You have worked around the quirks and you have lived with the inconsistencies. You have stood by and watched your code fail spectacularly between minor point releases. You scrambled to fix your code’s dependence on register_globals set to on when they got turned off by default in version 4.2.0. You have lived with the disappointment when version 5 failed to deliver on better object orientation. There have been a lot of warning signs telling you to look for better alternatives, but still you persevered. Then came the recent changes that really make you shake your head in disbelief. Face it, PHP’s direction as of late has really taken a downturn. You’re thinking it’s time to look for alternatives.

If you are one of those folks who have been using PHP and nothing but PHP for a long time you will be hard pressed to find an alternative. PHP is, after all, one of those things that are “easy to get into, but difficult to get out of”. PHP lures you in with its forgiving nature, vast library of pre-built extensions, ease of deployment and just plain “instant gratification”. It’s easy to forget that there are other languages for server-side programming/scripting.

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Now see this is why I love Django. It’s an awesome framework with a great community behind it.

I finally had a long needed vacation and took the family to Boracay. It’s been more or less 8 years since I last set foot on that island and a lot of things had certainly changed. If you’re planning on going to Boracay for the first time and you expect to come to a “tropical paradise”, let me spoil it for you and tell you that you will be sorely disappointed. “Tropical”, yes. “Paradise”, hell no! You’re 16 years too late.

It was about 16 years ago when I went to Boracay for the very first time. Back then, it was still the “tropical paradise” as most of us would have pictured it. A simple bamboo and nipa hut for accommodations. No running water, we got water from a nearby well which we had to boil because it had a bit of salt in it. No fricken jetskis or watersports or scuba diving. No bars. No hotels. It was “tropical paradise” in the truest sense.

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