So the Google ecosystem was a bad idea after all. I knew it. First they lure you in with a slick web mail client and a couple of gigabytes of storage. Then they buy up a bunch of companies, including YouTube. Then they link your Google and YouTube accounts together. And now your Google identity is suddenly your YouTube identity which is linked to your real name. I didn't ask or sign up for the vast majority of this!
I merely provided a rebuttal to the argument that PHP, or any other language, for that matter, is unreliable. I did not make the case that automated testing somehow makes PHP a preferred choice. How you test the code is what dictates reliability, not the language.
>Have you tried automated testing on a large complex web application? It's an insanely monumental task.
What's so insanely monumental about writing unit, functional (i.e. like these http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/testing.html#functional-...) and Selenium tests to cover everything before committing new changes? It's just like any other code - test the main condition and edge cases and everything will be running smoothly next time you come back to that feature.
> I use Python because it balances getting stuff done with having that stuff not fall over as soon as I turn my back.
Uhh... Heard of automated testing?
It makes absolutely no difference what language you write your code in, whether it's PHP, Python or Brainfuck - reliability is dictated by your testing strategy, not the language. In the PHP applications I write, the only things that break are the things I didn't test.
>Yes, in principle they could learn that stuff; but they consider it to be a waste of their valuable time, for which they have other priorities.
Yet they spend their valuable time on watching television while being bombarded with adverts and forced to come back because their favorite series always ends with a cliff-hanger. Or they are drinking. Or they are working excessive hours because in spite of the fact that we have automated massive swathes of work, five days a week is still the standard, which makes absolutely no sense. Or they are too stressed by their dire financial situation because we have an economy based on gambling and usury.
My point is that people are naturally curious creatures who, given the time and opportunity, are quite capable of learning anything.
When we have a society which spends a great deal of resources constantly diverting peoples' attention, creating fake demands and generally holding an air of chaos, is it a wonder that nobody can be bothered to learn how to operate a revolutionary class of machines which provide one with knowledge about anything and everything?
By dumbing things like this down, we are approaching the problem from the wrong end. We need to work on creating a bigger leisure class which will naturally be inclined to understand it's environment better, since it will actually have the time and focus necessary to do so.
By another way of analogy - we're in the position of the 16th century puritans (in this case tech nerds) asserting that ofcourse everyone must learn to read (or operate computers) so that they can read the Bible (internet) for themselves and interpret the word of collective wisdom directly. Notice how the result of that battle was not to dumb down the English language, which is unnecessarily complicated in many places, but to teach people how to use the bloody thing. This is a similar situation.
>It should be pointed out, infairness, that the US Navy will also be using these drones to detect drug running in the Caribbean and I don't think anyone would object to that
I'll object to it. It's nobody's business to dictate to people what they can do with their own bodies. The current drug laws create a black market and fuel gang violence. As demonstrated by countries like Portugal, treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal issue reduces addiction rates and side effects from drug consumption. Thus, anything which polices the current drug laws is destructive by it's very nature.
Are they also working with sub-par equipment? If so, put in a request together with them. Otherwise, put in the request yourself. If they turn it down, look for another job and put this one down as a contracting position. In my experience, employers in this industry pretty much never ask for references anyway, in the UK at least.
Yet companies act in exactly that way towards their employees. Late too many times? Ultimatum is issued where you get fired if it happens again. Too many sick days? Same result. Underperforming? Yup, you guessed it. Your employers are not your friends - do what you have to to make your life easier. IMO, ofcourse.
Word of advice - if you know anything about the code that nobody else does, use it as leverage. Come in one day, call your boss into an office and tell him you're quitting. When he asks why - voice your problems with the tools you work with. Offhandedly suggest that you actually wouldn't mind staying if work wasn't such a pain in the ass thanks to these issues. Outline how much it will cost them to train a new employee up and how much cheaper the hardware is in comparison.
Alternatively, just complain incessantly without threatening to quit if you can't get another job easily.
Reason I say this is that me and my team have been working on shoddy hardware for the last six months, then we put our collective feet down and demanded something better. Now we each have a pretty damn sweet system to work on.
Congratulations, you have managed to provide a two second delay between clicking on, for example, the Firefox icon and the resulting sprite CSS being displayed on a brand spanking new eight core, 8GiB RAM system. I hope you're proud of your abuse of my computer's resources. But, alas, I shall be having no more of this nonesense!