At 05:36 26-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote:
>The first problem is technical. You just keep developing PHP to satisfy
>the user needs as soon as you perceive them and that's it.
I think we're doing that nicely, but it's quite true that meeting the
technical needs is not enough.
>The second problem is marketing. It doesn't matter for people that have
>to make the decisions how much better PHP in fact is if people don't
>hear about it. Even if they hear about it, it may not be enough if they
>hear much more from the rest (Java, ASP.Net, C#, , whatever).
>
>Here PHP looses bigtime. You may not want to believe me, but I am afraid
>that unless PHP is better marketted, soon or later its market acceptance
>will be weakened.
I think you're right here also, but only to a degree. PHP has reached (or
is quite close) to the critical mess it needs to penetrate the suite of
'accepted solutions'. As in, solutions which are covered by analysts and
that exist within large organizations. It's true that it took it some 5
years or so to make this penetration (and it took .NET about -2 years), but
that is the price you pay when you don't have gigantic marketing budgets to
compete with. Undoubtfully this is a problem, but the bottom line appears
to be that we managed to overcome this, despite the lack of resources.
>That's not my point. Some marketing is better than no marketing at all
>which is what you do today. There are plenty of ways to do some
>marketing on PHP that don't even cost money to you.
I don't think it's fair to say that there's no marketing today. Well,
forget fair, but I don't think it's accurate either :) There are several
good PHP sites, and there are a few companies advocating PHP as
well. Analysts are starting to cover PHP, and it's a fairly important
landmark in PHP's penetration to the family of industry-adopted solutions.
At any rate, suggestions will be welcome. I've seen the Web Developer Ring
you suggested, and I think it's worth thinking (the reason I'm not going
wild with enthusiasm is that I think it also has drawbacks, not only
advantages).
>oh, man Linux was a different story. Expecting a similar future for PHP
>I'm afraid it may be wishful thinking. PHP is mostly focused on Web
>development. Web market is fading out.
I agree with the first part of the paragraph, but completely disagree with
the 2nd. Web is not fading out, the .COM era is. Web, as a medium, is
here to stay, and on the long run, it's going to grow to be much larger
than what it is today.
As for the similarities and dissimilarities of PHP and Linux, I think it's
fair to say that it's pretty difficult to predict the way things will go
with PHP in the enterprise, but I doubt it'll happen in a similar way to
that of Linux. Linux 'made it' when huge corporations like IBM started
using it and advocating it, after smaller companies (like RedHat) managed
to create enough hype to 'wake the giants'. It's unlikely that such a
giant will make the same choice with PHP, even if we just look at it from a
statistical perspective.
>Even if you can do non Web programming with PHP, most people are not
>aware of that. You need to do some marketing to put in evidence that PHP
>is as much capable for non-Web programming.
Given the fact that I don't see the Web going anywhere, I strongly
disagree. PHP's strength is in its focus to provide a good Web development
framework. Losing that focus would be a bad idea.
Projects like PHP-GTK are nice and for certain audiences they're also quite
useful, but it's very wrong to assume that PHP's future lies in
there. There are too many languages in the world, including ones which are
much more capable than PHP in the GUI programming area, and if we move the
focus to this front, we're going to fight a lost battle. In the Web front,
on the other hand, we're doing quite well.
>There you have another big problem that is there is no affordable way to
>compile and generate executables from PHP programs. I know that
>historically you never liked this ability into PHP programs, but that is
>a vital need for people that will want to distribute their programs like
>VB or Delphi programs.
If you mean native executables, then I have to disagree with you yet
again... I don't think native executables are the thing that's holding PHP
back. It's a direct deduction from my view that PHP's main course is the
Web environment, where native executables simply do not make sense.
If you mean something else, I'll be happy to discuss this with you over
personal email :)
Zeev
--
Zeev Suraski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CTO & co-founder, Zend Technologies Ltd. http://www.zend.com/
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