Geek Rant #4080

So, following Stefan's example, I've returned to my programming roots, and I am trying to do a PHP back-end for my new site Old Street Kebab.

But coding again has reminded me how effing frustrating it is. Spending hours to realise you've writting '=' instead of '==', or forgetting whether the scope of a variable is global or local.

To add to this frustration, every modern language is a C++ variant (Javascript, Actionscript, Perl, PHP, etc.) But each has it's own idiosyncracies. So just because I understand how to do something doesn't mean that I know how to do it.

For example, to find the length of an array it might be length($array) or $array->length or $array.length. In PHP it's actually count($array).

Considering programming has existed since the 19th century -- why the hell can't a robust programming language exist as an abstraction?

If you know your if...else statements, for loops, etc. there should be a meta-tool to let you put everything together, and then spit it out as perfect PHP code.

Sure, I've heard about Microsoft's visual programming -- but since it's built by Microsoft engineers, I think it will still be a pain in the arse.

What the next generation needs is a programming language built by Designers for Designers. And let the techies run around in the background and figure out how you make it run.