NYCPHP Meetup

[Mark Armendariz]

I always just figured these guys were bitter because their job doesn't get
them laid.  When out in a group and the subject of what everyone does for a
living comes up, I usually sneak away to buy the next round and let the
musicians and actors steal the show.  When you mention programming to a
group of non-programmers (particularly of the opposite sex), a deafening
glaze takes over.

Not that I'm not proud of being a programmer.  After 8 or 9 years in these
trenches, I can't think of much I'd rather do.  Especially in my underwear
(although clients tend to prefer you put pants on for the meetings).

Anyways, I always figured that since we can't have a 'normal' conversation
about the usefulness of singletons, oo vs procedural, referential integrity,
relational calculus, Unicode and why it's right for you and whatever the
hell else comes up daily in our world a lot of us end up picking on each
other.

In the end, though.  Every language has tons of faults.  We're the middle
men between punch cards and literally telling machines what we want in plain
<insert your native language here>.  We're inching towards our replacement
every day, which will most likely have modules in just about every
programming language we use daily and a few more we come up with along the
way.

The languages don't matter.  Because even then, a system that understands
Exactly what a trader on wall street wants, might have trouble understanding
what the hell aunt Bessie is asking for - and vice versa.  We're basically
translators, and as long as we're well trained in getting our ideas across,
then all else generally falls in the place just fine.

In the meantime, as these silly naysayers yell 'doom, doom, doom' about the
'other' languages (the ones they won't use for whatever reason), I like to
swoop in, solve the clients' problems quickly and correctly and collect the
check - then go have a drink with some friends and forget about these silly
languages we use to tell computers to do what we need them to do. 

(sorry for the long post - maybe I should finally start a blog one of these
days)

Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On Behalf Of Ophir Prusak
> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:57 PM
> To: NYPHP Talk
> Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Why the light has gone out on LAMP
> 
> I agree with Chris that writing a response is not necessary.
> 
> While I don't really agree with his "solution" - don't use 
> PHP / MySQL I do agree that:
> 
> - PHP has lowered the entry barrier into the realm of 
> computer programming.
> - Many of the people who write programs in PHP don't take the 
> time to learn computer science fundamentals (and it shows in 
> their code).
> 
> I have an old blog entry that goes into more detail about this:
> http://www.prusak.com/archives/2004-11-04/how-did-we-get-here/
> 
> But to the point - An analogy I like to use is Digital Video.
> Today's tools and technologies allows anyone to make their 
> own "movies".
> Of course this means that we have more people making movies 
> that are junk, but that doesn't mean everyone should be using 
> 35mm ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35mm_film )
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Ophir Prusak
> http://www.prusak.com
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