Need an environment for dynamic web content for freebsd.org

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 08:21:01AM +0000, Vadim Goncharov wrote:
> >> No. Not PHP. Ever. Forget.
> >>
> >>  It should at least cgi or, as aforemetioned, a wiki-like page. There can be
> >>  already some wiki engines which allow voting.
> > I've not seen any useful voting mechanism implemented on a wiki.
> > Pointers?  CGI is exactly the kind of 15 year old stagnant web
> > technology we are trying to get away from. We need quick templating,
> > sessions, high level UI libraries, etc..  
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > All of which things like PHP, Python/Django, etc.. provide.
> 
> They all provide, except PHP :) Every serious PHP project is reinventing
> template system, database abastraction layers

Because PHP's DBI implementation sucks horribly.  One of the worst
things about it is that it doesn't support placeholders/binds in query
strings.  Another horrible aspect is that there's a separate API
function name per DBI, rather than using a standard calling convention
and let you pick a database driver to use (like perl and most other
languages).

The only reason people use PHP -- and that includes me (yes, I speak
fluent PHP) -- is because it's *convenient*.  It interfaces with
webservers in a much "nicer" way, and has a significant number of API
functions that are more web-friendly than, say, perl.

And don't even get me started on how to debug PHP.  I hope you enjoy
using print/echo repetitively throughout code.

I have no interest in Python, because any language which treats
whitespace and tabs differently can rot (even assemblers don't behave
this way!).  And I will strangle whoever recommends Ruby or Ruby on
Rails.

> >       - Murray (who doesn't know/use PHP, but knows that the freebsd
> > web presence is notably missing something like it)
> 
> Anything but PHP. Don't choose that buggy, slow, immanently insecure
> technology. Please.
> 
> P.S. You can see http://tnx.nl/php for a short summary of PHP drawbacks. Even
> Perl is much better.

I would agree with this.  One can accomplish great things with
p5-libwww.

The existing CMSs out there (for both PHP and perl) are either horribly
written, or bloated beyond belief.  The same goes for most Wiki
software, again regardless of PHP or perl.

Then again, all said comments are coming from a person who's very much a
minimalist.  :-)

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |