Hi Jurriën,
The topic you wrote about on your blog is particularly interesting to
me at this time and you make some very good points. While I'm not
convinced that PHP 6 specifically is the make-or-break point for PHP
as a whole, I think that there is a lot of anticipation from the OOP-
centric PHP developer community on its release and the features
included within it. I feel there is a major divide in the PHP
community that you touched on a bit in your blog post I'd like to
discuss more.
On one side of this divide are new-comers to PHP. In my opinion, PHPs
success is largely based on its ultra low barrier to entry for new
programmers. It's free, the documentation is excellent (its easy to
learn), and there are plenty of people (and hosting companies) already
using it to get help from.
The other side is made up largely of experienced programmers who have
enthusiastically embraced PHPs current OOP direction. To them its a
matter of language survival: in order to be taken seriously in the
larger programming community PHP needs to mature, and maturity is OOP.
The language is moving towards this latter side of the divide. I think
that this might be to the detriment of the rest of current PHP
community as a whole. Gone will be the low barrier to entry. A new
developer will need to understand more advanced programming techniques
to get started with PHP. I suspect that as this trend continues the
number of developers adopting PHP will go down.
Underscoring all of this discussion about PHPs significance as a
programming language is the general view amongst programmers that web
development in general is ~30 years behind current software
engineering standards. In terms of reusable code, accepted programming
methodologies, etc. A great paper written on this is "Spaghetti Code
for the 21st Century" by Dr. Tommi Mikkonen and Dr. Antero Taivalsaari
at Sun Labs (https://research.sun.com/techrep/2007/abstract-166.html).
I think there is a trend in web development right now to play "catch
up" with our software engineering brethren. Additionally, a merging
effect where web apps are increasingly moving to replace desktop apps
is taking place. I think code quality and a focus on our tools is an
extremely important issue for web development in the future.
Personally, I feel the benefits of this movement in PHP far outweigh
the trade-offs mentioned earlier. I want web development to be taken
seriously as a platform for serious developers. I think PHP could be
on the leading edge of this movement, even though right now its
playing catch up. Once it catches up, there will be a massive
community driving it forward. I'm looking forward to being a part of it.
Darcy Hastings
Notion Design
http://www.notiondesign.ca
On 12-Jun-08, at 2:26 AM, Jurriën Stutterheim wrote:
Hi all,
A few weeks back I posted an entry on my blog regarding my thought
on PHP as a programming language. Even though it's not entirely
related to Zend Framework, I thought I'd mail this list anyway ;)
I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are about the things I
mention in my post.
The link: http://www.norm2782.com/2008/05/27/php-what-to-say/
PotatoBob even digged it at Digg:
http://digg.com/programming/PHP6_and_why_I_think_its_gone_wrong
- Jurriën
