Top all-time · #891
me.veekun.com
Personal blog · me.veekun.com/blogprogrammingsystems
me.veekun.com is a personal blog at me.veekun.com about programming and systems. Since 2011, 76 different Hacker News readers have linked it 88 times, most often “PHP: A fractal of bad design”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog mostly for 'PHP: A Fractal of Bad Design', cited as a detailed critique of PHP's language flaws, plus a post on the controller pattern in MVC.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- PHP: A fractal of bad design51 people · 60 mentions · first linked 2012-04-10
- The Controller Pattern Is Awful, Or, Stop Writing Stupid Classes6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-03-04
- CVs and File Extensions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-10
- A new use for StackOverflow2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-22
- Quick doesn't have to mean dirty2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-07-29
- Mozilla and Free Speech2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-06
What Hacker News says?
You're making a mistake. The question is not whether to start a company with PHP vs language X. The company is long started. The question is not whether or not to poof into existence a port from all of FB to language X. That's not possible. The question is, given that PHP is the current language, with all its faults, will it it cost more (including all definitions of cost) to make the switch? How long will it take?…
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Hack: a new programming language for HHVM”Submitted PHP: A fractal of bad design as a story · 765 points
HN discussion... and then again php isn't good for anything anymore http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others launch webplatform.org”Submitted Fuck passwords as a story · 655 points
HN discussionI meant PHP. I don't want to spark some sort of war on what language beats up your language. So I wont. Besides I don't think something 'being everywhere' makes it good. By that standard lots of things in this world are good. PHP is exactly what you say it is with regards to being similar to a workhorse. It is a tool for programmers who like to work very hard to achieve something that a harvester could do a lot quic…
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Ghost — rethinking WordPress”Submitted I only know PHP. How do I write a Web application in Python? as a story · 230 points
HN discussionActually there are better alternatives which can replace Comic Sans entirely but to the newbie wannabe designer who wants to get something out, if you argue this, you get a response as if you've recommended ruby to a php developer (Ok, maybe not that strong). The activism against them look quite similar: http://www.sitepoint.com/friends-dont-let-friends-use-comic-... vs http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fra…
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Why I created Comic Sans”Submitted Python FAQ: Equality as a story · 91 points
HN discussionFor me, this is the definitive take-down of PHP: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de... Even if a handful of those issues have been addressed in the intervening 15 months, the depth and breadth of fundamental problems remains. /$.02
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Software in 2014”Submitted Python FAQ: Descriptors as a story · 41 points
HN discussion"haphazardly accumulated features" is not an explanation, it's a subjective point of view. If you really need it, here's a very good write-up which should cover that in an impressively detailed manner: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Software in 2014”Submitted Quick doesn't have to mean dirty as a story · 36 points
HN discussionI think we're mostly in agreement, @dj-wonk. Objects are about bundling that state and behavior, nothing more. How they're created or instantiated is secondary. It's unnecessary to create classes for functionality when it's unnecessary to create objects for functionality. Here's an eloquent article on that subject: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-...
Comment linking /blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-is-awful-and-other-oo-heresy/
on “Why Class?”Submitted Tmux is sweet as heck as a story · 20 points
HN discussion> A good portion of why people like to mock PHP is due to the way people end up using the language rather than the language's ugly parts. Are you really going to trot out that old lie? Why not read this, instead? http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “PHP: The Right Way”Submitted A new use for StackOverflow as a story · 19 points
HN discussionOh, the MVC pattern again. Here, take one of these: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-...
Comment linking /blog/2013/03/03/the-controller-pattern-is-awful-and-other-oo-heresy/
on “I’m done with the web”Submitted The Controller Pattern Is Awful, Or, Stop Writing Stupid Classes as a story · 12 points
HN discussionIt is build around a model of process input, spit output, exit; which is not what you want for long living processes. There are many articles about it's flaws, my favourite is this one: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Nginx now supports Websockets”Submitted A New Use for StackOverflow as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThe most egregious example in common usage: PHP. http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Some dark corners of C”Submitted Fuck passwords as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIs it my imagination or is Marco the king of writing blog posts that are quick reactions to whatever is trending on HN? The message you should get from this post is that familiarity with one's tools easily trumps any aesthetic flaws (consistency in parameter ordering, naming conventions, etc are really nothing more than aesthetic flaws and not "deep" [1] as the author suggests. After all, human language is inconsist…
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “PHP Addiction”Submitted A little bit Rusty as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWhen you "improve" inconsistency and misfeatures, you're essentially replacing anyway. Else you're building a mess of backward compatibility like in the fopen() example in http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “PHP Addiction”Submitted Mozilla and Free Speech as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFollow the "deeply flawed" link in the article to see lots of bullet points of precise criticisms. The target of the link is http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “PHP Addiction”Submitted Should your resume be a .PDF or an .EXE? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionConsistency: The design must not be overly inconsistent. Consistency can be sacrificed for simplicity in some cases, but it is better to drop those parts of the design that deal with less common circumstances than to introduce either complexity or inconsistency in the implementation. . . . I don't know about you, but IMHO, this is PHP in a nutshell. If you had read some of the criticisms of PHP that had been posted…
Comment linking /blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
on “Coding Horror: The PHP Singularity”Submitted CVs and File Extensions as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
