Comments on: Future Proof http://blog.adventdigerati.com/2008/10/futureproof/ Where Life meets Geek Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:13:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Zack http://blog.adventdigerati.com/2008/10/futureproof/comment-page-1/#comment-19 Zack Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:27:11 +0000 http://adventtechnorati.wordpress.com/?p=8#comment-19 @Nate: That's a very good point, and in fact one of the pillars most MVC frameworks I've seen are built on. A well-designed framework leverages its strengths and minimizes its weaknesses, of course; so any language with code generators is perfectly adept at taking advantage. (Lisp is utterly famous for this.) In the technology market, it's invaluable to have a language that can adapt as fast as you need it to. Rapid prototyping and tracer bullet-style development require quick thinking and even quicker typing. Eval() makes short work of this. Case in point: In an MVC with an RDB backend, it's worth while making a generic linking function in your base object. Leverage what you have: an instantiated object pulled from the DB with an attribute/field which is a valid pointer to another loadable object. By using Eval() to load that object, zipping along your foreign keys can be a relative breeze. @Nate: That’s a very good point, and in fact one of the pillars most MVC frameworks I’ve seen are built on. A well-designed framework leverages its strengths and minimizes its weaknesses, of course; so any language with code generators is perfectly adept at taking advantage. (Lisp is utterly famous for this.)

In the technology market, it’s invaluable to have a language that can adapt as fast as you need it to. Rapid prototyping and tracer bullet-style development require quick thinking and even quicker typing. Eval() makes short work of this.

Case in point: In an MVC with an RDB backend, it’s worth while making a generic linking function in your base object. Leverage what you have: an instantiated object pulled from the DB with an attribute/field which is a valid pointer to another loadable object. By using Eval() to load that object, zipping along your foreign keys can be a relative breeze.

]]> By: nate http://blog.adventdigerati.com/2008/10/futureproof/comment-page-1/#comment-18 nate Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:32:12 +0000 http://adventtechnorati.wordpress.com/?p=8#comment-18 Hey Zack. Very true. Runtime evaluation is extremely handy and one of the beauties of loose typed scripting languanges. In php this also can extend to function and class method names. <code> if(method_exists($obj, $method)) $result = $obj->{$method}(); </code> or <code> $function = "nl2br"; echo $function("a\nb"); </code> Recently used this doing some MVC style controllers mapping URLs to models. Obviously, with this kind of flexibility comes responsibility - "eval" style statements can be dangerous without the proper checks and string cleansing. In more recent versions of PHP, I believe you can also use variables to set classes at runtime just as you can for variables and functions. Hey Zack. Very true. Runtime evaluation is extremely handy and one of the beauties of loose typed scripting languanges. In php this also can extend to function and class method names.


if(method_exists($obj, $method))
$result = $obj->{$method}();

or


$function = "nl2br";
echo $function("a\nb");

Recently used this doing some MVC style controllers mapping URLs to models. Obviously, with this kind of flexibility comes responsibility – “eval” style statements can be dangerous without the proper checks and string cleansing.

In more recent versions of PHP, I believe you can also use variables to set classes at runtime just as you can for variables and functions.

]]> By: No One Plans to Fail « Advent Technorati http://blog.adventdigerati.com/2008/10/futureproof/comment-page-1/#comment-2 No One Plans to Fail « Advent Technorati Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:53:56 +0000 http://adventtechnorati.wordpress.com/?p=8#comment-2 [...] same decimal separator, or even the same character encoding. The customization is fairly complex, and your portion of the product must accept this. Whether you do this elegantly or not is another [...] [...] same decimal separator, or even the same character encoding. The customization is fairly complex, and your portion of the product must accept this. Whether you do this elegantly or not is another [...]

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