Technosailor.com

A lively little discussion developed over the past few days on the DC-PHP developers mailing list. We have a very active developers group here in the DC area – much larger than most cities, in fact. Part of what makes our group great is the diversity of background and experience that is in the group. More after the jump.

By now, the news has hit the street about Facebook’s new PHP pseudo-compiler technology that is looking set to change the PHP world once again. It is called HipHop for PHP.

Here at Emmense, we build on PHP and more specifically, we build on WordPress. The PHP community as a whole continues to innovate the language and Facebook has been a longstanding member of that community. WordPress stands on the shoulders who have gone before, and there are certainly instances of large-scale installs of WordPress that could stand to use some acceration.

If there’s one thing I have been consistent on in the past (almost) 6 years of blogging and engaging on the web, it’s that I believe in the mantra “no sacred cows”. In politics, I confound and confuse members of both parties who look at life through sterilized lenses that reflect their party platform. I will often stir up controversy by dragging people into a process of debate that, while respectful, causes them to think and re-think their positions. At least that’s the goal. I am a fiercely independent thinker and though some of my closest friends are on the left, I’ve ruthlessly challenged the parts of the left that I don’t like while supporting the ones I do. I’ve done the same thing with folks on the right. More after the jump.

Last night, I spent the evening with a bunch of PHP developers in DC. This informal gathering in the DC-PHP community is a regular occurrence known as the DC PHP Beverage Subgroup – Virginia Chapter. There is also a DC-chapter that meets once a month as well. These two informal gatherings are for the sole purpose of getting together, enjoying some food and cold beverages and generally just talking about anything and everything. It complements the official DC PHP meeting which is generally a technical presentation directly related to PHP.

So last night, we were yukking it up about how PHP has re-invoked the GOTOoperator, a programming mechanism that, we thought, died with the BASIC programming language of yore. Coding in BASIC was very procedural and not very rich in its abilities. More after the jump.

At the end of this post, this site is going into a twitter free period of two weeks. I’m sensitive to the fact that we talk about Twitter quite a lot and not always doing a good job of reaching into all of real life like we’d like. So after this post, Twitter will not be mentioned here until June 12. :-)

However, I wanted to get this out the door for devs to knock on and bang out. Awhile ago, I created the dctwits Twitter group and released the generic code. It included a Twitter class created by David Billingham and slightly modified for our use.

Real quick note to let you know that over the weekend, I released new code that is GPLv2, relating to WordPress export format (WXR). The code and details are here and I’d love to get some input and contributions of other export classes. I’ve included a (yet undocumented) Expression Engine exporter as well and will [...]