The morning light at Situ Gunung, Gede Pangrango National Park. April 2012

If you ever found yourself in a debate with someone about the merit of PHP, just refer them here.

When asked why that’s the case, Bill Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president for Corporate Strategic Planning, often starts the discussion using this fact to put it in perspective:

“All of the energy concentrated in one gallon of gasoline is enough to charge an iPhone once a day for almost 20 years.”

And that is why ExxonMobil predict that by 2040, about 90 percent of the global transportation fleet will still be powered by liquid petroleum fuels – that is, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

Is it the developer’s fault? Is it a management issue? Bad methodology, or lack thereof? Or is it ingrained in the nature of the process?

My favorite:

1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

And this:

1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall’s forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall’s monitor isn’t random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

Rands¹ on design:

But you keep hearing this word. More importantly, you hear the urgency behind the word. You hear that choosing to design a thing is an important thing to do and the person saying it is also important, so you nod vigorously while silently thinking, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about and I’m pretty sure neither do you.”

From the company that brings you Kinect and Metro UI. They really got their design team sorted out.