Re: Interview questions?

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Frank Finner wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 19:44:42 -0700 "Brion Wikes" <brion(at)estaffing(dot)net>
> sat down, thought long and then wrote:
>
> > UntitledFrom: brion(at)estaffing(dot)net
> >
>
> >
> > The site is fairly sophisticated. I think it was built on postreSQL 6X
> > and
> >
> > PHP. When we loaded to the server, we ended up with 7X and there seems
> > to be
> >
> > a few wrinkles with the code on the newer version.
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> are you sure the odds are (only) resulting from a different database
> version? I am just lifting a PHP application from 4.0.x to 4.3.x and
> that seems to need a big rewrite of a lot of code. Even a lift from
> 4.0.x to 4.1.x broke several modules, and I have not found all the
> reasons yet. I have the same problem you have: The original developer
> isn´t available any longer, and I have to update and fix that
> application myself.
>
> I used to be a PHP-user for a long time, but these problems with
> different PHP versions have brought me back to the usage of Perl CGIs
> with FastCGI. Never had any problems with that combination yet,
> excellent speed, excellent stability, no release version related
> problems. YMMV.

Perl 6 will cause you pain. There are plenty of changes that will cause
much perl 5 code to break in Perl 6. The sad fact of the matter is tha
tin order for a language to grow, some things have to break, be it PHP,
Perl, or Java.

Once it's been stable a long time (C for instance) the changes drop off,
but even today changes in gcc cause older code to break.