[tlug] RE: Tlug Digest, Vol 14, Issue 33

["Kenneth Burling" <meyaden_emrys@??>]

> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:36:12 +0900
> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@??>
> Subject: Re: [tlug] ruby and python in Japan
> To: Tokyo Linux Users Group <tlug@??>
> Message-ID: <87abz0jjyb.fsf@??>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Brett Robson writes:
>
>  > I haven't had to deal with Japanese in PHP yet, but my understanding is
>  > that PHP doesn't support Unicode and apparently Python does. Does 
> anyone
>  > have experience with Japanese programming in PHP or Python?
>
> I encourage you to go with Python ;-) but PHP should support Unicode,
> at the very least UTF-8, since it supports multibyte strings.
>
> Since I don't use PHP I can't really comment.  I can make a
> meta-comment ("praising with faint damns") that most of the anti-PHP
> comments I've seen from people I respect are of the form "You should
> use Python [etc] instead of PHP because PHP doesn't ...".  But the
> stuff that goes in the ellipsis is of the same genus as when the same
> folks deprecated MySQL: "You should use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL
> because MySQL doesn't ...".
>
> You have to wonder "Does anybody in the real world really need ...?"
> Or, more precisely, you should wonder, "Do *I*?"
>
> I recommend Python because I think "..." is the RightThing[tm].  But
> in practice, Real Programmers don't seem to much miss it, at least not
> before they change jobs. :-)  And no, it's no accident that I didn't
> fill in the "...", because I know it's there but I can't remember what
> it is.<wink>

I would go one futher and say that most people who make their arguments in 
the form of language a  is better than language b, because language b 
doesn't do <insert task>, are usually talking based on third party 
information or lack of experience.

Perl is actually a good example.  It is surprising how many people have said 
perl doesn't do <task a>, when I had used it for just that task the week 
before.  ^^;

I know that when you are dealing with experienced programmers, perl is not 
the right language for that argument (it can do almost anything, and do it 
at least halfway decent).  :)  Any of the power house languages are the same 
way, compiled or interpretted.   However you will always get the person who 
wants to say that said language can't do something that a person skilled 
with the language knows it does quite well.

^^;;