Programmer’s Paradox

I doubt I’m going to go off on a purely theoretical tangent like this often, but I’ve had lots of time lately for eating, drinking, and thinking, with not much else going on.
This discussion stems from several events coming together in my brain at once.  First was my previous PHP Insanity post, part I.  In [...]

It’s the holidays here in the US, and that means I have time off of work and plenty of time to think.  Sitting next to me at this moment is a pile of reading material.  I’ve got two issues of Wired, the latest New Yorker and Newsweek, Catch-22, and The Pragmatic Programmer.  [...]

I have a feeling this might become a regular series.
Today’s insanity is brought to you by the function intval.  Let’s pull a quote straight from the php.net intval page:
Intval returns:
The integer value of var on success, or 0 on failure. Empty arrays and objects return 0, non-empty [...]

One of the most common metaphors used to describe programming is that it is like writing.  While this is a good metaphor, it is lacking at times, as others have pointed out.  So, while in the shower (when many great ideas can be had, because taking a shower isn’t a mentally taxing [...]

I’m sure what I’m about to say will be familiar to all you PHP programmers out there.  PHP is a crap language, as far as languages go.  Of course, I feel I can say this since I program in PHP everyday for my job.
Why is PHP a crap language?  It’s inconsistent.  It routinely does things [...]