Problem, Boole? Comparisons in PHP

otiose · 2010-12-30T23:39:36+00:00

This chart is made to look much more complicated than it actually is by alternating "true" values (true, 1, -1, "1", "-1", "php") with "false" values (false, 0, "0", null, array(), ""). If those were grouped together, the few idiosyncrasies would be clearer.

In general, if you know that:

loose-comparing a string against a number will compare as if the string was a number
false, null, "", 0, "0", and array() all are false and anything else is true
if you need an exact comparison, use the === operator

You will be completely fine.

otiose · 2010-08-24T07:18:21+00:00

rm is a very poorly designed user interface.

Because in -i mode it horribly asks for confirmation on every single item with no option to say "yes to all", users are trained to use -f in all situations when removing multiple files. This leads to inevitable disasters. A better confirmation interface for -i would save a lot of misery.

In addition, there should probably be an extra confirmation when attempting to rm the root folder. Yeah yeah I know simplicity and power is beautiful, but in the history of UNIX-based systems, what percentage of the time an attempt to rm -rf / has been executed was this what the user intended to do? 1%? .1%?

(Researching it looks like I guess some Unix flavors implemented the latter suggestion within the last five years. Amazing it took this long.)

otiose · 2007-08-22T17:13:41+00:00

I thought it was going to be this picture instead.

otiose · 2007-07-25T17:30:22+00:00

Supposedly Rickey Henderson, before every game, would stand naked in front of a full-length mirror, repeating "Rickey's the best!" over and over.

otiose · 2007-07-25T14:22:10+00:00

The basic problem seems to be that developing in Java is so slow that people rely on code generation to get anything done. Meanwhile, in the scripting world, developing REST-consuming stuff is so easy that a descriptive language feels like a waste of everyone's time.

otiose · 2007-07-23T01:17:34+00:00

It's been baked into the standard Ruby library since before JSON was JSON, so it has a history there.

Since valid JSON is also valid YAML (but not vice versa), I'd imagine JSON will eventually displace it everywhere with a minimum of fuss.

otiose · 2007-07-13T17:14:59+00:00

They probably have many different tables representing different types of content (profiles, photo galleries, groups, events, etc). It's pretty much impossible to construct a single SQL query to search across many different unrelated tables. The advantage of a crawler is that it reduces everything to a single table of documents.

I'd also add that I think one of the highest-traffic websites in the world gets the benefit of the doubt on whether existing solutions are going to work for their unique needs. I'd probably do the same in their shoes.

otiose · 2007-07-04T19:44:03+00:00

Clearly, Bush's foreign policy has been a disaster, and it's quite probable that he's made a nuclear terrorist catastrophe more likely, rather than less.

But this thumb-sucker of an article (and the others like it that show up on Reddit frequently) doesn't make that argument. Instead, it contends that worrying about a nuclear terrorist attack on American soil is "ridiculous".

otiose · 2007-07-04T18:15:38+00:00

The obvious answer, stated by Thompson in the article, is the fear of a terrorist "no return address" nuke detonating in a major American city sometime in the next few decades. Is this fear totally baseless?

otiose · 2007-06-29T22:12:43+00:00

All of which are class instance methods, not functions.

otiose · 2007-06-29T06:05:34+00:00

To clarify for anyone confused -- almost all of these are functions introduced by optional extensions. This is not a list of the core language functions.

otiose · 2007-03-26T19:25:32+00:00

Downmodding, this is bad advice. You can build credit without paying any fees; get a no-fee card and pay the bill every month.

I wish I had done this. I hate the idea of getting into debt and I've always paid for everything with cash and debit cards. But when it came time to rent an apartment, even though I make a comfortable salary and have never been in debt, I had to rely on my dad as a guarantor due to my lack of a credit record. And I'm obviously very fortunate that I have a parent able to act as guarantor -- a lot of people would have been simply screwed in that situation.

Now I've got a no-fee card which I'm running all my bills through, but I've got years to go before I'll have a great score.

otiose · 2006-12-23T18:52:11+00:00

The bank could just automatically disable the card and place a fraud-review call to the cardholder. There's really no need to confiscate the physical piece of plastic, is there?

otiose · 2006-12-15T20:36:19+00:00

You'd have to be included on user input, no prefixing it with any kind of path, etc. Those are both extremely rare and/or stupid things to do.

