Re[2]: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello Sean, Thursday, September 06, 2001, 1:46:28 PM, you wrote: SCM My experience is the same. Here in Spain everybody uses Microsoft SCM products. W95, W98, NT everywhere, and now 2000. There a lot of MCSE SCM around and very little Linux/PHP experts. Yes there are a lot of people SCM that say I'm an expert on this or that... but once you get to work SCM with them, you notice that their knoledge is not the one that they say. I hope germany is on the way to change this. Open Source is sponsored and supported by the goverment ;) SCM The Universities and companies I have been working at or with they all SCM use in 90% of the tasks MS products. And for critical tasks they use SCM Solaris or another Unix. Here, at my university, they use linux, Solaris, M$ And my employer, an ISP, uses most linux boxes. SCM Where did you get that thing about EU being more open source that the SCM US??? Is it your personal experience or what??? It is not my own SCM experience... maybe what you mean is that the US is more in the bussines SCM of making money with the open source than the EU, but that is something SCM else. look up ... -- Best regards, Manuelmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
B. van Ouwerkerk wrote: I can tell you that in general, companies in Europe appears to be more open to open-source solutions much more than ones in the US. Of course, Europe is comprised of lots of different countries, and each country has lots of different companies, so your mileage may vary. In The Netherlands many people believe M$ creates great products.. I stopped fighting, upgrading and patching NT pays the rent :-) One of the reasons open source might be considered an alternative is the fact that M$ products cost In Europe M$ products are more expensive then in the US. I talked with one of my customers about using Linux instead of Novell or NT.. he said Linux is to big to be used in a small company.. I don't understand him and I even stopped trying to understand. Just my 0,02 Bye, B. Hi, My experience is the same. Here in Spain everybody uses Microsoft products. W95, W98, NT everywhere, and now 2000. There a lot of MCSE around and very little Linux/PHP experts. Yes there are a lot of people that say I'm an expert on this or that... but once you get to work with them, you notice that their knoledge is not the one that they say. Also saying I know Linux means absolutly nothing... The Universities and companies I have been working at or with they all use in 90% of the tasks MS products. And for critical tasks they use Solaris or another Unix. Now a few companies we are dealing with are moving to Linux/PHP, but sometimes they fall back to Microsoft because they cannot afford hiring another programmer/technician that deals with this special software written in another language and another operating system. Too bad. Where did you get that thing about EU being more open source that the US??? Is it your personal experience or what??? It is not my own experience... maybe what you mean is that the US is more in the bussines of making money with the open source than the EU, but that is something else. Sean C. McCarthy SCI, S.L. (www.sci-spain.com) -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Miles Fascinating link and series of articles. Well worth reading. One of my VFP buddies copies his entire set of classes into every new project he starts; I've also seen scenarios where to use one or two useful functions you had to import a whole class structure. Yes, I think he raises some very fair issues. My own experience goes like this - 1) Had a business idea and couldn't afford the software, so decided to learn how to build it myself. 2) Read Code Complete and did the first draft 3) Found I was getting drowned in complexity: assumed OOP would be the answer and that I might have to abandon PHP. 4) Read the OOP classics. I have a pretty strong academic background but I find a lot of the OOP stuff extremely difficult to understand. I have a rule of thumb that if an author can't explain something clearly, it is often because they are not clear about it themselves. Began to wonder if the OOP emperor had no clothes. 5) Began to suspect that it is the architectural ideas of OOP that are interesting, rather than objects themselves. 6) Played around with PHP and discovered I could do most of the same things more simply and more flexibly, organising the app around tasks rather than objects. 7) Found some writers such as Michael Jackson (his recent book on analysis is a classic) who gave a theoretical justification for what I was intuitively doing in practice. This is where I think a PHP Pattern Repository would come in - to allow the community to begin to flesh out and document these non-OOP approaches. But as there has been a thunderous silence, I have to assume that no one else agrees... Geoff Caplan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Geoff, I'm getting a 404 not found on that URL. Please check it. Miles At 05:07 PM 9/6/01 +0100, Geoff Caplan wrote: Michael Kimsal wrote Tell me more about your thoughts on this please. One of the strengths of PHP is the gentle learning curve. This means that a lot of people are using it as their first programming language, and a lot of the traffic on the lists, and the articles on the PHP sites, are at a pretty basic level. Nothing wrong with this, but it may give some the impression that PHP is not a serious tool. If you lurk on Java/Ruby/Python/Rebol lists, as I sometimes do, there is a lot of higher level discussion about how to get the best out of the language, in architectural and design terms. I thought that a good way to focus this kind of discussion would be debating and documenting design and architecture patterns as applied to PHP. I would have thought that this would be stimulating for the gurus, and beginners like myself would learn a lot from watching the process. And because the PHP solution will often be much simpler than the Java/C++ style solutions, it would be a good way to demonstrate the power of the language to anyone considering adopting it for serious work. Here is a paper documenting some procedural/relational patterns that might give a sense of what I am suggesting: http://www/geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/prpats.htm Hope this is useful Geoff Caplan -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Original message From: Miles Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 01:44:16PM -0300 Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository Geoff, I'm getting a 404 not found on that URL. Please check it. Miles /Original message Reply You should replace the slash by a dot: http://www/geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/prpats.htm ^ | v http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/prpats.htm /Reply -- * RzE: -- -- Renze Munnik -- DataLink BV -- -- E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- W: +31 23 5326162 -- F: +31 23 5322144 -- M: +31 6 21811143 -- -- Stationsplein 82 -- 2011 LM HAARLEM -- Netherlands -- -- http://www.datalink.nl -- -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Hi I'm getting a 404 not found on that URL. Please check it. Oops - silly typo - and I double checked it too! Here is the address: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/prpats.htm Actually, this is a pretty interesting site. The root is at: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/index.html It is a pretty thought provoking critique of OOP as a tool for small to medium business projects - helped give me the confidence to stick with a procedural approach. His style is pretty combative, which will put some backs up, but it makes for entertaining reading. The site is a bit shambolic, but if you dig around you will find about 30 papers and lots of good links too. I particularly like his concept of Table Oriented Programming: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/top.htm He shows how to use various kinds of external configuration approaches to increase flexibility and reduce maintenance. Good stuff, IMHO Geoff Caplan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Michael Kimsal wrote Tell me more about your thoughts on this please. One of the strengths of PHP is the gentle learning curve. This means that a lot of people are using it as their first programming language, and a lot of the traffic on the lists, and the articles on the PHP sites, are at a pretty basic level. Nothing wrong with this, but it may give some the impression that PHP is not a serious tool. If you lurk on Java/Ruby/Python/Rebol lists, as I sometimes do, there is a lot of higher level discussion about how to get the best out of the language, in architectural and design terms. I thought that a good way to focus this kind of discussion would be debating and documenting design and architecture patterns as applied to PHP. I would have thought that this would be stimulating for the gurus, and beginners like myself would learn a lot from watching the process. And because the PHP solution will often be much simpler than the Java/C++ style solutions, it would be a good way to demonstrate the power of the language to anyone considering adopting it for serious work. Here is a paper documenting some procedural/relational patterns that might give a sense of what I am suggesting: http://www/geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/6888/prpats.htm Hope this is useful Geoff Caplan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP - PHP Pattern Repository
Hi Thomas Deliduka wrote: Actually this originally started ... with my question as to what to tell my JSP-loving buddy that PHP isn't an antiquated and dying language/processing system. I have a proposal for the PHP gurus which should help establish PHP's credentials as a serious tool with cutting-edge capabilities. I think this may be important, so please bear with me while I outline the case... Clearly, most of the current buzz is around OOP Java. And even with the stronger object model proposed for Zend 2, PHP will always remain at heart a procedural language. So it seems important for the community to demonstrate how serious projects can be accomplished with a procedural/relational approach, as this is the strength of PHP. PHP offers some very powerful features not available in traditional procedural languages - such as: - includes and variable includes - variable variables - variable functions and variable length argument lists - smart loose typing - the wonderful, all singing, all dancing PHP array The problem is, how to make best use of this power? Because these are innovative features, there is little guidance out there in the traditional literature. As most will be aware, the Big Thing in OOP right now is Patterns. In essence, patterns are outlines of proven solutions to common issues. There are patterns for program architecture, program design and for the development process itself. ( By the way, an interesting source of patterns for web architecture is http://www.martinfowler.com/isa/ , if you don't know it). Clearly, a lot of people are finding patterns very helpful, judging by the explosion of interest in the field. Even in my own experience as a newbie self-taught hacker, I have found ways of using PHPs features to accomplish in a few lines of code things that would involve a mountain of abstraction using the Gang of Four OOP patterns. It is obvious that you can cream things with PHP that are difficult in Java/C++. Those of you with more education and experience than me must have discovered a wide range of these techniques. What I am proposing is that the PHP style gurus get together to produce an evolving repository of patterns demonstrating the power of PHP. A good start would be to demonstrate how some of the Gang of Four patterns could be accomplished more simply in PHP. This could be hosted on PHP.org or Zend.com. If the repository became a lively focus of community activity, it could go a long way to establish the serious credentials of the language. The PHP documentation is terrific for an open source project, but there is a huge gap between understanding the syntax of the language, and understanding how to unleash its full power. A repository of quality PHP Patterns would help bridge this gap. What do people think? Geoff Caplan -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
