Which has better packages, Python or PHP?

Answered in Quora Q: Which has better packages, Python or PHP? It depends on the target utility. In the Python world, the most common package installer is pip; the PHP world didn’t settle on a dominant format/installation for packages until composer, and that was relatively recently (last 4 years). … The reason for this is […]

Web Code (NaNoWriMo 2016)

Web Code by Terry Chay Preface Programming, it turns out, is hard. —Eloquent Javascript (and typical) One day, a friend came back from a seminar at which the panelists were a coterie of white, male, twenty-something college founders of various startups you might have heard of. “They said learning to code is hard. They implied […]

I come to bury PHP, not to praise it?

(I received an answer request from someone on Quora for this question. At the time of my writing, there were only two answers, both that boiled down to “use Python.” While I feel I was asked to balance out that with some PHP cheerleading, I can’t bring myself to do that. Nor, can I hop […]

Why do Python programmers hate PHP?

Why do Python programmers hate PHP? I saw a colleague answer this question and thought I’d give a go: Are sure it’s just Python programmers? I think that relatively speaking Ruby developers and Java developers hate on PHP more (and Perl and Javascript developers less). From a software language design perspective, the PHP language is […]

On being a beginner (again)

Compiled from three separate discussions on IRC, twitter, and in person: “Whatcha do with your time these days? Learning Rails? ?” I did pick up Objective-C again after an aborted attempt at learning Swift. Mostly I’m trying to catch up on the javascript frameworks that have come out since I stopped coding. Right now it’s […]

Some advice about coding bootcamps

A friend writes: Hey Terry! I’ve been looking into attending a coding bootcamp. Do you have any opinions on them? Any local ones with particularly sterling reputations? Do they seem to churn out somewhat competent alumni? Thanks in advance for any insight you might be able to lend. Honestly, I don’t have a good opinion […]