<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(plix @ Jan 20 2007, 01:00 PM) [snapback]275726[/snapback]</div>Woah! you must have jumped in early!!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(STFM @ Jan 28 2007, 09:30 PM) [snapback]276940[/snapback]</div>During the development days of PHP 3. I toyed around with PHP/FI a bit, but it was on it's way out at the time. Back then I was working in Perl, mostly, and a guy I worked with was really psyched about PHP and convinced me to give it a try (though since he was lead on a few projects, in many ways I didn't have a choice).

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(GrimFang4 @ Jan 26 2007, 04:50 PM) [snapback]276577[/snapback]</div>The file is ok.

I don't think this is a very good tutorial because everything is in one big example. When you are learning how to write a program you should start with small examples.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(plix @ Jan 29 2007, 03:53 PM) [snapback]276951[/snapback]</div>Good choice then :) Must be good to see a technology develop itself into a leader like that

I remember being in on an interview for a Java developer and the applicant proudly (and smugly) stated
"Ive got 8 years Java experience"
This was in 2001.
Needless to say he didnt get the job!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(STFM @ Jan 30 2007, 09:30 PM) [snapback]277219[/snapback]</div>The funny thing about PHP is that I will always have a love-hate relationship with it. It has advanced in ways which I absolutely love (there are meta-programming techniques that have been introduced that have allowed for some really neat things), but the strides taken toward "security" have equally frustrated me. register_globals was one of the *huge* selling points of PHP back in the day (very few people seem to remember what an absolute pain query parsing could be with Perl; PHP simplified all that). At the same time, while shifting away from what made it popular to begin with, the developers are really avoiding a few major shortcomings (I've been following the namespace specification proposals for years all the while in pain over how long it's taking).

The irony of your story is that I currently develop with Java professionally. I'd rather like to carve my eyes out. If it weren't for the Java tooling communities I'd have lost my mind long ago (Eclipse is by far the single best IDE I've ever used). I've always been of the "MIT approach" mindset (see: Peter Gabriel, "The Rise of Worse is Better"), though, and am really first-and-foremost a functional programmer. There are days I dream of a CS landscape ruled by Lisp.