Debugging a php script with emacs in geben mode.
Debugging a php script with emacs in geben mode. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was recently testing some wordpress plugin code for an upgrade. As part of my testing, I turn on debugging to see if any errors or warnings show up.

Imagine my surprise when several errors appeared, many of them deprecation warnings. After troubleshooting to determine the source of the errors, I discovered it was coming from the theme I was using.

Without turning on debugging, the site appears to behave normally, which is problematic. One of my objections to many languages and frameworks is that they hide problems from the developer. In many cases, for example, deprecation warnings don’t mean much—except they’re a ticking time bomb. At some point in the future, the code is going to break. Better to fix it now while it is easier to do, than scramble to diagnose and fix lots of code just after an upgrade.

In the case of WordPress (or PHP in general), it would be helpful if the admin area showed everything – bugs and warnings. For novice admins, of course, this would be a support nightmare, as they would have little clue what was going on. The upside is (hopefully) sloppy coders would fix their stuff promptly. Nothing will get a plugin/theme pulled faster than getting an error right after installing it.

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