I can tell you that in general, companies in Europe appears to be more open to open-source solutions much more than ones in the US. Of course, Europe is comprised of lots of different countries, and each country has lots of different companies, so your mileage may vary. In The Netherlands many people believe M$ creates great products.. I stopped fighting, upgrading and patching NT pays the rent :-) One of the reasons open source might be considered an alternative is the fact that M$ products cost In Europe M$ products are more expensive then in the US. I talked with one of my customers about using Linux instead of Novell or NT.. he said Linux is to big to be used in a small company.. I don't understand him and I even stopped trying to understand. Just my 0,02 Bye, B. -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. I really disagree with you Zeev. I am from Portugal, Europe, and here the idea of Microsoft is the best still exist! Hope this change in the near future! Cheers Valter Santos WEB/WAP Consultant Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: +351 93 9650075 WeDo Consulting - http://www.wedo.pt -Original Message- From: Zeev Suraski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 1:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP At 01:40 31-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: Whoever hears you may even believe that Microsoft products and supporting sites are successful because they don't have flaws. Sorry, but honestely this sounds like an excuse for not doing it. Microsoft chooses which sites it links from microsoft.com *very* carefully - a very small select number of sites gets connected to it, and usually only for specific purposes (e.g., a specific article). If you draw a comparison to the PHP world, you actually proved my point. The problem is not PHP-GUI capabilities being able to compete with other languages. The problem is that you seem to be willing to omit them when you present PHP as if it is something you don't want PHP be known for. I actually mention PHP-GTK in my sessions. I mention it as an anecdote, much like I mention some of the other interesting modules and projects in PHP (e.g., PEAR). I'm really not sure why people think I'm trying to bury PHP-GTK. Just because I don't see PHP-GTK as a main course of PHP, doesn't mean I don't think it's an important and useful project. In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. This is my most important point: to make PHP a credible well known solution in all markets that it could be used with advantage. I don't think you'd find anybody who would argue with you about that. Zeev -- 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] -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 03:11 03-09-01, Valter Santos wrote: In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. I really disagree with you Zeev. I am from Portugal, Europe, and here the idea of Microsoft is the best still exist! It will continue to exist for a long while in the minds of many people. That's just the way things are - you never get anywhere near 100% of the people supporting you. The question is whether in Portugal, you feel that going with a non-Microsoft solution means a complete up-hill battle or not. I can tell you that in general, companies in Europe appears to be more open to open-source solutions much more than ones in the US. Of course, Europe is comprised of lots of different countries, and each country has lots of different companies, so your mileage may vary. Zeev -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
Zeev, I agree with you! Valter Santos WEB/WAP Consultant -Original Message- From: Zeev Suraski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 1:21 AM To: Valter Santos Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] The future of PHP At 03:11 03-09-01, Valter Santos wrote: In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. I really disagree with you Zeev. I am from Portugal, Europe, and here the idea of Microsoft is the best still exist! It will continue to exist for a long while in the minds of many people. That's just the way things are - you never get anywhere near 100% of the people supporting you. The question is whether in Portugal, you feel that going with a non-Microsoft solution means a complete up-hill battle or not. I can tell you that in general, companies in Europe appears to be more open to open-source solutions much more than ones in the US. Of course, Europe is comprised of lots of different countries, and each country has lots of different companies, so your mileage may vary. Zeev -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Friday 31 August 2001 15:22, Manuel Lemos wrote: I actually mention PHP-GTK in my sessions. I mention it as an anecdote, much like I mention some of the other interesting modules and projects in PHP (e.g., PEAR). I'm really not sure why people think I'm trying to bury PHP-GTK. Just because I don't see PHP-GTK as a main course of PHP, doesn't mean I don't think it's an important and useful project. Oh, man, do you really do that? That is worse than not mention it at all. You may be joking but not everybody may understand it that way. Doing that you ruining the credibility of those efforts that take PHP far out what originally it was meant for. If you are going to just make it a joke, you'd better not mention it at all. I think that is Heyheyhey, cool down. Anecdote != Joke. That's important. Anecdote in this context simply means an and by the way, there also other interesting uses for PHP: ... Actually that's just what you wanted him to say :) In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. So, what? Even if it is like you say, because you have this perception that it is not that way in Europe and far east, you are not going to do anything to help people living in the Americas to make a better case for PHP in the corporate world? Much can be done - we all know that. But: (1) Most of that requires either mucho $$ or heaps|truckloads|... of time. Rasmus certainly has neither and the zend people already spend their time doing the really important thing (improving the language). So such marketing campaigns have to come from other people. (2) American corporate culture (hmm, rhymes with vulture... :) listens to the players with the most money. MS, Sun, Oracle, ... So the only marketing plan that has a good chance to work is Somehow make about 5 billion dollars within a year and burn half of it for glossy ads etc. I certainly won't do this... (3) http://php.net/usage.php Period. Marketing really isn't the most important thing to do :) Conclusion: PHP's future looks bright, everyone is working hard to make it even brighter, and we all can dance happily around on the flowery meadows (except when working of course :) -- Christian Reiniger LGDC Webmaster (http://lgdc.sunsite.dk/) Error 032: Recursion error - see error 032 -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 16:22 31-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: Oh, man, do you really do that? That is worse than not mention it at all. You may be joking but not everybody may understand it that way. Doing that you ruining the credibility of those efforts that take PHP far out what originally it was meant for. If you are going to just make it a joke, you'd better not mention it at all. I think that is extremely unfair for people like Andrei and other that worked so much on it! :-( Uhm, I'm not joking. Richard pointed out to me in a personal letter that anecdote may not be the right word here (thanks, Richard :). I mention them (PHP-GTK, PEAR, etc) at the end of my presentations, as a list of pointers people should look into if they have interest in that particular subject. Manuel, you should *REALLY* relax about this 'Zeev vs. PHP-GTK'. This is absolutely the last time I'm going to say it - I have nothing against PHP-GTK, and Andrei and I work very well together. So, what? Even if it is like you say, because you have this perception that it is not that way in Europe and far east, you are not going to do anything to help people living in the Americas to make a better case for PHP in the corporate world? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not going to say what I was saying again, though. Look in my old posts if you're interested... Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 14:52 01-09-01, Christian Reiniger wrote: On Friday 31 August 2001 15:22, Manuel Lemos wrote: I actually mention PHP-GTK in my sessions. I mention it as an anecdote, much like I mention some of the other interesting modules and projects in PHP (e.g., PEAR). I'm really not sure why people think I'm trying to bury PHP-GTK. Just because I don't see PHP-GTK as a main course of PHP, doesn't mean I don't think it's an important and useful project. Oh, man, do you really do that? That is worse than not mention it at all. You may be joking but not everybody may understand it that way. Doing that you ruining the credibility of those efforts that take PHP far out what originally it was meant for. If you are going to just make it a joke, you'd better not mention it at all. I think that is Heyheyhey, cool down. Anecdote != Joke. That's important. Anecdote in this context simply means an and by the way, there also other interesting uses for PHP: ... Actually that's just what you wanted him to say :) Oh, so it *was* the right word? :) Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Zeev Suraski wrote: At 01:40 31-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: Whoever hears you may even believe that Microsoft products and supporting sites are successful because they don't have flaws. Sorry, but honestely this sounds like an excuse for not doing it. Microsoft chooses which sites it links from microsoft.com *very* carefully - a very small select number of sites gets connected to it, and usually only for specific purposes (e.g., a specific article). If you draw a comparison to the PHP world, you actually proved my point. That hasn't much to do what I was saying, but, anyway your are not linking to anybody in either php.net or zend.com , apart from the links section and the directory that do not give a big deal of visibility. The problem is not PHP-GUI capabilities being able to compete with other languages. The problem is that you seem to be willing to omit them when you present PHP as if it is something you don't want PHP be known for. I actually mention PHP-GTK in my sessions. I mention it as an anecdote, much like I mention some of the other interesting modules and projects in PHP (e.g., PEAR). I'm really not sure why people think I'm trying to bury PHP-GTK. Just because I don't see PHP-GTK as a main course of PHP, doesn't mean I don't think it's an important and useful project. Oh, man, do you really do that? That is worse than not mention it at all. You may be joking but not everybody may understand it that way. Doing that you ruining the credibility of those efforts that take PHP far out what originally it was meant for. If you are going to just make it a joke, you'd better not mention it at all. I think that is extremely unfair for people like Andrei and other that worked so much on it! :-( In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. So, what? Even if it is like you say, because you have this perception that it is not that way in Europe and far east, you are not going to do anything to help people living in the Americas to make a better case for PHP in the corporate world? 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Php'ers: These are great points that have been brought up (a kinda synopsis, since we are repeating here :) synopsis 1) some want direct marketing 2) Some believe the status quo is enough 3) all agreee php is useful as a web development tool/language 4) some agree that it can/should be more (GTK/Command Line etc) This originally started as a call to php'ers to step up and market the language so that it can compete more vitally in a larger market. Both Rasmus and Zeev have stated that they believe they are doing just that via conferences and Zend. Mr Lemos et al believe that more should be done. A more constructive targeted aim at the .NET and Java based crowd. Several solutions/ideas have been suggested one of which is a poll/display of quality/imaginative etc php sites. Another suggested that php go the way of BIND and APACHE and that the wait will pay off with the volume of users in 10-12 years. /synopsis Good Day! --ccma -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Actually this originally started (If you're referring to the thread itself) with my question as to what to tell my JSP-loving buddy that PHP isn't an antiquated and dying language/processing system. I NEVER would have thought it was balloon into this conversation! On 8/31/2001 10:29 AM this was written: This originally started as a call to php'ers to step up and market the language so that it can compete more vitally in a larger market. Both Rasmus and Zeev have stated that they believe they are doing just that via conferences and Zend. Mr Lemos et al believe that more should be done. A more constructive targeted aim at the .NET and Java based crowd. Several solutions/ideas have been suggested one of which is a poll/display of quality/imaginative etc php sites. Another suggested that php go the way of BIND and APACHE and that the wait will pay off with the volume of users in 10-12 years. -- Thomas Deliduka IT Manager - New Eve Media The Solution To Your Internet Angst http://www.neweve.com/ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
looks bright. -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
