Manuel, I have replied inline with a few comments that kind of reply in some way to what you said:
> IMHO, that is there no marketing effort behind PHP, meaning there is no > Microsoft nor Sun nor any strong brand behind PHP to advertise it. > Microsoft make $xxx BILLION dollars a year SELLING their software. Sun make $xxx BILLION dollars a year SELLING their software. Both, by coincedence release free software, such as API's and SDK's. the PHP Group (and the PHP community) make $000 a year GIVING AWAY our software. however, we get more usage than ASP/Microsoft servers, and Java only beats us because it has been around for longer. I note that sun don't promote java as they used to anymore... they don't particularly need too. Like Oracle. > Even in the Open Source world the PHP credit is relative. in ANY world these days, ANY computing credit is relative. There are so few universally agreed standards that certification becomes almost worthless, because it becomes harder to work out how good the person behind the paper really is (but alas, we all take the exams) > For instance > well known publishers on the field like O'Reilly don't seem to care much > about publishing PHP books. I don't know why. > O'Reilly seems to give more credit to Perl and Python than to PHP, but > it is also true that such languages have well organized advocacy groups > while there seems to be no organized advocacy for PHP at all. > Erm,. O'Reilly and Perl have a long standing friendship, first of all. I hear Tim O'Reilly and Larry Wall are good friends. That said, O'Reilly have one book on the shelves (Rasmus' reference guide) and a further one i believe at post - edit stage. They also have my proposal under consideration for a further php book. (And ARE INTERESTED) > Also PHP is only known to be adequate for Web programming niche market > although it can be used as a general purpose programming language. Since > Computer Science courses are for much more than Web programming, > colleges do not see PHP as a good bet for the future of their students. ERM, PHP is now a leading programming language for several major sites. sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net, www.alltheweb.com , livebid.amazon.com, www.knowone.de , audiogalaxy.com are just some which manage huge hits. Also, PHP as a CLI is coming into it's own, but obviously when PHP was first imagined, the CLI approach would have been a distant dream. > Unfortunately, in this world when somebody does not know about > something, what is important is not what that "is" but what "seems to > be". So humans seem to give more credit to something that appears often > in many places than something that appears not very much in only one > place. PHP popularity seems to be limited to what it is advertised for > which isn't much as I mentioned above. www.php.net/usage.php www.php.net/usage.php www.php.net/usage.php Q E D. > So, if you care about PHP credit and consequent success in the Computer > Science world, what shall you do about it? > > Well, as an individual you may not be able to do much. But I think there > is plenty of things that can be done to better market PHP so it gets the > necessary recognition to appear in Computer Science curriculum. Wear PHP.net T Shirts. Give out mousemats. Or just simply make a good quality php web application in which people visit. That way you'll soon find people asking how you did it, and they'll start using php too. Open Source doesn't need huge advertising dollars spent on it. It just has to be damn good and withstand the scrutiny of our peers. > In the past I made several suggestions to PHP developers in order to > improve PHP recognition not only in colleges but also in companies that > are not aware of the capabilities of PHP. If companies are not made > aware of PHP capabilities, that reduces the chances of employment of > people like everybody here that would like to keep working on PHP and > you may be forced by the circumstances to work with other more accepted > languages in the labour market. REAL Job advertisement: PHP Developer Fast growing company specialised in Internet is urgently looking for an experienced PHP Developer to join young, multinational team. Knowledge of other programming languages fe Java, Oracle, would be an advantage but the most important thing is that you have good knowledge and experience in PHP development. Fluent German speaking is essential. Type: Permanent Location: Frankfurt, Germany Start: ASAP Posted: 16/01/2002 18:42:20 Reference: JS/3780/SAB or see http://www.it.jobserve.com/jobserve/searchresults.asp?jobType=*&d=5&order=Ra nk&page=1&q=php To have over 100 jobs in this difficult market place in the UK right now for php developers can only show the need for php in the market place today. > - Promote contests of PHP applications or components. The Python > community does this and it seems to be getting the attention of the > computing media. This leads to an obvious greater exposure of the > language to the computing community that does not know it while it > promotes the development of more and better applications and components. Python owe's it's huge interest mainly due to the fact that google uses it. <snip> Again, i think it's down to the users to promote locally the use of PHP, and not down to the central group and/or developers to do that job. Promote it by using it, and being a proud user. Don't expect other people to do it for you. Regards, James Cox -- James Cox :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please CC me when replying to my messages on lists. Was I helpful? http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/wishlist/23IVGHQ61RJGO/ -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
