunks of PHP with surprisingly acceptable (c…
Comment linking /blog/off-the-island-2013
on “PHPPHP: a PHP VM in PHP”Submitted Selfish AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDrupal is 10 years old so started back in the dark ages of PHP 3. So it started almost completely procedural but large chunks now have been converted to OOP. Drupal doesn't follow the MVC pattern but the somewhat less common PAC (Presentation-Abstraction-Control) pattern. See http://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/mvc-vs-pac for a good overview of the differences between MVC and PAC and how Drupal implements it.
Comment linking /blog/mvc-vs-pac
on “Drupal 7 Released”Submitted Deception and discrimination in Drupal as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOver in Drupal land we are talking a lot about the direction we want to take Drupal 8; FP vs OOP. The last couple of posts on this blog are a good read. http://www.garfieldtech.com/
Comment linking /
on “Programming is for Stupid People”Submitted Deception and discrimination in Drupal as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software. Okay. Under my real name/identity, I was once upon a time a substantial contributor to the Drupal project, a PHP-based CMS/web dev framework. Earlier this year, we had a kerfluffle where someone had a grudge against Larry "Crell" Garfield, a core developer, liaison to the wider PHP communit…
Comment linking /blog/tmi-outing
on “When should behaviour outside a community have consequences inside it?”Submitted The future of caching as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe order of reading seems to be like this: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing http://buytaert.net/living-our-values https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/60y9mq/larry_garfie... https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-2
Comment linking /blog/tmi-part-2
on “Response to conversations about me”Submitted Selfish AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNo, this is Larry's response to Dries, the DA and others (following his first post https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing ).
Comment linking /blog/tmi-outing
on “Response to conversations about me”Submitted Selfish AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionDrupal developer here. I've worked on core, maintain many contrib modules, etc. and have worked with Larry IRL on Drupally stuff. I really don't understand what this quote is talking about if they aren't specifically pointing at his history. He's never been less than pleasant and considerate of others in my IRL interactions with him. Also, from his post: > Second: I've been involved in the Gorean community since 200…
Comment linking /blog/tmi-part-2
on “Drupal project imploding, core developers ejected for S&M hobbies”Submitted Best practices are contextual (2017) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI don't agree with the decision. But, he was not ejected for S&M hobbies. He was ejected because he was perceived to believe that women are subservient to men (evidently this was part of some of his online writing). Here's a timeline of blog posts: 1. Larry's (the ejectee) initial blog post: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing 2. Dries' (founder of Drupal) following blog post: http://buytaert.net/living-our…
Comment linking /blog/tmi-part-2
on “Drupal project imploding, core developers ejected for S&M hobbies”Submitted Composer vs. Linux Distributions: A Mental Model Battle as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>how is this different that discriminating based on sexual preference (being gay)? Garfield made that exact analogy in his reply ( https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing ).
Comment linking /blog/tmi-outing
on “Drupal project imploding, core developers ejected for S&M hobbies”Submitted A Tale of Two PHP Devs as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