synopsis 1) some want direct marketing 2) Some believe the status quo is enough 3) all agreee php is useful as a web development tool/language ... Did you open source your thread filter program? :) Good job anyway. For me the most important point is that the developer/maintainer of the language are focusing on making the best web development language out there. (even if it is already the best) py - Original Message - From: Christopher CM Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 10:29 AM Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Php'ers: These are great points that have been brought up (a kinda synopsis, since we are repeating here :) synopsis 1) some want direct marketing 2) Some believe the status quo is enough 3) all agreee php is useful as a web development tool/language 4) some agree that it can/should be more (GTK/Command Line etc) This originally started as a call to php'ers to step up and market the language so that it can compete more vitally in a larger market. Both Rasmus and Zeev have stated that they believe they are doing just that via conferences and Zend. Mr Lemos et al believe that more should be done. A more constructive targeted aim at the .NET and Java based crowd. Several solutions/ideas have been suggested one of which is a poll/display of quality/imaginative etc php sites. Another suggested that php go the way of BIND and APACHE and that the wait will pay off with the volume of users in 10-12 years. /synopsis Good Day! --ccma -- 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] -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP or my 2 cents
I think with everyone replying to The future of PHP e-mails and putting in their two cents, we're eventually going to raise that $100,000 in no time. g Yeah.. not to mention the time it takes to read or just download those messages. I stopped counting and started hitting the delete button. Just wondering how long this tread will keep alive.. thought it would be dead by now. It started as The future of PHP but seems to become a discussion about what is a suitable job for a PHP script.. how to do some marketing for PHP.. ISP's not nowing everything about PHP.. and many many other things.. I've got some great ideas for cheap but very effective marketing.. but I'm running out of time now. Bye, B. /\ \ / ASCII Ribbon CampaignX Against HTML Mail and News / \ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
looks bright. The future's so bright, I need to wear shades. Sorry, couldn't resist. Bottom line I'm hearing: The Dev team has no more hours to give, and is focussing on what they believe is right. If somebody wants to sink time/money into this, go for it. -- WARNING [EMAIL PROTECTED] address is an endangered species -- Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP or my 2 cents
Although Fred's comments appear rhetorical, the suggestion has some merit. Anyone have a feel for how many PHP devotees are out there? How many people subscribe to this list? Do these numbers make it feasible to ask for a $1-10 contribution? How about $0.02 from each of the 7 million domains running PHP? There, that was my 2 cents worth. Or was that a 2 bit opinion? (I'll leave the next joke to the group) Also, I'll be proactive. Send all monies to me ;) Matthew A. Schneider - Original Message - From: Frederick L. Steinkopf [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 5:55 AM Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Manuel, Rather than whining about the future of PHP, why don't you be proactive and take on the goal of raising the $100,000 for the project? Fred Steinkopf -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP or my 2 cents
In article 010001c1311e$d86ebb40$[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthew A. Schneider) wrote: Rather than whining about the future of PHP, why don't you be proactive and take on the goal of raising the $100,000 for the project? Although Fred's comments appear rhetorical, the suggestion has some merit. Anyone have a feel for how many PHP devotees are out there? How many people subscribe to this list? Do these numbers make it feasible to ask for a $1-10 contribution? How about $0.02 from each of the 7 million domains running PHP? To continue this (speculative) train of thought: Would it be feasible to collect some kind of contest entry fee, either instead of or in addition to donations toward the prize? If maximum participation were the goal (and I'm not sure that it would/should be, but for the sake of argument...), it might be a way to get entrants intestered in recruiting more entrants by reminding them that more developers in the contest, the bigger the reward to be won by one of them... As for collecting funds for such an endeavor, FWIW I (and presumably others) would be more likely to give if it were through the PHP.net group or Zend than through any third-party. At least then if the contest were to fall through, I'm confident that the money would still be well-spent on furthering PHP development/marketing. -- CC -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP or my 2 cents
I think with everyone replying to The future of PHP e-mails and putting in their two cents, we're eventually going to raise that $100,000 in no time. g Navid -Original Message- From: CC Zona [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 3:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP or my 2 cents In article 010001c1311e$d86ebb40$[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthew A. Schneider) wrote: Rather than whining about the future of PHP, why don't you be proactive and take on the goal of raising the $100,000 for the project? Although Fred's comments appear rhetorical, the suggestion has some merit. Anyone have a feel for how many PHP devotees are out there? How many people subscribe to this list? Do these numbers make it feasible to ask for a $1-10 contribution? How about $0.02 from each of the 7 million domains running PHP? To continue this (speculative) train of thought: Would it be feasible to collect some kind of contest entry fee, either instead of or in addition to donations toward the prize? If maximum participation were the goal (and I'm not sure that it would/should be, but for the sake of argument...), it might be a way to get entrants intestered in recruiting more entrants by reminding them that more developers in the contest, the bigger the reward to be won by one of them... As for collecting funds for such an endeavor, FWIW I (and presumably others) would be more likely to give if it were through the PHP.net group or Zend than through any third-party. At least then if the contest were to fall through, I'm confident that the money would still be well-spent on furthering PHP development/marketing. -- CC -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Can small business live from e-commerce today? What is the relevance of your question? Do businesses live from their telephone? Whether they do or not, they need it in either case. AFAIK, it costs a lot more money to have any start and operate a e-commerce business than a telephone. Actually... If you are starting a *SMALL* e-commerce business, you can probably start it up for about the same as a phone installation... :-) Shared web-server: $35 setup + $20/month (or less) Registration: $10/year CCNow or similar processing: very small setup fee, moderate cut of each transaction. Telephone setup, in Chicago at least, is quite expensive, and probably is more than that. At least, it was 15 years ago when I moved in :-) -- WARNING [EMAIL PROTECTED] address is an endangered species -- Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
(Even though I didn't understand quite how shared objects work. g ) Like, I only did it once, and it was GD, and about 80% of the time it puked trying to display an image, but... Basically, if you compile using --with-apxs in the first place, and then you re-compile from source using that --with-apxs thingie again only you add more --with-foobar options, you get these .so files in the libs directory that you can just http://php.net/dl into your script rather than install the whole new PHP binary. More importantly, you could compile them on a different machine (same hardware with all the same versions of everything) and then put them onto a server that ain't got those toys. (In my case it was about not altering the main PHP binary and making it non-standard from the other 7 boxes for what was just a test run of something I wanted to play with for a day...) Or, at least, that's how my vague memory of stumbling through this once goes... Now if somebody more organized than me (most of you, I imagine) wants to try that and turn it into a HowTo to add to the PHP site, that would be pretty nifty :-) -- WARNING [EMAIL PROTECTED] address is an endangered species -- Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
This has strayed off-topic a bit. Unless you're into music and/or business planning for e-commerce, you probably should hit delete now... How about this one, doing *EXTREMELY* well selling CDs online: http://CDBaby.com/ Of course, that has almost nothing to do with his choice of PHP (the language he could understand the easiest) and everything to do with intelligent business decisions on the back-side. No VC. No we'll make money later. Just great service at a fair price. I'm sure there are others out there. *CAN* it be done? Sure. Can the idiots who invested millions in companies with a business plan that involved *NO* revenue model make it? No. What is doing extremely well? Do you know that from facts or you have just been told? Number 1 volume seller of CDs on the 'net? Amazon.com Number 2: CDBaby.com Reference: http://musicians.about.com/library/sellcds/blcdbaby.htm (Follow Back to Retailers Index to read about his few competitors that are still around) And is Amazon even making money yet? Last I heard, they were going to lose only a few million this year. :-^ I would say that being #2 behind Amazon that's spent a bazillion dollars promoting themselves and has lost money year after year that amounts to more than the GNP of small countries is pretty good, wouldn't you? And he doesn't even accept major label music -- only indie. So, like, how does he get to be #2? He works his ass off and has a savvy business plan that's good for his vendors (the musicians), and fair to his customers. Just in case that's not enough, here are some more reasons that I know it's successful. #1. He has grown the company slowly from him and a friend part-time to six (6) full-time employees. Wanna see a picture of them? It's on the site or the companion site http://cdbaby.ORG (.ORG is for musicians behind-the-scenes info) Meanwhile, his competitors (now defunct) spent VC money to hire 120 people to do the same job... Hmmm. VC to hire 120 people overnight, or grow slowly to 6. Which one was the good business plan? #2. He's been around for several years, survived all the dot-bombs, and has (I think) acquired the content/inventory of a former competitor or two and cut a deal to sell CDs for a complementery web-site (http://garageband.com). #3. His competitors have almost all folded or laid off 80% of their staff. He's had no layoffs. #4. He sells ~10,000 CDs per month (more near Xmas). He gets $4 a CD. You do the math. #5. I've done some work for him. #6. Never met a dissatisfied vendor, and I'm in contact with hundreds of them. #6b. Most of his competitors have many, many dissatisfied vendors, and I'm in contact with them. :-| You can review archives from just about any music-related mailing list, and look for CDBaby, Amazon, The Orchard, and CDStreet and so on. I'll tell you now which one is always recommended by virtually everybody. #7. He has a chart online from his accountant of what he sold. Some doofus tried to sue him for false advertising. He sent his books to the judge, and the case was thrown out. So that chart showing his sales of 10K units a month is almost-for-sure not fake, eh?... #8. I'm a satisfied vendor and customer. #9. He's routinely invited to speak at music conferences, so I'm not alone in my assessment. #10. You can estimate what he spends on bandwidth etc, and employees, and work it all out. He ain't wealthy (yet), but his business is healthy. #11. Visit the site. You'll figure out why he's successful. There's no BS or huge over-blown hype. Just CDs for sale. Hell, find a CD you like and buy it. You'll understand even better why it's successful :-) Try mine first: http://cdbaby.com/rosner http://cdbaby.com/jademaze #12. One of the artists (Of A Revolution) that was listed on the cover of Performing Songwriter a few months ago derived much of their success and sales from his site. Getting your band name listed on the cover of Performing Songwriter is not trivial. Getting it there without major label support is phenomenol. #13. He *UNDERSTANDS* his vendors, because he got started by needing a site to sell his CDs. He's the *ONLY* one who passes on the contact info for the purchaser to the artist. His TCO to get started as a vendor is minimal ($35+ 5CDs). The $35 covers him scanning the artwork and RealAudio encoding the songs, cuz he knows not every musician can do that easily/correctly. His forms to fill in to sell a CD are designed for anybody to figure out. I actually could go on with a lot more little stuff, but I reckon that's more than enough :-) If they are really doing so well because they have a business plan with a revenue model, why do they succeed when others that also have a business plan with revenue model don't? Which dot-bomb had a business plan, with a revenue model, which did *NOT* involve going into heavy debt and blowing huge piles of VC money for several years in a market-share grab on the
