How Not Writing PHP Makes You Better At PHP

HOW NOT WRITING PHP CAN MAKE YOU BETTER AT PHP

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DANIEL COUSINEAU // FOLLOW ME : @DCOUSINEAU OR HTTP://DCOUSINEAU.COM
@dcousineau

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@croscon

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HOW NOT WRITING PHP CAN MAKE YOU BETTER AT PHP

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HOW TO LIFEHACK YOUR WAY INTO LEARNING
PROGRAMMING

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Don’t do more work than you have to
My middle school swim coach

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PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES

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TURING
COMPLETE

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any real-world computation can be
translated into an equivalent
computation involving a Turing machine.
CHURCH-TURING THESIS

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Turing Complete

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THE LANGUAGE IS A MEANS TO AN END
A WAY TO EXPRESS ABSTRACT THOUGHT

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THE LANGUAGE IS A MEANS TO AN END
A WAY TO EXPRESS ABSTRACT THOUGHT
ALGORITHMS

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EXPLANATION

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In the beginning, there was Assembly

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…and it was not good

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main:
li $a0, 1
li $a1, 2
li $t0, 3
jal addthem
add $t0, $t0, $v0
syscall
addthem:
addi $sp, $sp, -4
sw $ra, 0($sp)
add $v0, $a0, $a1
lw $ra, 0($sp)
addi $sp, $sp, 4
jr $ra

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And then there was C

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int main() {
int t0 = 3;
int v0 = addthem(1, 2);
return v0 + t0;
}
int addthem(int a0, int a1){
int t0 = a0 + a1;
return t0;
}

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CONSTRUCT FUNCTION
WHAT’S YOUR … FUNCTION

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function recurse() {
recurse();
}
recurse();
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded.

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REPETITION=LEARNING

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http://bit.ly/bk-js
Linguistic Relativity in
Programming Langauges

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+
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
The languages you speak determine the way you think

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+
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
The languages you speak influence the way you think

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Culture Language thought

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+
BLUB PARADOX
“Some programming languages are more powerful
than others… I look at [Python, Java, C and Perl].
How can you get anything done in them, I think,
without macros?”
Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

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+
BLUB PARADOX
“They're satisfied with whatever language they
happen to use, because it dictates the way they
think about programs.”
Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

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IDIOMS

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Combination of words in common use
that have a figurative, and sometimes
literal, meaning

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In this case, it was routed straight to the Director
of Central Intelligence and, because it evidently
discussed the identity of a field spook, to the
Deputy Director (Operations), since all the field
spooks worked for her. The former was a busier
person than the latter, but that didn’t matter, since
the latter was married to the former
Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six

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What beliefs or what wrong could motivate a man
to do murder on a large scale? In the former case,
Brightling was not a religious fanatic. In the latter,
he had no overt dissatisfaction with his country.

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His last through before closing his eyes on this
sunny morning was that he hoped the contact
number hadn’t been changed, or compromised. If the
latter, then he’d have to do some explaining to the
local police…

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Yes, this could and would work. The only question
was daylight or nighttime. The latter was the usual
answer, but he’d learned the hard way that
counter-terror teams loved the night…

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“Language and economics.” The former had proven
very useful. The latter had been totally valueless,
since the Marxist idea of economics had not exactly
proven to be an effective one.

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Means of expressing a recurring
construct or abstract idea, often
across multiple languages

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i = 0
for line in text.split("\n"):
print "#{0} {1}".format(i, line)
i += 1

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for i, line in enumerate(text.split("\n")):

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def my_enumerate(iterable):
i = 0
for item in iterable:
yield i, item
i += 1
for i, line in my_enumerate(text.split("\n")):

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function enumerate($iterable) {
$i = 0;
foreach ($iterable as $item) {
yield [$i, $item];
$i++;
}
}
foreach (enumerate(explode("\n", $text)) as list($i, $line)) {
print "#$i $line\n";
}

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DECISIONS ARE LIKE WATER

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(defn manhattan-distance [piece board]
"Find the manhattan distance between a piece and its goal"
(let [pos (locate piece board)
goal-pos (locate piece *goal-state*)]
(abs (+
(- (floor (/ pos 3)) (floor (/ goal-pos 3)))
(- (mod pos 3) (mod goal-pos 3))))))
(defn manhattan-distance-sum [board]
"Find the sum of the manhattan distances"
(reduce + (map #(manhattan-distance % board) board)))

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var sortedDict = _(someDict).chain()
.map(function(v, k) { return [k,v]; })
.sortBy(function(a) { return a[0]; })
.reduce(function(s, v) { s[v[0]] = v[1]; return s; }, {})
.value();

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PHP MADE
ME BETTER

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+
THE TAKEAWAY
Other languages make certain ABSTRACT concepts
easier to learn
By making it easier to use said concept than not use it
in a way that your current language does not

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THANKS.
FOR YOUR ATTENTION

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How Not Writing PHP Makes You Better At PHP

How Not Writing PHP Makes You Better At PHP

Daniel Cousineau

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