Here's what open source documentation SHOULD look like.

[grumpy_sysadmin]

eAcceleratorNo, it's not perfect English (Oxford, American, whatever... Standard {Written,White} English), but it makes its point clearly and concisely. Like a blog, it's still conversational (in a way technical documentation "shouldn't" be), but that isn't getting in the way of my understanding the content

Comments

[reddragdiva]

PHP itself is written like the authors stopped paying attention in arithmetic class in fourth grade, so the documentation should provide fair warning.

[ultranurd]

Why do so many people keep using PHP, with all of the criticism that's out there?

[grumpy_sysadmin]

Because Ruby on Rails doesn't suck quite enough for adoption yet.

[ultranurd]

I've found myself liking C#.NET far more than I'm comfortable with, for work, but configuring IIS and .NET's various security settings is an incredible pain unless you shell out for signed DLLs or something. Language good, runtime environment bad.

We did a collaboration with an MIT guy who insisted on Ruby on Rails, so I've seen a bit of it. It looked like it more strictly enforces MVC?

[loosechanj]

I'd have a harder time processing properly-written Italian or German, and I wouldn't have a prayer in French, Russian, Japanese

You just wrote this post to brag about your linguistic skillz, didn't you?

[grumpy_sysadmin]

Not purposely. I went to a liberal arts school, so I just figure most people are fumblingly fluent in at least one modern language that isn't English and have at least some concept of either Latin or Classical Greek (if not both). Which I recognize is a lousy assumption about people with US passports, but it's completely valid if you just go with "English speakers internationally".

[loosechanj]

It always strikes me as bizarre when people think knowing/speaking foreign or multiple languages has anything at all to do with intelligence, when it really boils down to need.

[grumpy_sysadmin]

I come back to this now through a largely vain reassessment of my Self as he exists online, but since I do know and respect you, I'll go ahead and say this this way (which will also, so far as I can tell, generate an email to you): Your observation is correct. I don't think that you actually meant it in contrast with what I said, because I think we agree. I happen to think that it's a Bad Thing that there's little if any utility for US citizens to comprehend any language besides English, but it is true.