It’s almost beautiful in its stupidity.

The great thing here is that it demonstrates the futility of the idea that every single sodding user has to be an expert in teh codez … because obviously it doesn’t just stop there. You also have to be an expert in cryptography. And no doubt in finite state machines, and inter-process communication, and so on and so on.

Dammit, when I use a library I want it to be written by experts in their field. This is true of every other language I can think of; even the loathesome Visual Basic. Perl goes out on a limb a bit by offering twenty flavours of every conceivable library, but at least that “community” is relatively well self-policed and promotes the best of breed in each case.

PHP obeys the classic Loon mantra of “worse is better,” mistaking as it does simplicity for elegance. The problem with this is that “simplicity” is easy to achieve in the early days, but very difficult to maintain if the only tool you have is a million eyes.