I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of technology I don’t like, and that’s really to be expected—programming is a hilariously young discipline, and none of us have the slightest clue what we’re doing. Combine with Sturgeon’s Law, and I have a lifetime’s worth of stuff to gripe about.

This is not the same. PHP is not merely awkward to use, or ill-suited for what I want, or suboptimal, or against my religion. I can tell you all manner of good things about languages I avoid, and all manner of bad things about languages I enjoy. Go on, ask! It makes for interesting conversation.

PHP is the lone exception. Virtually every feature in PHP is broken somehow. The language, the framework, the ecosystem, are all just bad. And I can’t even point out any single damning thing, because the damage is so systemic. Every time I try to compile a list of PHP gripes, I get stuck in this depth-first search discovering more and more appalling trivia. (Hence, fractal.)

PHP is an embarrassment, a blight upon my craft. It’s so broken, but so lauded by every empowered amateur who’s yet to learn anything else, as to be maddening. It has paltry few redeeming qualities and I would prefer to forget it exists at all.

But I’ve got to get this out of my system. So here goes, one last try.

What is it about that word? Why, in a world of 24-hour porn channels, a world with Rihanna's "Rude Boy" playing on the radio and junior pole-dancing kits sold in Tesco, is the word "cunt" still so shocking? It's a perfectly nice little word, a word with 800 years of history; a word used by Chaucer and by Shakespeare. It's the only word we have to describe the female genitalia that is neither mawkish, nor medical, nor a function of pornography. Semantically, it serves the same function as "dick" or "prick" – a signifier for a sexual organ which can also be used as a descriptor or insult, a word that is not passive, but active, even aggressive.

"Either" and "neither" are used in almost the same way as "so" and "too," but they are used with negative verbs.

Examples:

I didn't get enough to eat, and you didn't either.

or

I didn't get enough to eat, and neither did you.

Pay attention to word order. "Either" goes at the end of the sentence after the negative helping verb, and "neither" goes after the conjunction, then the helping verb, and then the subject.

It's important to notice that words following "neither" are not negative. You shouldn't use double negatives in English.

They're pronounced the same, but, technically speaking, there is a distinct difference between a disc and a disk.

In the beginning, there was My Computer, and then there was My Yahoo! Then, like mushrooms after a rain, a million mindless imitators emerged.

These sites didn’t just use My in the brand like My Yahoo! or MySpace. My came to preface any interface element inviting personalization.

In their excellent Design Pattern Library, the Yahoo! Developer Network explains the heart of the problem their parent created. Instead of reinforcing a sense of ownership and agency, this unnatural locution feels presumptuous and alienating.

It is as if the user has printed out labels and stuck them to various objects: My Lunch, My Desk, My Red Stapler. Except the user hasn’t done this; you (the site) did it for them.
This is lazy design and branding. It’s bad style. And it sucks. So, let’s unsuck it!

Eric Meyer delar med sig av sina framgångsrika försök att lära deras 13 månader gamla bebis att prata teckenspråk. Mycket intressant.