I think I’m going to change my technology focus. Now that I’ve stepped outside of my circle of really talented and competent people, I’ve learned that PHP Developers suck. I’ve been trying to hire people for a big project that we’re working on, and I am absolutely amazed by the number of unreliable and/or absolutely terrible programmers that I’ve talked to.

PHP is suitable for “enterprise development”. The problem is, only 1% of everyone who knows PHP actually knows what “enterprise development” is supposed to mean.

Maybe this’ll all have a happy ending, but this has so far been pretty close to the top, if not the top, of my list of “Worst Birthdays Ever” …

I’m not rich. Far from it. I get by pretty well from being self-employed, but there are breaks in the income and sometimes I have to make my money stretch across multiple months, depending on what I’ve got going on.

My dad helped me buy my laptop because at age 20, I still have no credit and can’t finance anything more expensive than a peanut. I went to go get him a portion of the money that I owed him out of an ATM and it decided to give me the money in five dollar bills. This is the result:

I almost want to just keep this until I get the entire amount that I owe him and wrap it all up to see how big it is …

I picked up Portal a few days ago, because I’ve been hearing from just about everyone that the game is amazing. I became a fan pretty much instantly. I played through 18 ½ levels just on the first day.

For the uninformed, Portal is basically a puzzle-shooter. The basic premise to the game is that you can place two portals on certain surfaces. You go in one portal and come out the other. You keep your motion and velocity when you come out of the opposite portal, so you have to keep that in mind when solving a bunch of the puzzles.

It’s very much a game you have to think about. I got stuck a couple of times and had to get some help from other people in the room that could take a fresh look at what was going on around me. The ending is pretty cool and there’s a lot of humor throughout the game.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you can pick it up for $20 by itself or for $40 with The Orange Box. With the Orange Box, you also get Half-Life 2, HL 2: Episode One, HL 2: Episode Two, HL 2: Lost Coast, Peggle Extreme, and Team Fortress 2. Not a bad buy for all that, but I just bought Portal separately because the others would probably just take up space and I’d never play them.

Give the game a shot. It’s pretty fun and funny at the same time.

From ZDNet, it looks like Microsoft is preparing what they call a “don’t blame Windows” tool. What I found incredibly interesting is the description on what the tool does.

Windows Advisor is an easy-to-use self-help tool that notifies users about problems on their PCs and helps fix them. Windows Advisor scans users’ PCs continuously, notifies them about important issues, and, when possible, suggests easy fix solutions. The program also provides users with self-help solutions, including a 1-click checkup function that enables them to check their PCs whenever they like; tips and tutorials that teach users how to perform certain actions on their PCs; and a toolbox that concentrates the important tools that are found in the operating system into one easy-to-find location.

I feel like I’ve heard of something like this before … but, I can’t for the life of me remember where …

$5 Million seems a lot smaller, now that Microsoft has stepped into this particular game. Only, Microsoft has a much wider scope in mind: “Windows”

I should’ve expected something like this would happen over a year ago. Of course, I also didn’t expect I’d be more successful now. Only … I don’t have VCs to answer to. Wink, wink.

As you all know, I’m a web developer using PHP, MySQL, and Apache. Port 80 just so happens to be the default port for HTTP connections. What completely baffles me is that Skype will use ports 80 and 443 (HTTP and HTTPS) as alternative ports for incoming connections. By default. So, unless I change this option, if Skype starts before Apache, Apache won’t start.

Thanks Skype. I appreciate this “feature”.

Okay, so PHP Sucks, But It Doesn’t Matter.

I like Jeff Atwood. I enjoy reading his blog and I’m looking forward to stackoverflow. I’m just not used to seeing him quote painfully old articles when trying to make his points.

From my own experience, and the countless of online tutorials and blogs, many PHP developers are guilty of the same crap code VB developers were once renowned for. OO, N-Tier, exception handling, domain modeling, refactoring and unit testing are all foreign concepts in the PHP world.

Ever heard of PHP 5? PHPUnit? Zend Studio? The plethora of other tools that real, good development shops use? Sure, a lot of the junk you see in PHP was done by hobbyists or people without a good, firm understanding of how things work. There are quite a few professionals out there who develop and distribute quality PHP-based products.

I think Stas put it best, PHP isn’t the only language where really crappy code is produced. I read The Daily WTF quite a lot and notice a ton of other languages in there, so they must all suck too, right?

It’s certainly very possible to build really elegant solutions in PHP. It’s also possible to build maintainable solutions in PHP. As tools like Zend Framework, PHPUnit, Phing, phpUnderControl, xdebug, Eclipse with PDT, Omega Vortex’s own Omega Matrix, and many others start to become more widely used, I think it’s very possible that you’ll see a gradual increase in the overall quality of PHP code.

I know what you’re thinking: “You’re kidding, right?” (Okay, maybe that’s just what I thought.)

In some cases, I wish that I was …

So Long … And Thanks for All the Fish

Yahoo responded to the letter from Carl Icahn, but I think this is the lead out before the final nail goes into the coffin. Microsoft has said they’ve moved on, though? What happens if this new board of directors can’t get the software giant to bite? I think Dvorak put it best. This squad looks like a great bunch of sellouts.

If Yahoo can’t fend off Icahn, it’s game over. If Icahn does manage this take over, selling out to Microsoft might actually be the best case scenario. Can anyone spot the irony in that sentence? So, we’re looking at the possibility of Yahoo being sold to Microsoft where the clash of culture and technology is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services … or Yahoo being cut up and sold to the highest bidders … which is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services. I can’t find the win in this situation, can you? Oh right, I’m not a Yahoo shareholder … maybe I should be.

I feel really sorry for some of the more prominent members of the PHP Community who are currently employed at Yahoo. I can’t imagine that they would have any trouble finding a new home, if they decide to leave after whatever ends up happening. Maybe everything will settle down and nothing will happen, then they’ll get to just keep their jobs in peace. Who knows?

Let’s pick on CNET for a while … (more…)