NYCPHP Meetup

[John Lacey]

David Sklar wrote:


> 
> Indeed. The first question in the last "general intro to PHP" talk I gave
> was "I heard that PHP has lots of security problems. What's with that?!" My
> answer tried to separate problems with the language with problems in
> programs written in the language and turn it into a virtue of PHP: "because
> it's so easy to learn, beginning programmers often use it and since they're
> beginners, they often write programs that aren't as secure and robust as
> what an experienced programmer would do. But if you're a good programmer,
> you can write perfectly secure PHP programs."
> 
> This is a perfect example of a problem PHP has that can only be fixed with
> marketing, not with technology.
> 

 From the "Let's Do Something About It Dept."

I'm almost finished with moding the phpTest engine for phundamentals 
quizzes, and I had a thought ( related to time :).

I would volunteer to *contribute* to a document (html and .pdf) that 
would be available for downloading from the NYPHP site.  The document 
would be geared towards the 'marketing aspect' of getting the word out 
concerning AMP technology and other closely-related areas.  Since I've 
co-authored about eight technical books ( "semimar" and the use of 
"site" for "cite" notwithstanding :), I'd be happy to give it a go.
Ideally, it would be less than 30 pages and pithy.

Some suggested sections:

- Executive Summary
- Company software assets and the GPL
- Links (Appendix) to Open Source studies (David Wheeler's, others)
- Overview of AMP technology (pictures, bulleted items)
- Where the pieces fit and what they can do
- Where the pieces are not a good fit and why
- Q & A (for ease of addressing important issues without the verbiage)
- The compulsory "Interesting Statistics" section (who, where, how much)
- ...


It would be an NYPHP branded document (written using OpenOffice.org and 
exported to .pdf??), with additions as appropriate.

what do ya'll think?

John