On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 10:33, Sean Quinlan wrote: > On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 21:58, Tom Metro wrote:
> > This reminded me of something I've wondered about for a long time. Why > > did PHP become as successful and popular as it is, even though it mostly > > offers a subset of what Perl can do. (I'm aware of some of the > > historical reasons for PHP being created. What's less clear is why a > > Perl equivalent didn't address the need.) > I certainly wouldn't mind this as a discussion topic for part of the > meeting. I'd also be particularly interested in hearing from people who > are working with PHP and other languages. What are the pro's and cons'? Since I can't be there, I'd just like to explain why I think this happened. mod_perl is an amazing tool, and correctly combined with other tools such as HTML::Mason, TTK, etc. it makes for a very usable content system. However, PHP's arrival on the scene was important as it was the first open source language (to my knowledge) which required exactly no integration work between it and the HTML-based Web page. Inline PHP is simple and easy to use. PHP's inlinability makes lots of things easier when you're getting started, and so the language gained quick popularity. It's also deadly as many PHP developers discover all too late (see the various *Nuke projects and other PHP projects which have done well to a point and then had to pour tons of engineering time into separating presentation and code in order to move to a level of abstraction that allowed the project to scale). Currently working in TTK, I can see the echos of that. There's a strong insistence in the docs that you not use the inline perl features (turned off by default), for example. Having first experienced content generation under StoryServer (a proprietary system using embedded TCL in HTML, but with a simply awesome caching system that beats anything else even today), I came into TTK already wary of this pitfall, but it's good to see the reflective paint on the guard-rails.... -- â 781-324-3772 â [EMAIL PROTECTED] â http://www.ajs.com/~ajs _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
