2007/12/26, Andrés Robinet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> Well, my fellow countryman... one of my classmates at college had a
> saying:
> "el hombre es un animal de costumbres" (translate it "you gringos" :) - no
> offense). And I guess it's most of the time like that... we learn
> something,
> we are never willing to unlearn it. But the truth is, there are at least
> as
> many habits and learnt behaviors as people are there walking in the
> streets.
> So, sometimes, we should be a bit more tolerant to "foreign habits"
> (unless
> we are Micro$oft.. but even so...).
>
> If my intuition is right you must come from the Java/C++ world (my bet is
> java 80/20). Maybe you have evaluated the hassles of implementing
> namespaces
> into PHP... and you have concluded it's not possible. Or maybe, that it
> will
> be a "buggy implementation" in the end; like PHP 4 OOP (which doesn't look
> like OOP at all). Maybe some old-seasoned gurus in the internals community
> have set you apart, or have treated your opinions with contempt (this is
> just my assumption, like most of this email's contents). So, you are now
> assuming that you won't need PHP, and that it will 'die("alone")' like
> some
> poem of your authorship stated in one of its verses. Yes, after all
> developers find out the hassles of namespaces and type hinting in PHP,
> they
> will give up... won't they? (just reading your mind... forgive my
> arrogance
> and continue).Well, it's been years since I've done anything important in Java or C++. I've been doing mostly scripting languages in all sorts of flavors. I don't really care that my opinion felt to /dev/null or something else, I just kept trying, and when I understood that I had to get my hands really dirty to be taken into consideration, that's what I did. The short time I had been dwelling through php source code, I finally understood why the core developers have such a short temper. To be fair with the core developers, the php community should issue a "thank you for keeping php running" email each week. The poem! That was fun! =D It's not an assumption that I won't need PHP, it's just that I wanna try doing something that's far away from web development and php. It would have been a waste to leave everything I wrote in the first mail in the garbage bin. That's why I wrote it, so if there's someone who sees that something is sensible or useful in there, he can just take it. That was my only intention. I don't expect developers to just give up. I expect them to (a) accept them and continue doing as always (b) ignore them (c) complain (d) use them wrongly. I'll go for (d) if you wanna bet. You know... I think I'm about your age (judging for the picture of yours at > phpclasses.org, if that's your picture). Maybe a bit younger, or a bit > older... but just a bit. And the thing is, I heard about two years ago or > so, a big buzz around a "PHP replacement". It was something about trains > (that's the farthest understanding I reached on it... "something about > trains"). I think it was called, railroad, or railway, or diamond on a > train... mmmm... nope, now I remember, it's "ruby on rails" (if you have a > sarcasm detector, use it now). Last time I checked, it was still alive... > arguably in a much more evolved fashion, and some (may I say "few"?) > hosting > companies support it now. I don't know much about current statistics, but > I'm tempted to say that: > - There are many more Books on PHP than on RoR > - There are many more PHP hosting offers than RoR's counterpart (even if > we > reduce the stats to PHP 5 - just a guess) > - There are many many more websites built on top of PHP than the RoR's > counterpart > - There are many many more extensions, APIs and Frameworks for PHP than > for > RoR (actually, RoR IS a framework itself) > - There are many many more PHP developers than RoR developers > In the shared market niche, PHP has beaten java, coldfusion, asp, and > perl, > which already existed. PHP has survived .Net rumbling, despite the Vb, C#, > J# or C++ flavors and the awesome Vi$ual $tudio IDE. And despite all the > predictions and prophecies about PHP's doom... it is still here, and will > be > here and in the top 5 for at least 10 years. By the time PHP is replaced > by > RoR or anything else, I will probably be selling RoR T-Shirts, or be > retired, or be dead (maybe of lung cancer, or cirrhosis, or just because > no-one can live past 120's)... Please, don't let me get started on the Freaks on Rails. RoR is a stillborn baby. It wasn't just bad enough that the RoR developer failed while doing the first video presentation of RoR. People still kept boarding that train. And it become worst, people from PHP started to think that RoR was actually a good idea to be copied. There are two major faults with RoR: 1) The MVC design pattern is not applied correctly 2) The whole application is designed around the (faulty) MVC design pattern The MVC design pattern has one purpose and one purpose only, user interface implementation. RoR forces you to put code that's not pertinent to the system design because the MVC design pattern is forced on you. You should never force a problem to fit a pattern. The resultant is code that's hardly maintainable, mostly redundant, poorly reusable, scalable only in dreams, and strictly limited. All the PHP "frameworks" which copied the RoR ideology, had also, most of the times, copied its faults. Luckily, the Zend Framework was really well thought, and it is, as I said before, IMHO, the first real php framework. It's ironic that they choose "Rails" as the name for their abomination. It's quite appropriate. When you're on rails there's not much you can do, just one way to go. The point is... "sayonara PHP" means "sayonara most new clients" right now, > sayonara "sustained trend", sayonara "all php-based solutions" and > sayonara > "most of the web development world". The facts show that googling for > "PHP" > throws about 8,830,000,000 results (this is a bit biased, but the point > still holds)... try to Google for anything else and get similar numbers. Probably, I'm not sure. But, in this case, yes, I'm saying goodbye to web development. [snip] > > All in all, my fellow countryman, I guess that unless you have a huge > positive bank account balance, and you drive a BMW (I don't like them > anyway…) you'd better off tolerating PHP for this little "namespace issue" > if you want to stay in business. Unless, of course, that you have an > incoming contract to develop a core system for an NSA mainframe. And if > that's the case please tell them I prepare the most awesome "mate" > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage)) in the world, and that you > cannot work without it. I'll tell them, but I'm guessing it won't be easy to pass through immigration with a bag of "yerba". Last man I heard trying, was almost body-cavity searched. xD I know that, even if you wish to leave PHP forever, you'll come back… all > the roads will lead you to it. So, you'd better take a smart decision now… > than have no other choice in the future (... ok, that was kind of The > Godfather's script, lol). > > Enjoy your holidays, > > Rob > We'll see... for now I'll follow the stupid decision of finally doing what I intended when I began this whole dance of software development. I hoping with all my heart that this will go well and I'll never have to work in web development again. If not, well, I'll come back to whatever it's that's being used in that specific moment, be it PHP or whatever may come. Just know that I'm not leaving for some petty reason. And I really hope that someone else could find anything sensible in the things I posted in the first mail, and keep on building on top of them. Best Regards and Happy New Year, Martin Alterisio
