Let's organise (... what I want programmers to know ...)

[Peter Corlett]

On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 04:00:21AM -0800, Ovid wrote:
[...]
> While we're at it, perhaps one of the most important things programmers
> should know (or do know, but ignore), DON'T PUT DATA IN CODE! It kills me
> every time I need to grep through a codebase to pull out a hard-coded
> email address or company name (yeah, guess what I'm doing now -- kill me,
> please)

For @DEITY's sake, don't look at any PHP code or your head will explode.

Nor, for that matter, at anything involving Movable Type. Yeah, let's embed
Perl into our HTML templates and store that in a database as the
authoritative copy of that data. But wait, there's more!

The HTML templating language is not quite HTML so it can't be used as input
for a HTML validator. And rather than having the Perl generate an object to
hand to the templating language, you have the template generate Perl
fragments that are pieced together and handed to the Perl interpreter. So
perl -c can't be usefully used either.

Oh, did I mention that you have to enter these half-HTML, half-Perl files in
via a <TEXTAREA> on a form on the administrative interface. That takes up to
thirty seconds to respond? Well, I have now.

And, as far as I've seen so far, the paid support mainly involves somebody
at Sixapart putting your query through Google instead of you doing it
yourself.

Why, yes, there's an incredible amount of Perl gaffer tape formed around the
beast to tame it a bit. Including, I'm pleased to note, a Catalyst shim over
the top which the users love because it responds virtually instantly instead
of taking thirty seconds like MT's own CGI scripts do. And the one that just
wedges templates straight into the database to avoid MT's CGI scripts.

(Yes, CGI. Although a couple of months ago they finally released a version
that can use FastCGI. Welcome to 1996, guys.)

Gah, and people ask me why I've got to like single malt whisky these days.

P.S., anybody fancy a lunchtime pint in the Jerusalem Tavern in an hour's
time?