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Thursday, March 3, 2005

Yahoo Programmer Leaves Comments in API

This is funny and sad at the same time. The new Yahoo Search Web Services comes with a programmer’s kit, the so-called SDK. In the comments of the main PHP script – no sign of PHP5-native XML functionality – the programmer Rasmus Lerdorf left an awkward note:

// Ok, now that we have the results in an easy to use format,
// display them. It’s quite ugly because I am using a single
// display loop to display every type and I don’t really understand HTML

Andrew in the forum rephrases this: “I don’t really understand HTML, yet I was assigned to write an example PHP code that is distributed with the Yahoo API.”

So are the other examples any better? Well, another comment reveals that the Python script was based on the PHP one, so I suppose not.

# Yahoo Web Services Python CGI Example, after PHP example
# Matt Kangas <kangas@yahoo-inc.com>

Update: I guess the comment was meant ironically; Yahoo employee Rasmus Lerdorf – who helped kick-start the PHP project – left a note in the forum, and this is from his biography, showing the same humble spirit:

“He tends to deny being a programmer, preferring to be seen as a techy adept at solving problems. If the solution requires a bit of coding and he can’t trick somebody else into writing the code, he will (very) reluctantly give in and write it.”

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