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 02:52:33 -0500, Richard Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which dot-bomb had a business plan, with a revenue model, which did *NOT* involve going into heavy debt and blowing huge piles of VC money for several years in a market-share grab on the Internet, where the barrier to change brands is one (1) click Internet market share is an illusion when you can change brands with a few clicks. The only way to keep Internet customers is to provide good service and products at competitive prices, and continue doing so year after year. It's virtually impossible for big corporations to compete on that playing field, because their overhead costs are too high. The only way they can sell at a competitive price is to lose money on every sale, a dead-end tactic that only works until you burn through all your investors' cash. Businesses need profit to survive. So why would any business be willing to lose money on a sale? To gain Internet market share which is an illusion in the first place? Obviously, that's a fundamental mistake made by many large corporations trying to grab Internet market share. Small businesses, like CDBaby, are the future of this market. Egan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Manuel, I started answering your letter point by point, but stopped, as it wouldn't have gotten us anywhere. I'm sorry if sharing my (IMHO very realistic) estimate of the PHP world seemed like an insult to you or anybody else. Not everything that is done in the PHP world is of good quality. PHP and the various services around it are not magical, and are not free of flaws. It would be scary if it was. I basically said it out loud. Do I appreciate each and every effort made to improve PHP and the community around it? Definitely. Is everything that's done perfect? No. Some of the efforts are young, and will mature. Some are just not that good. Many are great. I'm sorry you fail to understand that this is a tricky business and not blackwhite, and try to show my points in a very negative light. Talking in theoretical terms is much easier than trying to work with the real-world resources and context, and picking realistic routes. As for the GUI business, I'll repeat what I answered to others on this list, and on other lists, in many occassions. First off, Perl and Python are *NOT* successful GUI platforms. They may be feature complete, they may be very easy to use and develop (I don't use either, so I don't know) but in practice, they're completely negligible in the GUI world. I don't think anybody has a good reason to believe this is going to change in a revolutionary manner. Now, does the fact that I think that hurts the developers of Perl's and Python's GUI bindings? I sure as hell hope it doesn't, and it doesn't, if they're realistic people. I don't see the efforts made in the PHP-GUI front as fundamentally different. It's useful, it's cool, it should be developed and improved, and no, it will not take over the world. About a central resource of PHP sites that has a voting system - I think that's a good idea. You're quite welcome to implement it if you volunteer. www.php.net will happily host it. Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello Zeev, Zeev Suraski wrote: Manuel, I started answering your letter point by point, but stopped, as it wouldn't have gotten us anywhere. I'm sorry if sharing my (IMHO very realistic) estimate of the PHP world seemed like an insult to you or anybody else. Not everything that is done You don't have to be sorry. It is your point of view. You don't have to agree. I don't feel insulted. I don't take difference of points of view personally, if they are just that. in the PHP world is of good quality. PHP and the various services around it are not magical, and are not free of flaws. It would be scary if it was. I basically said it out loud. Do I appreciate each and every effort made to improve PHP and the community around it? Definitely. Is everything that's done perfect? No. Some of the efforts are young, and will mature. Some are just not that good. Many are great. I'm sorry you fail to understand that this is a tricky business and not blackwhite, and try to show my points in a very negative light. Talking in theoretical terms is much easier than trying to work with the real-world resources and context, and picking realistic routes. Whoever hears you may even believe that Microsoft products and supporting sites are successful because they don't have flaws. Sorry, but honestely this sounds like an excuse for not doing it. As for the GUI business, I'll repeat what I answered to others on this list, and on other lists, in many occassions. First off, Perl and Python are *NOT* successful GUI platforms. They may be feature complete, they may be very easy to use and develop (I don't use either, so I don't know) but in practice, they're completely negligible in the GUI world. I don't think anybody has a good reason to believe this is going to change in a revolutionary manner. Now, does the fact that I think that hurts the developers of Perl's and Python's GUI bindings? I sure as hell hope it doesn't, and it doesn't, if they're realistic people. I don't see the efforts made in the PHP-GUI front as fundamentally different. It's useful, it's cool, it should be developed and improved, and no, it will not take over the world. The problem is not PHP-GUI capabilities being able to compete with other languages. The problem is that you seem to be willing to omit them when you present PHP as if it is something you don't want PHP be known for. About a central resource of PHP sites that has a voting system - I think that's a good idea. You're quite welcome to implement it if you volunteer. www.php.net will happily host it. My point to suggest that was to help you to make it work according to a criteria that you would accept. In the end it would to favor your cause, which is the PHP future. I can't justify any time spent on that because I don't depend on PHP for my professional future. Currently, I even do not even program for a living. I manage people in a company that pays me for managing software development projects. In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. This is my most important point: to make PHP a credible well known solution in all markets that it could be used with advantage. 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
Manuel, This thread is long since dead. Your points are respectfully taken by all of us, but I for one believe you are missing a fundamental point. That in mind, I've prepared a list of ubiquitous tools in use today. These tools are not backed by big marketing budgets or Microsoft or anything of the like. Some are represented in trade shows. Some don't say a word. Some have done crazy things like you have suggested we do, like contests. Some are old, some are relatively new. The only common thread they have is their success. Some went down a road similar to what you've suggested. Some have gone down long roads, some short. Many of the names you will see here today enjoy the backing of corporations who have built their existence around the survival (and thriving) of a technology which they did not create and do not own. Apache Sendmail BIND Perl HTML/WWW Python Linux C++ I hope you will consider the point I'm making here and leave this thread to the winds. And for what it's worth, in passing, the reason PHP-GTK is not mentioned when presenting PHP is that it isn't relevant. You won't win hearts by dazzling them with irrelevant features. PHP-GTK is a great project, but the world is slowly being captivated by the power of its web capabilities, not buttons. The Regards, Cristopher Daniluk President CEO email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] direct: 330/530-2373 Digital Services Network, Inc Unleashing Your Potential voice: 800/845-4822 web: http://www.dsnet.net/ -Original Message- From: Manuel Lemos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 6:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Hello Zeev, Zeev Suraski wrote: Manuel, I started answering your letter point by point, but stopped, as it wouldn't have gotten us anywhere. I'm sorry if sharing my (IMHO very realistic) estimate of the PHP world seemed like an insult to you or anybody else. Not everything that is done You don't have to be sorry. It is your point of view. You don't have to agree. I don't feel insulted. I don't take difference of points of view personally, if they are just that. in the PHP world is of good quality. PHP and the various services around it are not magical, and are not free of flaws. It would be scary if it was. I basically said it out loud. Do I appreciate each and every effort made to improve PHP and the community around it? Definitely. Is everything that's done perfect? No. Some of the efforts are young, and will mature. Some are just not that good. Many are great. I'm sorry you fail to understand that this is a tricky business and not blackwhite, and try to show my points in a very negative light. Talking in theoretical terms is much easier than trying to work with the real-world resources and context, and picking realistic routes. Whoever hears you may even believe that Microsoft products and supporting sites are successful because they don't have flaws. Sorry, but honestely this sounds like an excuse for not doing it. As for the GUI business, I'll repeat what I answered to others on this list, and on other lists, in many occassions. First off, Perl and Python are *NOT* successful GUI platforms. They may be feature complete, they may be very easy to use and develop (I don't use either, so I don't know) but in practice, they're completely negligible in the GUI world. I don't think anybody has a good reason to believe this is going to change in a revolutionary manner. Now, does the fact that I think that hurts the developers of Perl's and Python's GUI bindings? I sure as hell hope it doesn't, and it doesn't, if they're realistic people. I don't see the efforts made in the PHP-GUI front as fundamentally different. It's useful, it's cool, it should be developed and improved, and no, it will not take over the world. The problem is not PHP-GUI capabilities being able to compete with other languages. The problem is that you seem to be willing to omit them when you present PHP as if it is something you don't want PHP be known for. About a central resource of PHP sites that has a voting system - I think that's a good idea. You're quite welcome to implement it if you volunteer. www.php.net will happily host it. My point to suggest that was to help you to make it work according to a criteria that you would accept. In the end it would to favor your cause, which is the PHP future. I can't justify any time spent on that because I don't depend on PHP for my professional future. Currently, I even do not even program for a living. I manage people in a company that pays me for managing software development projects. In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 01:40 31-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: Whoever hears you may even believe that Microsoft products and supporting sites are successful because they don't have flaws. Sorry, but honestely this sounds like an excuse for not doing it. Microsoft chooses which sites it links from microsoft.com *very* carefully - a very small select number of sites gets connected to it, and usually only for specific purposes (e.g., a specific article). If you draw a comparison to the PHP world, you actually proved my point. The problem is not PHP-GUI capabilities being able to compete with other languages. The problem is that you seem to be willing to omit them when you present PHP as if it is something you don't want PHP be known for. I actually mention PHP-GTK in my sessions. I mention it as an anecdote, much like I mention some of the other interesting modules and projects in PHP (e.g., PEAR). I'm really not sure why people think I'm trying to bury PHP-GTK. Just because I don't see PHP-GTK as a main course of PHP, doesn't mean I don't think it's an important and useful project. In this company, they have choose Microsoft stuff because they think it is the right choice for what they do. For some things, PHP could be a better choice, but it would be hard to convince who is in charge above me because PHP does not benefit of a great credibility in the market that would help me to make a good case to switch to PHP. In the US (and perhaps in the rest of America), that's relatively true. That's not the case in Europe or the far east. It has a lot to do with mentality and corporate culture. This is my most important point: to make PHP a credible well known solution in all markets that it could be used with advantage. I don't think you'd find anybody who would argue with you about that. Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Manuel, Rather than whining about the future of PHP, why don't you be proactive and take on the goal of raising the $100,000 for the project? Fred Steinkopf - Original Message - From: Rasmus Lerdorf [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 12:11 AM Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! Manuel, please, give this tirade a rest. Nobody associated with Python development was involved in this amazing marketing trick you are referring to. Somebody just decided to do this on their own. And now you are criticizing the PHP developers for not having the same foresight as the Python developers? It says so right in their FAQ (http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/faq.html) And in answer to some of the more virulent postings on Usenet and in other venues, neither Guido van Rossum nor anyone else associated with Python development was involved in setting up this project, choosing the language, or defining the terms of the competition. Guido was only asked to be a judge after the decision to use Python had been made. If we had decided to use Perl or Tcl, we would obviously have invited Larry Wall or John Ousterhout to join the panel. If somebody wants to put up $100,000 for a PHP software contest, perfect, great, we will be every bit as cooperative as the Python developers. -Rasmus -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
