Re: The Web is "Broken", But PHP Can Save It

["Oliver Wong" <owong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Larry Qualig" <lqualig@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:1158332618.989172.48130@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Oliver Wong wrote:
> > "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> > news:2064722.zfhubutnej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Is PHP The Cure For The 'Broken' Web?
> > >
> > > ,----[ Quote ]
> > > | "The Web is broken and it's all your fault."
> > > |
> > > | Those are the words that Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, said to
> > > kick
> > > | off his keynote at the php|works conference under way here.
> > > |
> > [...]
> >
> > <quote>
> > Part of the reason Lerdorf considers the Web "broken" is that it is
> > inherently insecure for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons sits 
> > at
> > the feet of developers.
> > </quote>
> >
> >     It's ironic that PHP is partly to blame for this brokeness in the 
> > first
> > place. PHP really lowered the barrier to entry in writing web apps, which
> > meant that people could learn to write web apps in PHP without earning a
> > computer science degree, which meant that people could learn to write web
> > apps in PHP without taking computer security 101.
> >
> >     But in retrospect, I think it was worth it. We've got a lot of great 
> > PHP
> > applications out there. E.g.: phpBB, phpMyAdmin, WikiMedia (which powers
> > Wikipedia), etc. I heard Yahoo uses PHP to power some of its portals as
> > well. It's better to have a broken web rich with useful applications than
> > unbroken web with only a few CGI apps, mostly at universities and big
> > companies. IMHO, anyway.
>
> PHP is merely a language. It's not the language itself but the people
> using the language who "broke" the web.

   Yes, well, in the same vein, it's not "PHP" which will "save" the web, 
but rather people using the language who may do so. Obviously, we're all 
speaking informally here.

> The web would be just as broken
> if these same people created static HTML pages.

   Given that the "broken"-ness of the Web seems to be mainly security 
issues, I don't see what security issues would come up with static HTML 
pages. Perhaps an unusually large CSS section would case a buffer overflow? 
Seems implausible.

   - Oliver