You know what I hate pretty much more than any other code nightmare in the world? The hideous waterfall that is PHP! And it’s not so much about PHP because I’ve managed to use it without doing this ever (really). What in the name of all that is cute and cuddly makes a programmer think this is a good idea:

if (some_condition) {
   print $header;
   print $some_condition;
   print $footer;
} else {
   print $header;
   print $other_condition;
   print $footer;
}

Please, please, PLEASE stop doing this!

Here’s a hint:

print $header;
if (some_condition) {
   print $some_condition;
} else {
   print $other_condition;
}
print $footer;


Ugh! This, more than pretty much anything else, is the single biggest failure of Open Source software. Open Source creates a low barrier of entry, thus allowing anybody to write and publish code. And because said code is mature and relatively bug-free, it is said to “work”, but one of the major tenets of the free software movement is that “If you want to change something, you have the code.” Well, that’s all well-and-good when you want to replace an image or rewrite a string, but it’s a nightmare when you actually want to use the code.

I’ll probably spend the better part of today hacking on this, but I wonder if (in the same amount of time) I would be able to whip something up from scratch that did exactly what I needed and didn’t suck so bad.

And the really bad thing is that it’s a good piece of software — it works and is feature-rich and has a good reputation. But those are all external to code quality (quality as it relates to legibility/extensibility, not functionality).

I’ve uploaded a new batch of pictures over at Flickr. These encompass Hays’ birthday, a recent family outing to the Dell Diamond for a baseball game and some fireworks and some really great pics I snapped off yesterday when I got home from work.

…but I had no idea.

Yesterday was a whirlwind, one-day trip to Six Flags Fiesta Texas (warning, Flash ahead) in San Antonio. We had a total blast and rode lots of great rides! Unfortunately, there was some weird height restrictions that were undocumented on the website, so we didn’t do Scream, Superman or Poltergeist. The kids had a blast on Rattler, which was pretty scary from a “holy crap this thing is rickety” standpoint. And Boomerang was a ton of fun. The kids seemed to like Der Fleidermaus (sp?) — they rode it like 5 times. Nothing like spinning around in a big circle for 3 minutes! Wheee! The best part of the night had to be when we went on Power Surge. The ride itself was your basic four-across-log-ride-with-splash-at-the-end, but the fun was afterward…. The kids stood on the over-ride crosswalk (at our suggestion) to watch the next boat come down the ride. Hah! They got completely soaked. Griffin was not amused that she was tricked into that, but she definitely found it funny.

Of course the Summer of Theme started out back in April with our trip to the land of Disney. And while the family was in Wisconsin, they went to Wisconsin Dells and the Mount Olympus (warning, Flash ahead) theme park where the kids rode Hades all by themselves (that was actually an accident, we didn’t realize it was one of the scariest rides in the country until after they went). A couple weeks ago, they went to Volente Beach and we’ll probably go back there again before summer’s over, since we bought discount “revisit” wristbands.

All-in-all, I think we’re pretty tired, and ready for school to start back up. The fun’s not over yet, though! This Friday night Grandma and Grand-dad and cousins Nik and Drew are coming to town for the 6th Annual Aggie Night at the Dell Diamond, which I’ve just learned has sold out! On Friday, with fireworks! Should be a lot of fun.