Time to set my phasers on “kill” (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 4/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill” <——THIS POST. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

I received this e-mail from someone at Zend:

After the latest tempest in a teacup with CIO Magazine, I am left with the question I always have and I want to ask it of each of you.

We see PHP being used in everything from inTicketing to FaceBook to Wikipedia. These are all “large scale” application but obviously the business community at large defines “enterprise” different from “large scale.” So I’m writing a bunch of you asking the same question. Every person receiving this email is in some way connected to PHP but many of you are not developers. I really want a broad spectrum of answers.

“What exactly is ‘enterprise’ and what does PHP need to be ‘enterprise-ready?’”

Oh yeah, bitches, The kid gloves are off and it’s time for that can o tychay! (Don’t worry, Cal, I already picked on you.) Time to pick on the my favorite punching back of all time!

Enterprise Web Application Development

[Why Enterprise Scalability is Science Fiction after the jump.]Continue reading →

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Sinking a Fleet of Fail (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 3/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. <——THIS POST Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

Onto the second part of the article, where the author shows why PHP, the language used for the busiest sites on the internet, apparently can’t scale it’s way out of a paper bag:

Oh c’mon and get serious. At least read up on a subject before posting an article about so full of holes it could sink the Titanic three times over and have enough left to take out the Japanese whaling fleet.
—Pádraic Brady commenting on the article

Failboat

All aboard the Failboat

[Destroying the myths of thread safety, performance, security, and scalability after the jump.]Continue reading →

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Even the Pros are Cons (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 2/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction:

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?!. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. <——THIS POST Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

Looking at the “compliments” served to PHP by the article as “advantages”…

[Takedown Part 1 after the jump]Continue reading →

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You Used PHP to Troll WHOM?! (PHP and Enterprise Scalability Part 1/5)

Why Enterprise Web Scalability is Science Fiction. Its five part mission: to explore myths of PHP, to seek out this “Enterprise Scalability”, to boldy go where no web developer would bother going before… *queue music*

  1. You Use PHP to Troll WHOM?! <——THIS POST. The wherefore of this article and an introduction.
  2. Even the Pros are Cons. Why PHP’s advantages in enterprise are a form of backhanded compliment.
  3. Sinking a fleet of FAIL. Reasons for why PHP should not be used in enterprise fail you.
  4. Time to set my phasers on “kill”. Deconstructing the use of the word of “enterprise” as an adjective modifying “web development.”
  5. Defensing the indefensible. Don’t bother defending your B.S. it only makes you look more stupid.

(I apologize for the book-like length of this article, Paramount wouldn’t buy the movie rights.)

…

Some people have asked me to respond to this article.

Time to whip out the tychay

“Rip this guy a new one, please :-)”—Ben Ramsey

“Yeah, yeah, what Ben Ramsey said! (Make sure you beat him for using a f—ed up title like that too.)”—Elizabeth Naramore

“+1. That dude needs a taste of Terry Chay in the worst, most serious kind of way.”—Robert Gonzalez

This is what I get for being a self-styled PHP Terrorist. *sigh*

Honestly, I don’t know if I have anything to add beyond the total and complete humiliation the author and his editor received in the 50 replies it received.

I suppose this is what it feels like to put down a lame horse.

[Why me? after the jump]Continue reading →

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Geek. Set. Match…

Just now, Mager messaged me:

“I am excited for Lunch two dot oh—I don’t say “point-oh” anymore.

Flashback.

…

In the summer of 1992, a friend was reading me a geek purity test he got from USENET.

One of the questions was:

Do you pronounce “*.*” as “star-dot-star?”

Of course, since he was reading it aloud, I heard:

Do you pronounce star-dot-star as star-dot-star?

Needless to say, I was quite confused. 😀

[More geek after the jump]Continue reading →

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Starbucks mastermind

All month, the closest Starbucks’s chalkboard has read: “Try a Skinny or Mocha Cinnamon dolce Latté A Non-fat, Sugar-free dairy delight!”

I had to stop ordering them because I dislike the sugar-free aftertaste. This means that I’m now faced with the question, “Do I want whip cream in it?”

