You don't even have to include the word "PHP" in there. A lot of frameworks include a massive amount of functionality that you're almost never going to use. And for the few times you might need to use it, it'll probably take less and less learning and less dependency on code you don't control just to code up something by hand.
But my complaint isn't about frameworks or their relative complexity. It's about how most people touting some of these solutions pride themselves on how terse the end result is. This goes well beyond DRY. A good abstraction is great for providing a clean view of the logic, but some abstractions and meta-programming take it so far that now the logic is no longer obvious.
> Again the only thing I'm hearing here is arguments from people who are too lazy to actually see how things are done from a functional perspective.
I've done functional programming work in the past (ML) but the fact is, it's just much harder to just get things done in functional languages. When you find the perfect domain mapping for functional work, it's great, but most of the time you don't have that. It's like arguing the Esperanto is a nicer and cleaner language than English -- that's probably true -- but if you want to get work done you use English.
> I've done functional programming work in the past (ML) but the fact is, it's just much harder to just get things done in functional languages.
This is 2010, we're not living in a FP vs. OO world anymore. Clojure (and I've heard Scala) preserves the greats parts about OO programming. I'm sure this is the just the beginning.
"I've done functional programming work in the past (ML) but the fact is, it's just much harder FOR ME to just get things done in functional languages."
With my addition above I agree with you 100%. Generalizing from personal experience? Let's try to raise the bar on discourse a little higher.
Fair enough. I hope you'll also complain about the original poster presuming that anyone who doesn't agree with him must be lazy and ignorant. It's a very common argument tactic whenever someone defends Lisp or Scheme: "everyone else simply don't get it."
There was a recent article posted here about people assuming, by default, that they are smarter than everyone else. Lisp has had over 50 years to prove that it can be used to develop software better than all the alternatives and it's still less successful attracting developers than languages just a few years old. It appears the previous commenter is just assuming he knows something that 99.9999% of other developers don't.
I don't advocate any particular language or platform for all possible solutions. Sometimes Java is right choice, sometimes PHP, sometimes C#, Python, etc. And whether or not a developer knows the language is a large factor but it's not the overriding factor. Trying to shoe-horn in a language of choice into every situation is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes it's necessary to learn a platform/language to effectively tackle certain tasks. So far, I've personally been unable to find a situation where Lisp seems to work. To generalize it: there is lots evidence that a vast majority of other developers haven't either. You can either assume they're all morons or not.
Come on man. We're all ignorant. I just called you out on a particular thing you seem ignorant about on which you wanted to make an absurd claim about based on your own limited experience. You should expect to get called out.
In my own ridiculously limited experience (which happens to include one new FP lang) I found your claim to be simply, irrefutably (in my mind) untrue.
The whole point of karma on HN is to keep things in balance. And I saw the need to keep the balance here. If you can't roll with that what's the point of discussion?
> I just called you out on a particular thing you seem ignorant about on which you wanted to make an absurd claim about based on your own limited experience.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what claim you're talking about. I think I even agreed with you. The whole line about lazy and ignorant seems entirely tacked on without referring to anything in particular.
> And I saw the need to keep the balance here.
You made a valid point but then you went into essentially personal attacks. That's not the kind of thing that Hacker News is about.
You don't even have to include the word "PHP" in there. A lot of frameworks include a massive amount of functionality that you're almost never going to use. And for the few times you might need to use it, it'll probably take less and less learning and less dependency on code you don't control just to code up something by hand.
But my complaint isn't about frameworks or their relative complexity. It's about how most people touting some of these solutions pride themselves on how terse the end result is. This goes well beyond DRY. A good abstraction is great for providing a clean view of the logic, but some abstractions and meta-programming take it so far that now the logic is no longer obvious.
> Again the only thing I'm hearing here is arguments from people who are too lazy to actually see how things are done from a functional perspective.
I've done functional programming work in the past (ML) but the fact is, it's just much harder to just get things done in functional languages. When you find the perfect domain mapping for functional work, it's great, but most of the time you don't have that. It's like arguing the Esperanto is a nicer and cleaner language than English -- that's probably true -- but if you want to get work done you use English.