I agree with Sheldon. When I first picked up PHP, the only programming
language (or something resembling it) I knew was HTML. I had dabbled
with Perl and C, but they were too complicated to pick up, especially
for programming on the web. Perl and C are great for use on real
applications, but PHP is a language designed with the web in mind.
I haven't contributed to any MediaWiki development, sadly, because I'm
still picking up the language; every time I stare at the code for a
major PHP application, I get a dreadful headache. Usually it's because
they use object-oriented PHP, which I haven't really learned yet.
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Months? It takes me a few *hours* to be able to
create useful code in a
new language. A few days and I can embark on significant projects. This
isn't about difficulty or time (though I'd not be happy about wasting
the time), it's about not wanting to subject myself to the horror that
is PHP just to be able to do a couple things with MediaWiki, probably
never to touch the code again.
Well, it only took *me* a few hours to learn how to create useful code
in PHP, and my programming skills are strictly hobbyist level. I
worked through a couple of online tutorials, and that was all I
needed. PHP is actually a lot like Perl, with somewhat more
conventional syntax and a little less emphasis on text processing. I
love the way you can use it to drop code right into the middle of
HTML. With just a few lines of code you can create an interactive form
that queries a database and returns a result. To do the same thing in
Perl, you'd typically need one static HTML page and a separate page
for the CGI script that processes the form data and returns the
result. It can be done, but it's more work. Once I discovered PHP, I
stopped using Perl and haven't looked back.
--Sheldon Rampton