was not hurt. Apart of the .COM world, which wasn't making any money anyway, the internet infrastructure is still being used just as extensively as it was, and I think that in the long run, it'll continue to grow. I don't think the actual PHP for command line features matter. My point is that people get it wrong. What is it that you can do on Perl in the command line that you can't do with PHP? Nothing relevant, it is that people hardly can concieve PHP as a command line scripting language because PHP is not known nor advertised as a capable language to work that way. That is what needs fixing: people's misconceptions. That's fixable with targetted marketing. I don't think that's even a problem, and it's not as if we have so many marketing resources we should be looking for new fronts to fight :) PHP is looking at a serious up-hill battle if it tries to market itself as a general purpose language. If we market it as a Web platform, it's an established solution (which still needs work). If I get to 'pick my fights', I'd go for the 2nd one any day. As I previously said, as things work in the opensource world - if people start working on different angles, there's nothing to stop them. But as far as the core project is concerned, I'd be very wary of losing focus. Man, give it some time! How long was it since Andrei released PHP-GTK? How old is PHP now? These aren't the right questions in my opinion. PHP was around when the Web started growing rapidly, in 1997-8-9. The GUI market, on the other hands, started booming in the early 90's. In my opinion, it's pretty much a lost battle - there are established solutions which are much better than PHP in this area. I think it is amazing the some how unexpected uses that people find for PHP. What really confuses me is that instead of making that use cases to promote PHP, you simply raise a lot of objections as if that would cause any harm to PHP. Come on, enjoy all the PHP users applications because they certainly help you to make the proof of concept that PHP is the right choice for so many people. That's my main point of disagreement. It would be quite cool to find some day that my fridge has PHP built into it, but let's be realistic about it - do we have the power and resources to do this? My answer is a definite 'no', and I think that if we try doing this, we'll lose what we already have - which is a *strong* Web platform. Useful? How can you reckon them as useful if you insist on neglecting them? What do you mean insist on neglecting them? If you mean that in a presentation that I may do about PHP to an audience of possible users, I would define PHP as a 'Web platform', then yes, I'm neglecting it. But if I pitch it as the 'Language that would change your life!!!', my chances of convincing them are slim. One other thing, I don't know if you notice, that but every time you neglect these unexpected uses of PHP you are somehow ruling out people behind them. That's a serious thing because you are eventually hurting people's feelings when that worked so hard to use the language that you developed. If people are making a private use of their work and could not care less if their work is reckoned, that is not a problem. But sometimes you see people working so hard with recognition as their main goal. Neglecting that recognition or making it very hard is terrible. I don't thing you want those people to give up for the lack of recognition, don't you? As I said earlier in this letter, making people feel good about what they do doesn't always go hand in hand with what would keep PHP alive for the years to come. It all depends what our goal is. If it's to try and keep PHP on the cutting edge, then we have to go in a certain path. If our goal is to make everybody happy, at the price of seeing PHP lose focus, become a super-market of 'everything goes', inevitably losing market share and eventually dying, it's another. These two are extremes, and we should do our best to find the path in between. As much as you tried to establish this in your letters, I haven't seen a good solid reason to believe that what you suggest is going to secure a better future for PHP, or even going to increase the chances of success for it. Your analysis of the situation assumes that in our current situation, we have nothing to lose. I see this very differently - I think that if we change directions without carefully thinking about the possible consequences, we have *TONS* to lose. You're welcome, but you just skipped the implicit million dollar question: will there be an affordable version of Zend encoder that developers can buy for USD$100 like they can with VB or Delphi? :-) The current Encoder pricing is quite affordable (people on this list didn't even agree with me that $50/month may be too high, but it's definitely not unaffordable). Unlike VB or Delphi, where you *cannot* develop unless you buy these products, with PHP, things
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
So sprach »Manuel Lemos« am 2001-08-28 um 23:21:54 -0300 : Man, give it some time! How long was it since Andrei released PHP-GTK? How old is PHP now? Exactly. And also Perl wasn't made to create GUI apps, was it? But look how many Perl GUI apps there are out there now. Eg. all (? at least a lot) of the Mandrake configuration tools are in Perl, or cscmail was/is made in Perl. Just because PHP-GTK might not be mature YET, does not mean that it will never be. Alexander Skwar -- How to quote: http://learn.to/quote (german) http://quote.6x.to (english) Homepage: http://www.digitalprojects.com | http://www.iso-top.de iso-top.de - Die günstige Art an Linux Distributionen zu kommen Uptime: 23 hours 5 minutes -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! Manuel, please, give this tirade a rest. Nobody associated with Python development was involved in this amazing marketing trick you are referring to. Somebody just decided to do this on their own. And now you are criticizing the PHP developers for not having the same foresight as the Python developers? Yes. I feel that it is a constructive criticism, like saying, there are plenty of ways to market PHP, with or without money, but what you do in comparision is very little to what Python people do. So, you need to do more. I am not saying that what you do is wrong. It says so right in their FAQ (http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/faq.html) And in answer to some of the more virulent postings on Usenet and in other venues, neither Guido van Rossum nor anyone else associated with Python development was involved in setting up this project, choosing the language, or defining the terms of the competition. Guido was only asked to be a judge after the decision to use Python had been made. If we had decided to use Perl or Tcl, we would obviously have invited Larry Wall or John Ousterhout to join the panel. What this says is something like if applied to PHP, what we are doing was not Rasmus initiative, although he accepted to be a judge in the contest. That doesn't matter, they are still committed to market Python like hell. If somebody wants to put up $100,000 for a PHP software contest, perfect, great, we will be every bit as cooperative as the Python developers. Money doesn't come that easily. You have to go after it if you feel it is needed. What won't help is staying there and do nothing, because I think the money won't come to you from the sky. You need to find sponsors. I'm sure it won't be hard if you really bother to look for them. 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
I don't understand when this thread became so focused on monetary needs. We are talking about penetrating corporate markets, and all corporate markets care about is time to market, cost of maintenance, and long term support. Not that marketing is worthless, but if we build a better product, it will be used whether we do some Houdini use-our-product marketing game or not. The future of PHP will be determined by the dedication and sacrifice of the developers associated with it. Every success is measured in sacrifice. In the realm of Java and .NET it is primarily a monetary sacrifice - they could have spent that money on something else, but elected to spend it on this instead. Every member of the PHP team could have spent their time on something else, but chose this. This continued dedication will yield just as much success in the long run. The true reason that Java gets a huge boost from marketing is that marketing creates the labor market of qualified people by encouraging people to retrain based on a perceived market for the technology. It is the perception that creates the market. Voodoo economics at its best. As I said before, PHP is already discussed in the corporate circles that matter, and the recurring theme is getting qualified people to do it. Sure, experienced Java or C or ASP (bleh) gurus could retrain easily and be able to handle PHP with no trouble. Who cares? They're not there yet. That affects time to market. When we look at pure numbers, there is a direct correlation between the corporate growth of PHP and the labor market of PHP developers. While we cannot create a labor market out of perceptual metrics, we have, in my opinion, the strongest and most comprehensive web scripting language on the planet, and that will make the future of PHP bright and limitless. The never ending dedication of the hundreds of developers and the thousands of people preaching its wonders will ultimately propel us to the front page of every buzzword magazine in circulation. This will happen whether we have silly games, spend a billion dollars on ad campaigns, build trade show booths that look like space rockets, or give away door prizes for making tricky code. Manuel, I can only urge you to focus on reality instead of Utopia. We have a better product and that is all we have. The good news? That's all we need. Maybe a little patience and some free pizza too, but that's neither here nor there. Economics says so. Regards, Cristopher Daniluk President CEO email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] direct: 330/530-2373 Digital Services Network, Inc Unleashing Your Potential voice: 800/845-4822 web: http://www.dsnet.net/ -Original Message- From: Manuel Lemos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 9:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Hello, These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! Manuel, please, give this tirade a rest. Nobody associated with Python development was involved in this amazing marketing trick you are referring to. Somebody just decided to do this on their own. And now you are criticizing the PHP developers for not having the same foresight as the Python developers? Yes. I feel that it is a constructive criticism, like saying, there are plenty of ways to market PHP, with or without money, but what you do in comparision is very little to what Python people do. So, you need to do more. I am not saying that what you do is wrong. It says so right in their FAQ (http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/faq.html) And in answer to some of the more virulent postings on Usenet and in other venues, neither Guido van Rossum nor anyone else associated with Python development was involved in setting up this project, choosing the language, or defining the terms of the competition. Guido was only asked to be a judge after the decision to use Python had been made. If we had decided to use Perl or Tcl, we would obviously have invited Larry Wall or John Ousterhout to join the panel. What this says is something like if applied to PHP, what we are doing was not Rasmus initiative, although he accepted to be a judge in the contest. That doesn't matter, they are still committed to market Python like hell. If somebody wants to put up $100,000 for a PHP software contest, perfect, great, we will be every bit as cooperative as the Python developers. Money doesn't come that easily. You have to go after it if you feel it is needed. What won't help is staying there and do nothing, because I think the money won't come to you from the sky. You need to find sponsors. I'm sure it won't be hard if you really bother to look for them. Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Frederick L. Steinkopf wrote: Manuel, Rather than whining about the future of PHP, why don't you be proactive and take on the goal of raising the $100,000 for the project? Because I do not depend on the PHP future for my professional life. That is a role for PHP core developers that only dedicate to PHP. Anyway, if you followed the whole thread from the beginning, you would noticed that I developed the PHP Classes repository. It is a site that lets developers post their PHP components in the form of PHP classes. Everytime a developer posts a new class, a notification message is sent to the site subscribers. The site has now over 42.000 subscribers. Over 300 classes have been contributed by the about 200 authors. This is a great place for developers get immediate exposure of their work and for users to find some freely available ready to use components for their PHP applications. I developed this site originally to distribute my own PHP classes, but while I was at it I decided to make it a place for other developers to distribute theirs. So, this helps PHP being promoted by providing compensation to both the developers and the users. This was all planned ahead. The users are required to login to download. That way I can account acurately the number of users that downloaded the classes. This way I can compute acurate top download charts, creating a sort of hall of fame for the most popular PHP Classes and the authors that contributed them. I antecipated that this way I would be providing recognition to PHP and all the authors that contributed because in the end I would have real figures to show to those that doubt of PHP acceptance. How much is that worth if you had money to put up front to promote PHP with a normal marketing campaign? Maybe more that $100.000. If I just think of the work envolved in the development of the site for all these two years, it would probably cost more. I don't do more because I really can't justify putting more time because these days my professional life does not revolve around PHP, not even for the Web. Since I really can't do it, coming here expressing my points on what should be done is much better than nothing. People that know me, are aware that once in a while I bother to speak up for the best of PHP, proposing new ways to go and warning about things that are not being properly addressed. If you look back in the mailing list archives you will notice that I am often fought by people that refuse to agree with me, maybe because they are responsible for not having done what I am proposing or for some reason they don't like to give me the reason that what I say the right way to go, despite probably some agree but don't want to admit it. Anyway, it doesn't matter, as long as something gets done and the future is brighter for PHP and all those that depend on it. So, history demonstrated that despite things are not done exactly as I proposed, something is done, which is better than nothing. I think this is being proactive, because I am acting with the intention of causing some progress. It does not cost me money directly, but the intention and the good consequences are what matter. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, one assumption you seem to have is the ongoing viability of php (if not the very livelihood of we the developers using php) is somehow a function of the number of folks who know what php is. that somehow the more folks know about php, the better php gets. it also seems that you feel 'the PHP people' are not putting forth enough effort to further php's acceptance and viability. from my point of view as a developer using php, recognition of php in the corporate world is not as important as how good php is. i prefer to see efforts focused on developing the best darn HTML-embedded scripting language this side of the railroad tracks. whether or not php gets talked about on the evening news doesn't really matter. what matters is whether php helps me as a programmer. i don't care how many folks recognize the power of php. i care about the power of php. the number of folks using php is a function of whether or not 'the PHP people' can continue to produce such rockin' code over the next few years. not the other way around. i imagine you have a unique perspective on the effort it takes to promote php. but, i'm guessing that 'the PHP people' probably do as well. i myself am unduly grateful for the effort that they put forth, not only in producing the rockin'st language anyone could have hoped for when learning to program, but in promoting php as well. when i saw php was featured at the open source convention in san jose, i knew things were moving along just fine. that's the kind of promotion i want to see. i believe 'the PHP people' should be allowed to promote php in a manner they are comfortable with. after all, it's their itch. ya know, making the best HTML-embedded scripting language seems a pretty noble goal to me. If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 15:19 29-08-01, Alexander Skwar wrote: So sprach »Manuel Lemos« am 2001-08-28 um 23:21:54 -0300 : Man, give it some time! How long was it since Andrei released PHP-GTK? How old is PHP now? Exactly. And also Perl wasn't made to create GUI apps, was it? But look how many Perl GUI apps there are out there now. I've yet to see one, which doesn't come to say that they don't exist (you named a couple) - but does come to say that Perl did not succeed at becoming a serious contended in the GUI market. As I told Manuel, the issue isn't *time*, but *timing*. If PHP's goal was to become a serious contended in the GUI app market (which it was not) - it long missed this opportunity. GUI applications of PHP are cool, can be very useful, especially to people who already know PHP. However, assuming that it would ever catch a significant share of the GUI market is naive, IMHO. Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: June: - Conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil - University in Lajeado, Brazil - Large government institution in Porto Alegre, Brazil - Linux User Group in Toronto, Canada - Linux Expo - Montreal, Canada - PHP User Group in Boston - SoftwareLivre conference in Montevideo, Uruguay July: - Talk and PHP booth at LinuxTag, Stuttgart Germany - Tutorial and session at OSCON in San Diego - Seminar in Herndon, Virginia August - Seminar in Pittsburgh - Seminar in Atlanta - PHP User Group meeting in Atlanta - Seminar in San Francisco - Seminar in Portland - Seminar in Austin - Seminar in Minneapolis - 6 hours of tutorials at LinuxWorld in San Francisco And the next 3 months look just as busy. The seminars were geared at semi-technical business managers and were held in conjunction with Nusphere. I also had an article in Linux Magazine during this time. And by the way, this is not my job. I do not get paid for this, nor does my future in any way depend on PHP. PHP happens to be the most visible thing I am involved in and people assume that my life therefore must revolve around it. That actually is not true. If you don't think I and others involved in PHP development is doing enough to promote PHP that is fine. And suggestions are welcome. But telling us that we are sitting on our hands watching the world pass us by without doing anything at all is rather insulting. Especially given the amount of time I have personally spent sitting on crummy airplanes in the past year or two for the sole purpose of promoting PHP. -Rasmus -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
I attended one of your conferences / training sessions, the Linux Conference in NYC, and I have to say it was excellent, and certainly motivational. Through that one day of your speech it motivated me enough to get off my bum and start using PHP in our environment for whatever we possibly could... and we have been pretty sucessful in the short time we've been implementing it. The ease of use, ease of learning, and overall excellent design of the language has made it a pleasure to use... And I recommend it to customers now, any one that is willing to listen to me blabber more than 2 minutes. --Matthew PS: The power of open source is not in the advertising... it's in the product, which makes it all the more worthwhile. -- On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 10:03:21 Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: June: - Conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil - University in Lajeado, Brazil - Large government institution in Porto Alegre, Brazil - Linux User Group in Toronto, Canada - Linux Expo - Montreal, Canada - PHP User Group in Boston - SoftwareLivre conference in Montevideo, Uruguay July: - Talk and PHP booth at LinuxTag, Stuttgart Germany - Tutorial and session at OSCON in San Diego - Seminar in Herndon, Virginia August - Seminar in Pittsburgh - Seminar in Atlanta - PHP User Group meeting in Atlanta - Seminar in San Francisco - Seminar in Portland - Seminar in Austin - Seminar in Minneapolis - 6 hours of tutorials at LinuxWorld in San Francisco And the next 3 months look just as busy. The seminars were geared at semi-technical business managers and were held in conjunction with Nusphere. I also had an article in Linux Magazine during this time. And by the way, this is not my job. I do not get paid for this, nor does my future in any way depend on PHP. PHP happens to be the most visible thing I am involved in and people assume that my life therefore must revolve around it. That actually is not true. If you don't think I and others involved in PHP development is doing enough to promote PHP that is fine. And suggestions are welcome. But telling us that we are sitting on our hands watching the world pass us by without doing anything at all is rather insulting. Especially given the amount of time I have personally spent sitting on crummy airplanes in the past year or two for the sole purpose of promoting PHP. -Rasmus -- 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] Get 250 color business cards for FREE! http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Damn, I wish I had read that thre was this event in Toronto, I would have liked to attend! :) - Linux User Group in Toronto, Canada I agree, suggestion and constructive criticism are fine but lets not start attacking the guys who have put in countless hours to make PHP what it is today. I'm sure they will take in suggestions and do as much as humanly possible to keep everyone happy ;) telling us that we are sitting on our hands watching the world pass us by without doing anything at all is rather insulting. Especially given the amount of time I have personally spent sitting on crummy airplanes in the past year or two for the sole purpose of promoting PHP. -Rasmus -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
So sprach »Zeev Suraski« am 2001-08-29 um 19:43:15 +0300 : very useful, especially to people who already know PHP. However, assuming that it would ever catch a significant share of the GUI market is naive, IMHO. Well, my point was, that at the beginning of the Perl-GTK binding, noone would have guessed that Perl EVER might be a useful GUI programming language (at least I suppose so). I'm also not saying that PHP has to be actively pushed in this direction. Not at all. I'm quite with you that PHP should focus on it's Web-abilities. However, I don't think it's right to say that this will never ever happen, like you do. And I also do think, that it's counter-productive from you to say something like this. I mean, it would be okay (with me), if you kinda ignored this. But what's so bad about PHP-GTK that you speak so strongly against it? Alexander Skwar -- How to quote: http://learn.to/quote (german) http://quote.6x.to (english) Homepage: http://www.digitalprojects.com | http://www.iso-top.de iso-top.de - Die günstige Art an Linux Distributionen zu kommen Uptime: 4 hours 12 minutes -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
