Comments on: Eye of the Beholder http://www.jeremyprivett.com/blog/archives/eye-of-the-beholder/ Programming and Life Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:01:20 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Karl http://www.jeremyprivett.com/blog/archives/eye-of-the-beholder/comment-page-1/#comment-106143 Karl Fri, 23 May 2008 02:23:40 +0000 http://www.jeremyprivett.com/blog/?p=248#comment-106143 Jeremy: I wrote my article when PHP5 was mature. The point isn't that PHP doesn't support them, it's that those features aren't used. Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of good examples where they are...but I'm equally sure that there are far, far, far more where they aren't. Specifically, and honestly the point I haven't really seen well defended, is that PHP itself (not as a language, but as a framework and a library) doesn't make use of these features. Take for example the documentation for mysqli - the improved OO library for dealing with mysql: $mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world"); /* check connection */ if (mysqli_connect_errno()) { printf("Connect failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error()); exit(); } why doesn't mysqli throw an exception if a connetion fails? Why aren't errno and error instance members? For backwards compatibility? Fair enough, but does that mean it doesn't suck? I don't think so. If the library you build your application on isn't solid, can you truly build a maintainable app? Absolutely - but you really are starting at a disadvantage. Jeremy: I wrote my article when PHP5 was mature. The point isn’t that PHP doesn’t support them, it’s that those features aren’t used. Oh, I’m sure there are plenty of good examples where they are…but I’m equally sure that there are far, far, far more where they aren’t.

Specifically, and honestly the point I haven’t really seen well defended, is that PHP itself (not as a language, but as a framework and a library) doesn’t make use of these features. Take for example the documentation for mysqli – the improved OO library for dealing with mysql:

$mysqli = new mysqli(”localhost”, “my_user”, “my_password”, “world”);

/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
printf(”Connect failed: %s\n”, mysqli_connect_error());
exit();
}

why doesn’t mysqli throw an exception if a connetion fails? Why aren’t errno and error instance members?

For backwards compatibility? Fair enough, but does that mean it doesn’t suck? I don’t think so.

If the library you build your application on isn’t solid, can you truly build a maintainable app? Absolutely – but you really are starting at a disadvantage.

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