Of course, when given an option for my food, I almost always say “yes,” and I started to realize that this is eating into my need for variety. How to balance those two?

[choice, choice, and more choice after the jump]Continue reading →

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Twat

At dinner with Morgan the other day, someone pointed out the past participle of “to twitter” should be “twat,” or perhaps “twatted.” As in, “That’s what she twatted.” Or, “I twat that.”

twat

In twitter-speak, OH means “overheard” which is a polite way of saying, “I don’t want to embarrass the person we all can guess must have said this. *wink* *wink*”

In an early draft an article, I tried the word out. But I ended up editing it—it felt uncomfortable writing about someone’s “twat.”

Posted on by tychay 11

Analog blog 2

I blame Merlin Mann of 43 folders. He’s the one who popularized Moleskines years ago.

How else can I explain that right after I wrote about my analog blog that Brian Moon pointed me to the very next xkcd about that. Which caused my friends to point out the sequel article:

journal 2

Journal 2 by xkcd

Which gave me this weird flashback to the Kubrick and Cupcakes Get Satisfaction/Songbird party, where I caught both Ramon and Dave McClure as being one of the few without hats.

Ramon

Ramon
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/20sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 21mm (31mm)

Ramon is almost always styling with a hat. Since everyone else is with hat, I suppose he is doing without.

Dave McClure

Dave McClure
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/10sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 18mm (27mm)

Dave wears 500 hats, but the only one he has on this day is his party hat.

[Why Merlin Mann is the anti-christ after the jump.]Continue reading →

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The best blogging system ever

Hmm it looks like my rant touched off a spirited defense from the writer of Mephisto.

Hey, that’s my blogging system! I’m just curious what kind of error page a bad url should show? Something like this?

And yes, the mephisto title is me having fun. Lighten up, dude 😀 I never said it wasn’t shitty, but it scales just fine.
—rick, the creator of Mephisto

I’ll admit, I was a little harsh on Rick. Shit, anyone who calls himself “technoweenie” is probably someone I need to kick of few beers back with—preferably with the Plasq peeps so we don’t have to spring money when Skitch is out of beta.

Any way you cut it, it’s ballsy to say Mephisto “scales just fine” given that WordPress does not and it’d pretty much crushes Mephisto out of the box on on availability, ease of install, extensibility, performance, and scalability.

That’s typical of Ruby programmers, always making outlandish claims that aren’t true and then saying that I have the burden to prove the negative.

Speaking of Skitch, How’s this for “lightening up”?

Mephisto the best blogging system ever

“I’m Rick Olson, I invented friggin Mephisto. Have you heard of it?”

You’re not going to demand that I prove that Mephisto isn’t “the best blogging system ever” are you, Matt? 😉 (This is a reference to WordPress’s funding.)

BTW, unlike his Ruby compatriots so quick to throw him to the wolves, I actually like that he is writing Mephisto in Rails. When Matt was forking b2 to write WordPress in PHP, I thought MoveableType had won and I was perfectly happy installing mod_perl. So what do I know?

As to Rick’s “curiosity,” Mephisto shouldn’t generate or allow a post slug with “/” or “:” etc or, if it does allow it, it should encode it. In the screenshot you linked, I don’t have that post slug on this blog with that URL and WordPress wouldn’t allow it so the screenshot he took is moot. It does, however, show my great taste in WordPress themes.

[more Ruby bashing after the jump.]Continue reading →

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LEGOs of things past

Scott Beale notes the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.

Burka asks, what is our preferred LEGO theme?

Does it show my age when I mention that pretty much the only theme available at the time was SPACE:

LEGO SPACE Model 442 (1978)

LEGO Space Shuttle (Model 442—1978)

Just so you know, the antenna in the back turns into a long range gauss gun. 😉

Look up the legos from your childhood on the LUGNET LEGO Set Database.

In 1977, there was a popular series of LEGO-like kits that allowed you to snap together models battleships, destroyers, and such. I don’t remember the name, but given the timing, they were the reason LEGO started to make themes. Here’s to that forgotten piece of toy history.

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