. Useful? How can you reckon them as useful if you insist on neglecting them? What do you mean insist on neglecting them? It seems that you are embarassed of showing that PHP can be and is used for non-Web programming. Non-Web programming can be complimentary to Web programming. PHP Web applications can have nice GUI installing programs also written in PHP, but your position make it sound like as if it is a sin to do non-Web programming with PHP. If you mean that in a presentation that I may do about PHP to an audience of possible users, I would define PHP as a 'Web platform', then yes, I'm neglecting it. But if I pitch it as the 'Language that would change your life!!!', my chances of convincing them are slim. You don't have to lie or pretend PHP can be used for things that nobody use for. You just have to present real world use cases which also include non-Web programming. That would help you to impress any PHP-unaware audience about PHP power. One other thing, I don't know if you notice, that but every time you neglect these unexpected uses of PHP you are somehow ruling out people behind them. That's a serious thing because you are eventually hurting people's feelings when that worked so hard to use the language that you developed. If people are making a private use of their work and could not care less if their work is reckoned, that is not a problem. But sometimes you see people working so hard with recognition as their main goal. Neglecting that recognition or making it very hard is terrible. I don't thing you want those people to give up for the lack of recognition, don't you? As I said earlier in this letter, making people feel good about what they do doesn't always go hand in hand with what would keep PHP alive for the That's sensitive! Are you just a techie that only cares about the technology that you develop, or are you a real person that is happy with the work that real world users put up front eventually helping you to promote PHP? years to come. It all depends what our goal is. If it's to try and keep PHP on the cutting edge, then we have to go in a certain path. If our goal is to make everybody happy, at the price of seeing PHP lose focus, become a super-market of 'everything goes', inevitably losing market share and eventually dying, it's another. These two are extremes, and we should do our best to find the path in between. As much as you tried to establish this in your letters, I haven't seen a good solid reason to believe that what you suggest is going to secure a better future for PHP, or even going to increase the chances of success for it. Your analysis of the situation assumes that in our current situation, we have nothing to lose. I see this very differently - I think that if we change directions without carefully thinking about the possible consequences, we have *TONS* to lose. These sound just like excuses to not agree with what I am suggesting. Never mind, I am used to this. I even do not take it personal. You're welcome, but you just skipped the implicit million dollar question: will there be an affordable version of Zend encoder that developers can buy for USD$100 like they can with VB or Delphi? :-) The current Encoder pricing is quite affordable (people on this list didn't even agree with me that $50/month may be too high, but it's definitely not unaffordable). Unlike VB or Delphi, where you *cannot* develop unless you buy these products, with PHP, things are very different. You can develop whatever you want, and only if you distribute your application *and* don't want to give out the source code (which almost always means you're selling it), you should consider getting the Encoder. $50/month is not a lot, and we're definitely not going to offer it for $100/perpetual. We do, however, look into different ways of offering this functionality in different ways to different audiences, but nothing has been decided as of yet. I don't want to interfere with your business model. If you can make a living from it, for me it is just fine. That's sincerely what I always wished for you: commercial success. Still that won't attend the needs of most of the PHP users. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 20:23 29-08-01, Alexander Skwar wrote: However, I don't think it's right to say that this will never ever happen, like you do. And I also do think, that it's counter-productive from you to say something like this. I mean, it would be okay (with me), if you kinda ignored this. But what's so bad about PHP-GTK that you speak so strongly against it? I am *not* speaking against it, not strongly or or otherwise. I'm really not :) As a matter of fact, some parts in the Zend Engine 2 are going to address issues that Andrei (that wrote the PHP-GTK module). I think that the ability to develop GUI apps using PHP is very cool, and I'm pretty sure that PHP developers who need to develop simple (as in control-based) GUI's are very likely to do it in PHP-GTK, which is good. What I *am* saying is that GUI apps are not PHP's main strength, and thus, should not be its main focus. If we try to push and market PHP, we should pick reasonable objectives - and pushing it as a platform is much more attainable than as a good-for-everything language. This objective is quite ambitious on its own. Zeev -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
He said: PS: The power of open source is not in the advertising... it's in the product, which makes it all the more worthwhile. I'm just waiting to see a PHP billboard. I'm telling you, wouldn't it be a blast? I'd drive the long way to work every day just to drive by it and tip my hat. Or maybe be sitting in a crowded train station waiting for the next train and hear people talking about the latest version of PHP. Or a TV commercial like Sony laptop's latest, with the airline pilots and support crew saying SIR! THIS PLANE CAN NOT MOVE UNTIL YOU PUT THE PHP AWAY! -Original Message- From: Ninety-Nine Ways To Die [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 11:18 AM To: Manuel Lemos; Rasmus Lerdorf Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP I attended one of your conferences / training sessions, the Linux Conference in NYC, and I have to say it was excellent, and certainly motivational. Through that one day of your speech it motivated me enough to get off my bum and start using PHP in our environment for whatever we possibly could... and we have been pretty sucessful in the short time we've been implementing it. The ease of use, ease of learning, and overall excellent design of the language has made it a pleasure to use... And I recommend it to customers now, any one that is willing to listen to me blabber more than 2 minutes. --Matthew -- On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 10:03:21 Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: June: - Conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil - University in Lajeado, Brazil - Large government institution in Porto Alegre, Brazil - Linux User Group in Toronto, Canada - Linux Expo - Montreal, Canada - PHP User Group in Boston - SoftwareLivre conference in Montevideo, Uruguay July: - Talk and PHP booth at LinuxTag, Stuttgart Germany - Tutorial and session at OSCON in San Diego - Seminar in Herndon, Virginia August - Seminar in Pittsburgh - Seminar in Atlanta - PHP User Group meeting in Atlanta - Seminar in San Francisco - Seminar in Portland - Seminar in Austin - Seminar in Minneapolis - 6 hours of tutorials at LinuxWorld in San Francisco And the next 3 months look just as busy. The seminars were geared at semi-technical business managers and were held in conjunction with Nusphere. I also had an article in Linux Magazine during this time. And by the way, this is not my job. I do not get paid for this, nor does my future in any way depend on PHP. PHP happens to be the most visible thing I am involved in and people assume that my life therefore must revolve around it. That actually is not true. If you don't think I and others involved in PHP development is doing enough to promote PHP that is fine. And suggestions are welcome. But telling us that we are sitting on our hands watching the world pass us by without doing anything at all is rather insulting. Especially given the amount of time I have personally spent sitting on crummy airplanes in the past year or two for the sole purpose of promoting PHP. -Rasmus -- 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] Get 250 color business cards for FREE! http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/ -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: Nobody was questioning your commitment to promote PHP, but that hardly address the problem of making PHP a credible choice for development before people that could be using it with advantage but hardly are using it because they hardly know about it. The talks that you give are for people that already know about PHP. The people, in special the corporations, even don't know about PHP to be bothered to attend. You can't just expect people to follow you where you are if they even don't know PHP as a language with reputation, especially in the corporate world dominated by Microsoft stuff. That is what I telling you to address. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
So sprach »Zeev Suraski« am 2001-08-29 um 20:32:32 +0300 : What I *am* saying is that GUI apps are not PHP's main strength, and thus, should not be its main focus. If we try to push and market PHP, we should pick reasonable objectives - and pushing it as a platform is much more attainable than as a good-for-everything language. This objective is quite ambitious on its own. Okay, then I'd like to appologize. I misunderstood you. In this case, I agree to everything you said. Alexander Skwar -- How to quote: http://learn.to/quote (german) http://quote.6x.to (english) Homepage: http://www.digitalprojects.com | http://www.iso-top.de iso-top.de - Die günstige Art an Linux Distributionen zu kommen Uptime: 4 hours 49 minutes -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hey, you guys keep coming to Calgary , Alberta, Canada. Stop by Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada! Brian Tanner Project Manager Zaam Internet Solutions Toll Free: 1-866-225-2675 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zaam.com -Original Message- From: pierre-yves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: August 29, 2001 11:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Grrr !! same for me, I never knew you were in Montreal, - Linux Expo - Montreal, Canada Now I see why the calandar is so useful on php.net !! py p.s. in june I was probably too busy at the jazz festival tho :) - Original Message - From: Jeff Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Rasmus Lerdorf [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 1:25 PM Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Damn, I wish I had read that thre was this event in Toronto, I would have liked to attend! :) - Linux User Group in Toronto, Canada I agree, suggestion and constructive criticism are fine but lets not start attacking the guys who have put in countless hours to make PHP what it is today. I'm sure they will take in suggestions and do as much as humanly possible to keep everyone happy ;) telling us that we are sitting on our hands watching the world pass us by without doing anything at all is rather insulting. Especially given the amount of time I have personally spent sitting on crummy airplanes in the past year or two for the sole purpose of promoting PHP. -Rasmus -- 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] -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
The talks that you give are for people that already know about PHP. No they aren't. As I said in my message, the seminar series I did were specifically for people who knew nothing about PHP and it was presented alongside other technologies. But yes, the people would have to have had some interest in web stuff or database stuff to have bothered to attend in the first place. -Rasmus -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Could we cool it down a little ... maybe let a day go by before hitting Send once more on this thread? Attacking Rasmus and Zeev is counterproductive, and it's starting to sound pretty hostile. The whole PHP development team is doing a fantastic job. (Even though I didn't understand quite how shared objects work. g ) We're the other part of the team: implementers, developers and - yes - promoters. We're the ones which actually prove, not just that PHP works, but that it is effective, economical and productive. It's our responsibility to promote it and use it. We can do that by: - talking about our work and the tools we use to technical groups. - talking about our vision and the practical application of open source software to everyday business and scientific problems at meetings of Rotary, Chambers of Commerce, Kinsmen, Lions, etc.. - by always emphasizing the BENEFITS of PHP We're the ones on the ground, the evangelists. To reach business people we have to go and talk to them, expressing our goals in their language. Managers live by their ears, and are very responsive to what they hear, from sales reps, other managers at the same level, subordinates, general chat at association meetings, etc. They tend to not do a lot of reading, certainly they don't have time to browse a bunch of web sites. They are able to authorize pilot projects, just to see if something works or is as good as it claims to be. We have to create some buzz. Ironically, we don't necessarily do that by promoting PHP explicitly, but by emphasizing results and benefits from the sites we develop. We then have opportunity to promote the tools used to achieve those results. Regards - Miles Thompson At 02:46 PM 8/29/01 -0300, you wrote: Hello, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed. Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: Nobody was questioning your commitment to promote PHP, but that hardly address the problem of making PHP a credible choice for development before people that could be using it with advantage but hardly are using it because they hardly know about it. The talks that you give are for people that already know about PHP. The people, in special the corporations, even don't know about PHP to be bothered to attend. You can't just expect people to follow you where you are if they even don't know PHP as a language with reputation, especially in the corporate world dominated by Microsoft stuff. That is what I telling you to address. 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] -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