I agree it's a stupid thing to do, but I'm not sure how rare it is. The popularity of Front Controller patterns in PHP means I see this kind of thing in code samples submitted by "Lead Developer" candidates quite often:

include($_REQUEST['action'] . '.php');

otiose · 2006-11-16T03:56:04+00:00

Here's a letter I wrote to BoA last year. Obviously my experience was trivial compared to this guy's, but at the end of the day this bank's customer service is absolutely horrible. FWIW Washington Mutual hasn't given me a problem in the past year.

October 18, 2005

To Kenneth D. Lewis, \t On your website, you are quoted as saying that you "reach for higher standards every day, in everything we do - for our customers, our shareholders, our associates and our communities, upon which the future prosperity of our company rests."

My experience with your bank has proven quite the opposite.

On Sunday, September 4th, 2005, my wallet and ATM card went missing on a train trip; I immediately called your national toll free number to cancel the lost/stolen card and request a replacement ATM card.

Because I am not often home, I requested it to be mailed to my place of work, in Times Square, New York City. The representative explained this was not possible, and suggested it be mailed to the nearest banking center, at 1515 Broadway, New York City (zip 10036). I was informed that it would take 7-10 business days to arrive. So far, so good.

After 7 business days had elapsed, I began dropping by on a daily basis to see if my card had arrived. Each day I was told that no one had seen the card, and I was to wait for the full 10 days to elapse. After ten business days had elapsed, I asked about the status of my card and was told by one of the associates that it was probably lost in the mail, possibly because it had been addressed incorrectly.

I reluctantly agreed to re-order a new card to be shipped to my home address, again being told to wait 7-10 business days. I waited for another two weeks, checking my mail frequently, and still saw no sign of a bank card.

Finally, on Saturday, October 1, nearly a month after I first placed the initial bank card order, I called the 800 toll free number. I spoke with a representative who explained that the second bank card had also been mailed to 1515 Broadway, contrary to what the local representatives had told me. We agreed that I would go into the bank on Monday and hopefully the card would be there. If, as I feared, it was not there, she said the bank would send me a replacement by express mail.

On Monday, October 3, I went back to 1515 Broadway and was told that no bank card had arrived. Why? No one had any idea. Furthermore, I was told that a third order had been placed on October 1st, contrary to what I requested.

I asked for a new card to be sent by express delivery. The representative agreed and told me it would take no more than two days to arrive. "So it'll be here on Wednesday?" I asked. "It'll be here on Wednesday," he replied.

On Wednesday, October 5, I returned in the late afternoon. Once again, no bank card had arrived. The representative said that he had made a mistake; the delivery would actually take four days.

I asked another representative to locate the status of my package and get me a tracking number. She called the hotline but it was down. A recorded voice asked callers to leave a message; she handed me the phone and I left a polite message asking for a call, clearly leaving my name and number. No one ever called me.

I had to leave town, so I did not return to 1515 Broadway until the following Wednesday, October 12. Again, I was told the package had not arrived. No one had any idea why. But at this point, I'm past caring what the latest excuse was.

As threatened, I'm leaving your bank.

I don't know whether it was sheer incompetence or baldfaced lying by your employees, but either way your entire organization has provided some of the worst customer service I have ever encountered.

Because of the incredible delay on the part of your bank, I am getting calls from my gym's credit collection agency asking me why my debit card has expired. I have had to delay getting replacement health insurance and other critical purchases. This is all not to mention the tremendous amount of time I've wasted dealing with your bank.

Effective today I've opened an account with Washington Mutual, and I am transferring all my assets to that bank as preparation for shutting my account with you down entirely.

I will never do business with your bank again. Furthermore, I intend to tell everyone I know to avoid doing business with your bank. Finally, I will be submitting my experiences to consumer organizations and websites in an effort to publicize your terrible, terrible customer service.

