Hi Darcy,
Thanks for sharing your view on things! The article you linked looks
very interesting, and I'll read it as soon as possible.
You are absolutely right when you say that a great deal of PHP's
success is due to the fact that it's very easy for beginners to get
started. The fact that it's possible to write a small procedural
script which actually does something is indeed a great strength of
PHP. Zeev gave a very nice example of this at the Dutch PHP Conference
last saturday by comparing a Java Hello World to a PHP Hello World.
As much as the strict-typing and OOP loving programmer inside of me
would want to, I don't want to see PHP drop everything it is now and
become yet another OO language. That just wouldn't make any sense. The
reason for its success is indeed the low barrier and flexibility of
the language.
It's this same flexibility that I would like to see pleasing
experience (OO) programmers by providing the features of mature OO
languages, while not enforcing them on the beginners. PHP can - and in
my opinion even needs to - be a great language for beginners and
experienced programmers alike. Let's just not forget about that latter
group.
PHP has it's own identity which it should never lose. However, this
doesn't mean it should stick to the old trusted ways and ignore modern
developments in the programming world. To keep this identity PHP needs
to innovate and learn from recent innovations and programming
insights. It needs to keep evolving so it can keep its lead on the web
and please both beginning and experienced programmers alike.
- Jurriën
On Jun 12, 2008, at 18:38 , Tech wrote:
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
