[Freedombox-discuss] Finding a good place to start

Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk
Wed Oct 6 13:04:02 UTC 2010


On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 01:00:30PM +0100, Jon Spriggs wrote:
>On 6 October 2010 12:22, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
><snip>
>> My FreedomBox should *not* include...
>>  * C# code: too big on disk
>>  * PHP code: too risky
>>
>> When ready, my FreedomBox should probably add...
>>  * Web-based mail reader
>>   + Preferrably non-PHP code
>>  * Diaspora or similar
>>  * YaCy or similar
>>   + Preferably non-Java code
>
>Just out of interest, why say that PHP code is "too risky"? I was
>under the impression that PHP code is only as "bad" as the developer
>writing their code. You've got as much risk with PHP as you do with
>Python or Perl (as all three are interpreted), however, there are a
>lot of poorly written projects which use PHP, with names like
>PHPMySuperFantasticProject, giving the impression that the fault lies
>in the language rather than the project. This trend of naming projects
>with the programming language being used tends not to be the case for
>C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl or Ruby projects.
>
>Recent versions of PHP will still allow you to create flawed
>applications, however, the same can be said for pretty much any
>language, compiled or interpreted.
>
>I'd like to hear your reasons for preferring not to use PHP,
>especially as many of the federated social networking applications
>that are around at the moment are written in PHP.

Thanks for asking ;-)

I do not have the time nor knowledge to proof-read all the code that I 
use in my systems.  So instead i try to locate and avoid "sloppy 
coding", which include the use of risky-by-default languages and coding 
environments. Such may be nice for mashups but not for production use.

PHP and Bash are sloppy languages by design.  Even if the actual PHP 
application is carefully written, it no doubt uses a bunch of plugins 
which might not be. Or the very selection and combination of plugins 
might cause new weaknesses due to language weaknesses.

Rails and Django are sloppy environments, even if the underlying 
languages are not.  Whoops - out goes current pre-alpha of Diaspora!


Regards,

  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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