In 1998 there was an ice storm that struck Upstate New York. Hams were virtually the only source of communication as official communication channels ran out of gas (in many cases literally) after a day or so. I sat in a Firehouse with my own equipment relaying communications from ambulances (where another ham was riding along) to other base stations in nearby towns. We did most of this over 2 meters.

Hams were absolutely crucial because we could move in and quickly setup and operate additional equipment. I know times have changed....but every time I look at the state's disaster readiness plan hams would be needed again.

I think you are over estimating the ability of official channels to be ready to function on their own for weeks at a time.

...in that, with this effort / funds, someone may be able to solve the energy density problem. Even our best batteries are something like 1/30th the density of unleaded fuel. As soon as the electrical energy storage problem is solved the world really will change drastically...flying cars anyone?

It is a loose typed language. This is what would happen in these cases. That's the point, it is in fact designed this way!
OMG Look how crappy c++ is!

Seriously, just because a language doesn't function the way you are used to, does not mean that it is broken...

Overall language issues PHP is number 6 in this list...
http://www.aabri.com/manuscrip...
In terms of web apps, PHP looks pretty damn good by comparison:
http://info.whitehatsec.com/rs...

Yeah, I do admit that MySQL / Maria is the hard limit here. Never used GlusterFS, going to do some reading later. Thanks.

Round robin DNS and nginx as load balancers. Then we auto scale cloud servers on the back end to handle the PHP load. Scalable MySQL: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud... File System: https://www.drupal.org/project... Cloud files is really the key here, otherwise you have to use an NFS of some other kind...which kind be a nightmare otherwise.

We load balance D7 across VM's automatically...no issues here...how were you trying to scale? What would you use instead of PHP?

What do you prefer for a server side language? I'm always open for a better way to go, from my experience PHP wins in development time and community support every time. I'd love your take on it though :-)

D6 was spaghetti code at its finest. D7 integrated a lot of very solid guidelines and changes, D8 continues in the same thread and is a very coherent and solid framework so far. We run some very large sites on D7 and they load very quickly on crappy hardware which keeps costs down.

We have === for this...if you change your way of thinking a bit you can actually code more quickly with loose typing (and yes, still keep things secure). Most of the arguments around PHP are something like "it doesn't work like this other language I'm familiar with".

Most of the arguments in here relate to complaining about the issues with most large open source projects, e.g. function naming conventions...while PHP has major issues in this regard (most notably how parameter order always flops around myFunc(haystack, needle), myFunc2(needle, haystack)...etc.) From my experience these sorts of things crop up in libraries / projects all the time, it is not unique to PHP.

The language as a whole really does allow for rapid prototyping, and quick updates, and cross platform support. Read efficient and profitable.

I've found that most people who hate PHP also hate Javascript, again, they don't know how to leverage it properly....so it must suck.

Also should have added that TFA is total crap.

So...do any of the PHP bashers do any actual extensive coding in PHP? Have you ever looked at the code in Drupal 7/8?

Seriously, I am always baffled by everyone who starts ranting on how crappy PHP is. I have done mostly PHP development for 12+ years. I have yet to have a site hacked, or SQL injection exploited. It is a very solid language, it can be made VERY fast (JIT is also coming down the pipe out of the box in 6+). It lends itself to rapid prototyping and easy patching / testing. There is a module / plugin / snippet of code out there for pretty much everything. It will run on a windows server, a debian box, and CentOS pretty much the same.

Loose variable typing is not always bad thing, and you can always cast variables anyway:
$_GET['my_var'] = (int) $_GET['my_var'];
Ta-da! We definitely have an integer now!

I have written entire chat bots with raw socket connections in PHP...it can pretty much do everything...and do it quickly.

You have to disassemble most of the headlight housing and surrounding components on my Subaru. The dealership does it for the cost of the light bulb if I'm getting an oil change anyway...how much is $12 worth to you? I used to do my own oil changes, but after buying everything I might save $10 ...and there lies the problem...a full day of fiddling (and it still might not work)...or $30 for a new coffee maker?

I still have no cell phone coverage at my house...I live in New York State...can I at least get coverage at my house...

http://www.hendohover.com/