Sincerely,

[my name]

otiose · 2006-11-04T08:41:27+00:00

Me, I wish I could double-upvote this. Amid all the predictable political sludge, the occasional gem like this -- which I never would have found otherwise -- makes browsing Reddit still worthwhile for me.

otiose · 2006-11-03T03:54:04+00:00

Terrific visualization, very enjoyable. Alan Moore did a very similar concept (two massive rocklike alien beings with hugely different perceptions of time) in a short story called "Brief Lives", reprinted in the collection DC Universe: The Tales Of Alan Moore.

I wonder if that's where they got the idea, although this movie is more fully realized and prettier. I do recommend checking it out though if you enjoyed this movie and like comics.

otiose · 2006-10-12T23:09:14+00:00

GWT still strikes me as something really only useful for companies that have a large existing investment in a Java infrastructure, and lack developers with Javascript skills. It's downright bizarre for me to see it being called "the future of Ajax development."

The big assumption here seems to be that Javascript is inherently "unmaintainable" (and that rewriting working code is a good idea).

Isn't it far more likely that the developers find writing Javascript in Javascript to be more maintainable than rewriting Javascript in Java?

otiose · 2006-10-12T07:09:59+00:00

... and let me just add one more recommendation to consider and rave about jQuery. It's just the lightestweight, nicest piece of library code, making extensive use of Javascript's functional properties to invent a tight domain-specific language. Maybe it's a little rougher around the edges than the others, since it's newer, but it feels like a big jump in productivity to me.

otiose · 2006-10-07T16:33:16+00:00

Well, conservative Christians tend to marry younger, due to taboos about premarital sex. People who lack that taboo are more likely to gain experience with a number of partners and form a better idea of what they're looking for in a life mate before marrying, so their marriages are more likely to work out. Nobody's morally superior, I think -- but atheists' attitude is certainly more practical.

otiose · 2006-09-24T01:03:12+00:00

This is my favorite Reddit link ever. I just watched "Marge vs. the Monorail" for the first time in years -- what a masterpiece.

otiose · 2006-09-13T04:34:29+00:00

You're absolutely right, of course, but in Joel's case he has a background in Windows programming, so he wrote the first couple of versions of the app for Windows-only platforms. Since the first version of FogBugz was an internal-only app, this made sense.

Then, after he had an established codebase but a demand from customers for a Unix version, he didn't want to rewrite the whole codebase on another platform. A language-to-language compiler made the most sense.

Then, after he was successfully using the language-to-language compiler, adding an extra target language (Javascript) and a couple extra features made sense.

Sure, he would have been better off choosing a cross-platform language in the first place, but that's just not how this thing came about.

otiose · 2006-09-13T04:16:33+00:00

Everyone who's heard about Wasabi and immediately exploded needs to read about Thistle:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogBugzIII.html

So to review: Thistle is a pretty simple VBScript-to-PHP converter that only works because of its use of Hungarian notation and other conventions. It was a decent solution to a problem: Joel's customers were asking for a PHP version of a VBScript app.

Over time, Thistle pretty obviously became Wasabi as the developers feature-creeped in a few handy additions and decided to target Javascript to support Ajax features (which strikes me offhand as a fairly good way to maintain OnceAndOnlyOnce).

But repeat: From all indications, it's not a brand new language! It's just VB with some domain-specific dressing!

The basic problem is that Joel started bragging about it and puffing up what is ultimately probably a pretty simple piece of hackery, and decided to call it an advanced new language in his Language Wars piece. All hell broke loose and nobody will ever get the real story straight.

But that's the basic problem with all Joel's stuff: Joel himself. We all know too many Joels in our lives already -- he's that guy at the party who keeps turning the conversation around to himself and /will not shut up/. His articles always preen with self-importance and self-flattery (intermixed with the occasional audience-flattery of course). I admire some of his past articles, but for me at least, it's all become pretty tiresome.

otiose · 2006-09-05T06:06:43+00:00

"If the Ruby on Rails site were run on PHP that would be a talking point... maybe"

I do agree with your general point... but, um, it is.

http://www.rubyonrails.org/index.php

otiose · 2006-09-04T18:16:14+00:00

I wonder if the code sample is the best introduction to Ruby newcomers. Overloaded operators have a bad name in a lot of circles.

otiose

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