Weblog

Posted at 12:31pm on 22 May 2008

PHP Sucks...

...but it doesn't matter - at least according to Jeff Atwood.

It seems that a good proportion of all the most successful web apps are written in PHP (Facebook, Digg, Wikipedia, etc.). Not bad for a language whose primary fault is that it doesn't scale well to high-load applications.

The similarities drawn between PHP and Basic have nothing to do with language structure as far as I can see, and everything to do with bloated namespace. There are a lot of built-in PHP functions, most of which have silly names and use inconsistent naming and parameter conventions. This is curse because I find myself having to look up every function, but a blessing because nine times out of ten the function I want is in there somewhere.

For what it's worth, this site is written in PHP, and it it wasn't it would probably never have been written at all.

Posted at 11:45am on 22 May 2008

SmallWorlds

An intriguing new online virtual world: SmallWorlds

Currently in closed beta, but due to be released to the public at large on Monday, SmallWorlds differs from other virtual environments such as Second Life by being based entirely within the web browser, and integrating with other social networking websites. In effect it is more like a 3D facebook than a traditional MMOG.

SmallWorlds is the first web-accessible, casual virtual world which is designed for mass market appeal ... for ages 13 to 103

One of the coolest parts about SmallWorlds is the close integration it has with other Web 2.0 services. You can buy picture frames that load up images from Flickr, radios that play stations from Last.fm, and billboards that let you post and view Twitter messages.