Hello, James Cox wrote: > > 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.
There is no doubt about that, but the original poster was asking why PHP is not part of college curriculum and I was explaining that unlike other languages that are marketed by companies with big brands, there is no big brand behind PHP to push it at any comparable level. To illustrate what I am say, althought it was not a language but a Open Source OS, Linux did not start taking much credit until Red Hat started distributing it and entered to NASDAQ. From then on, Red Had become a big brand (at least a noticeable one) and Linux was not necessarily the best free Unix like OS. Red Hat made it a big deal as we all know. > however, we get more usage than ASP/Microsoft servers, and Java only beats > us because it has been around for longer. AFAIK there is no strong evidence that lets you conclude that. Anyway, that is not the point. Even if what you mentioned was an undeniable fact, PHP is not being marketed up to the same level as Java or the Microsoft languages. The fact that PHP is not more accepted in colleges and companies, I think it is at least part due to that. > I note that sun don't promote java as they used to anymore... they don't > particularly need too. Like Oracle. Sun did smart marketing through well organized advocacy that helps evangelizing the Java community angariating new members, but Sun did much more. They provide very high carrer value to Java developers not only by motivating companies to adopt Java because it brings value to their business but also by providing very high certification for anybody that wants demonstrate real qualification in the language. Today, good Java programmers are in average much more well paid than good PHP programmers. That is Sun manage to create such a great demand for Java programmers in companies that there are not enough qualified Java programmers to cover for the needs. That is a direct result of better marketing the language. > > 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) I was not talking about that, but have you seen Java certification process? That is a very well thought and credible initiative, IMHO. > > 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. I don't think that is the reason. O'Reilly is a company, so they want to profit. If PHP community is so large, why would O'Reilly stop themselves from profiting much more by publishing PHP books? So far they only have published a book until today, and even that book is a reference book and not a book that teaches you how to program PHP. They have published 19 Perl books and 6 Python books agains 1 PHP book. Do they have anything against PHP? If Tim and Larry Wall are good friends, is Python author a greater friend of Tim than Rasmus? I don't think that is the reason. Maybe PHP needs to be better marketed before the eyes of O'Reilly. O'Reilly is big in colleges so it would provide greater exposure to PHP. There seems to be no reason to have at least as many PHP books from O'Reilly than they have of Python. Wrox publishes more PHP books than O'Reilly publishes of Python. There isn't certainly a lack of good PHP book writers. > 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) There seems to be an O'Reilly PHP book in the horizon for March but it is not yours. Anyway, if they really publish it, feel free to send me a review copy so I can post a review in the PHP Classes site. Reviews are notified to more than 30.000 site subscribers. Although you told me that I just seem to put up suggestions and do not do anything else besides that, here you may see that is not quite right. I really don't make much money (if any at all) from reviewing the books, but I know that helps marketing PHP: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/products.html > > 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. I know, but do colleges know that? That is my point, if PHP is not better marketed, they might not ever know about it to motivate them to put in their curriculum. > 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. That is a good thing, not just quite because you can use from the command line, as you could always do that using the PHP CGI version, but rather because as far as I understood, when you build the Apache module version you also build the CLI version. Is this accurate? That helps for instance Linux distributors to ship PHP both in the module version and CLI version in the same package. Other than that, what are the differences between the PHP CGI and CLI versions? > > 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 I know this, and despite the numbers are not conclusive, does the world know about this? Is it sufficient to motivate all the companies to drop better marketed languages for PHP? Maybe in some cases, but I don't think that is even the majority of the cases. > > 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. You are saying in part the same as I did. Open Source does not need money to be advertised, especially because there isn't much (any) to spend. Still, PHP is not so well accepted in Colleges and companies like other better marketed languages. > > > 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. Now, search for Java jobs and notice how many more there are and how much more they offer. > > - 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. I doubt it because I don't think much people know that. I don't see it obviously advertised there. I know Python is used in eGroups due to some revealing error message. Anyway, that is beside my point. Software Carpentry promoted a Python Open Source contest that was announced almost everywhere in the specialized off-line media. That provided great exposure to Python. That is why I say it would be a good idea for PHP too. > <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. Sure, but some PHP developers have better means to make things happen. Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General 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]
