News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Signs of Crappy PHP Software by snorkel on Sunday July 04, 2010 @11:26AM (#1485800)
Also disagreeing with #9. Plenty of popular frameworks have "core". core provides a clear delineation between extensible parts of a framework and its inner foundation. A well designed framework allows you to extend its functionality and upgrade the core at any time without disruption. Frameworks have core for the same reason objects have private members: interface opaqueness provides change protection.
Re:Signs of Crappy PHP Software by DanHulton on Sunday July 04, 2010 @06:15PM (#1486526)
I think that if you're using a well-developed framework, you can safely ignore #9. However, his advice is SPOT-FREAKING-ON for any home-grown stuff.

The last time I ran across a "core" directory, there was all kinds of application-specific code in there, all rolled up in switches and stuff - if you wanted to develop something using the "core", you had to go through about fifty files and add your own cases for your site. It was awful.

Re:Signs of Crappy PHP Software by robryan on Sunday July 04, 2010 @11:50AM (#1485836)
Lots of things though I think could be a bit more careful about a core, wordpress as an example includes a large amount of code on each and every page, when in reality a lot of the time much of it doesn't get touched every load.