Monthly Archives: March 2006

Goodbye Children, Bye Chef

Andrew just sent me a link to a post over at 411Mania about Issac Hayes wanting to leave the voice of Chef from South Park because he is upset about a recent episode that pokes fun at Scientology.

Issac Hayes upset over Scientology episode…

Issac Hayes is trying to get his release from the TV show “South Park.” He has served as the voice for Chef since 1997 but is apparently upset over the show’s recent episode making fun of the Scientology religion. Hayes is a Scientologist.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,” Hayes says. “Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.”

The reason I find this so comical is that it actually took South Park making fun of his own religious beliefs before he was upset enough to want leave the show. I don’t seem to recall any outbursts when they were making fun of Christians, Jews, Jehovah Witness, Muslims, Barbara Streisandism, etc, but when they make fun of Scientologists and Scientology it was no longer comedic satire, but “intolerance and bigotry”.

I’m sure there is more to the story than what I’ve read thus far, and I don’t claim to know the whole issue… but come on Mr. Hayes, the chocolate salty ball is in your court to clear your name of being a serious hypocrite.

The Simpsons in Real Life

No, I’m not talking about me actually being a Simpson (I’m Matt, not Bart or Homer, hell that’s old already)… I’m talking about real life people actually acting out the timeless “The Simpsons” cartoon introduction that my generation loves so much.

It’s pretty amazing and very well done, almost to a T. The only issue I noticed on first watch was when the end-of-day whistle blows at the Nuclear power plant and homer is rushing off, the glowing power-rod doesn’t stick to his back like it does in the cartoon introduction, yet he still pulls it out and tosses it when he’s driving in the car on the way home. Minor detail of course.

Did you see anything else missing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjP

P.S. Thank-you Karla for forwarding me the link to this! Mucho gracias.

Ugly Coding Standards Are Standard?

I just read through the manual on the much anticipated Zend Framework and for the most part, I really like the implementation. It is a collection of a number of classes I already use from around the net, which is fine by me. True, PHP is in dire need of a good framework that everyone can standardize on. Right? Yeah, well, I think so, but I’m not really sure… Isn’t that what Pear is? (as a friend reminded me this morning).

My major problem is their stupid coding standards; I honestly hardly agree with a single one of them… it actually makes me angry. Here are a few that I read through until I got so mad I just closed the damn manual website and did something else (wrote this angry blog post).

B.2.2. Indentation
Use an indent of 4 spaces, with no tabs.

I despise spaces in code… why hit the space bar 4 times when you could hit tab 1 time? So what, you have different editors with different default tab stops… who cares, it’s a preference. I refuse to use spaces.

B.2.3. Maximum Line Length
The target line length is 80 characters, i.e. developers should aim keep code as close to the 80-column boundary as is practical. However, longer lines are acceptable. The maximum length of any line of PHP code is 120 characters.

No way, not in a million years. I like long lines… sure, I may have to scroll horizontally to see some code, but it is a hell of a lot simpler to read if you’re looking at the whole file or a large chunk of code.

B.3.3. Filenames
Files that are containers for single classes are derived from the class names (see above) in the format “ZClassName.php”.

Whatever… this is silly. Have they ever used an FTP client before? Some clients by default change filenames to lowercase when the upload files… like they should be. As far as I’m concerned filenames on the net should be a-z 0-9 – _ . period. If everything is in lowercase you never have to worry about case-sensitive operating systems.

B.3.5. Variables
Variable names may only contain alphanumeric characters. Underscores are not permitted. Numbers are permitted in variable names but are discouraged.

Whatever… again, I use $variable_name and refuse to use $variableName… If you have the words “some string” does it make more sense to say someString or does it look more accurate to say some_string. My opinion is the later. camelCaps is ugly in PHP code. I agree with their definition of Constants, but it leads to the question of… if underscores are permitted in constants, why not in variable names? If the answer is to clearly separate the two, then why shouldn’t variable names be all lowercase and constants be all upper case.

B.4.2.4. String Concatenation
Strings may be concatenated using the “.” operator. A space must always be added before and after the “.” operator to improve readability.

$whatever = “that is “.$tupid;

I just give up… I refuse to conform to that less-efficient “standard”. My own personal “standard” is almost the exact opposite of this Zend outline and in my opinion it is much nicer to read through and work from. I’m actually a Graphic Designer turned developer… my whole education and philosophy revolve around making things look good and stay functional… I personally think I’m qualified enough to say those standards stink.