While I don't want to tear down Manuel Lemos or some of the good points he's made, I think it would be helpful to hope that he's been to a PHP talk. Likewise, he makes several pointed views on why it is important to follow the outline he's set forth for a product to be successful. Some credence could be added to these arguments if it were backed by either a clear logical explanation, or some relevant reference to work experience and/or education. Right now, I think a lot of us are stabbing in the air trying to agree with everything you're saying. I think you fail to understand the phenomenal success PHP has had in the last 2-3 years. I see it in every aspect of reality. Netcraft shows booming charts, the #php efnet channel has sweltered from a few dozen people at most to over 165 as I write this email. The mailing lists are unmanageable they're so high traffic. I can walk into a job, suggest PHP, and not be met by a bunch of questioning What the hell is 'PHP' looks. I can go to the bookstore and select from any one of probably 15 PHP books. I can go onto monster.com, pop in PHP, and get a plethora of results--compared to none about 16 months ago. To me, PHP will always be the project I watched grow into a juggernaut in front of my eyes. I'm proud of Zeev, Andi, Rasmus, and the rest of the team and all they've accomplished. I frequently regret not being able to dedicate myself to the success of the project like they do. I do not know what you define as success, but surely this has got to be it. The best thing? The project has attained critical mass now. It's going to keep growing and growing and growing no matter how poor of a job you think everyone is doing. It may be able to grow a little faster if we do a dance and spend a million bucks, but its going to grow sooner or later either way. Just think, someday I'd like to think our children will be coding in PHP. Regards, Cristopher Daniluk President CEO email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] direct: 330/530-2373 Digital Services Network, Inc Unleashing Your Potential voice: 800/845-4822 web: http://www.dsnet.net/ -Original Message- From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 2:10 PM To: Manuel Lemos Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP The talks that you give are for people that already know about PHP. No they aren't. As I said in my message, the seminar series I did were specifically for people who knew nothing about PHP and it was presented alongside other technologies. But yes, the people would have to have had some interest in web stuff or database stuff to have bothered to attend in the first place. -Rasmus -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello Zeev, Zeev Suraski wrote: At 23:02 26-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: I don't think we have the same understanding of what is marketing. For me, marketing is being proactive in terms of promoting something before the potential market. Seeing people advocating PHP or analysts covering PHP here and there is not proactive at all. It is a result of the evolution of PHP capabilities, but it was not something that was especifically planned. Well, that's not quite true. The analysts that are beginning to show interest are a result of efforts being made in certain companies. As for advocating, I specifically mentioned companies and not people, which is what makes it pro-active. I think our definitions for marketing are quite similar :) If when you mean pro-active you mean that's intentional and is all part of a plan, then we agree. If you acted somehow to promote PHP and got some unexpected results (good or bad) that is still marketing although not pro-active. 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). I don't know what drawbacks do you see, but let's discuss it openly. Well, not all of the sites are of the same quality and enjoy the same maintenance level. Such sites may have a good audience and may be a good service, but they won't necessarily do a good job at presenting PHP. They may (will) also overlap in content, which would also not look very professional either. If you are going to descriminate sites based on subjective criteria, like matters of taste or points of view that vary greatly from person to person, that is bad because you will certainly leave out contributions that could help greatly PHP and in the end yourself. It would certainly would make you look arrogant if you get to be picky as if including some sites and not others you would be doing somebody else a favor when the promotion that PHP gets from the sites will always benefit you direct or indirectly. If I were you I certainly would not rule out sites with content that overlaps others. Why not accept all sites that provide PHP articles? One site may not be as good or as complete as other today, but they may improve over time enough to be technically better than others that you picked before. What would you do then? Accept what you refused before and then discard what you accepted before? Doesn't seem to be a good idea. Anyway, in a Web ring banner you only promote a site at each banner view. I don't see the problem of rotating banners of overlapped content. Things like that are usually not that simple, or in other words, they're easier said than done. If done sloppily, they can have a negative effect. And doing them correctly requires substantial efforts. You sound bureacratic. You should feel honoured by the extra promotion that all the PHP content sites give you because your business depends on PHP acceptance in the market. Why make it hard for sites that are willing to help you in the end? I think it is fair enough to make some base rules like don't be too lame (define too lame), but almost everybody should be accepted. Ok, it is not fading out, but it is fading, meaning it is no longer the exciting thing that it seemed to be and was attracting some many people from everywhere. I disagree even with the toned-down version :) I think that the Web as a medium is one of the most promising infrastructures around. True, the hype is gone, but that's a good thing. I don't think the hype moved anywhere else, it's just gone (for now :) I guess you just say that because you were simply not affected by the major Internet layoffs that happened in the latest months, so you don't seem to have a great idea how bad this has been for so many people. Of course the Internet is not gone. It just happens that the number of companies with business depending on it was drastically reduced. So, there aren't so much employment and business opportinities as before. That's what I mean. It is not a matter of loosing that focus, but rather enlarge the focus of PHP that is adverstised for things that some people are already using it seriously. By definition of the word focus (well, almost), there's no real way to 'enlarge' it without losing it. We can play with words forever, though :) Ok, I meant enlarging the focus area, but I agree, there's no point in carrying on with playing with how each other expresses in English. :-) Anyway, lets just concentrate on the Web development focus. Web development is not just Web scripts that are served by the Web server. Web development is also, installing and maitaining applications and also run processes that run separately from the Web server. You know you can run PHP from the command line to do things like run database installation scripts or
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Julio Nobrega Trabalhando wrote: Hi Manuel, Great post. I enjoyed the part where you said it would be a good idea to do some 'competition' with php programmers, sponsored by some company. Actually, what I was suggested was not invented. It seems some body with great interest to promote Python invented this Open Source Software contest offering $100.000 in prizes. It is funny that they call it Open Source software contest but the rules explicitly said that only Python entries would be accepted. The contest was to develop software development tools that would probably would cost that much if they contracted qualified developers to write them on demand. This way, not only they got the tools that they wanted all in Python, developed by the best contenders, and even managed to promote Python as if it is the big language of the century so that it would be the only right choice for developing those tools! Yeah right! :-) These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! Look here to see the trick: http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/contest-rules.html 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! Manuel, please, give this tirade a rest. Nobody associated with Python development was involved in this amazing marketing trick you are referring to. Somebody just decided to do this on their own. And now you are criticizing the PHP developers for not having the same foresight as the Python developers? It says so right in their FAQ (http://software-carpentry.codesourcery.com/faq.html) And in answer to some of the more virulent postings on Usenet and in other venues, neither Guido van Rossum nor anyone else associated with Python development was involved in setting up this project, choosing the language, or defining the terms of the competition. Guido was only asked to be a judge after the decision to use Python had been made. If we had decided to use Perl or Tcl, we would obviously have invited Larry Wall or John Ousterhout to join the panel. If somebody wants to put up $100,000 for a PHP software contest, perfect, great, we will be every bit as cooperative as the Python developers. -Rasmus -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
--On Tuesday, August 28, 2001 11:42 PM -0300 Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: These guys resort to these marketing tricks to promote Python as hell, and the PHP people just sits and waits doing almost nothing in comparision to promote PHP as hard as they can even when they lives depend on the acceptance of PHP as a wide spread language! dear mr lemos, your ongoing participation in this thread has opened my eyes to views i had not considered before and caused me to revisit mine. however, the above is representative of where i think you and i disagree. [please note that my thoughts here are really in response to the overall impression i received from reading all of your posts in this thread and i only include the above quote for my convenience. even though i'll mostly mention where you and i disagree, it doesn't mean i disagree with all that you say. indeed, i find your enthusiasm contagious and offer encouragement to you in your effort] one assumption you seem to have is the ongoing viability of php (if not the very livelihood of we the developers using php) is somehow a function of the number of folks who know what php is. that somehow the more folks know about php, the better php gets. it also seems that you feel 'the PHP people' are not putting forth enough effort to further php's acceptance and viability. from my point of view as a developer using php, recognition of php in the corporate world is not as important as how good php is. i prefer to see efforts focused on developing the best darn HTML-embedded scripting language this side of the railroad tracks. whether or not php gets talked about on the evening news doesn't really matter. what matters is whether php helps me as a programmer. i don't care how many folks recognize the power of php. i care about the power of php. the number of folks using php is a function of whether or not 'the PHP people' can continue to produce such rockin' code over the next few years. not the other way around. i imagine you have a unique perspective on the effort it takes to promote php. but, i'm guessing that 'the PHP people' probably do as well. i myself am unduly grateful for the effort that they put forth, not only in producing the rockin'st language anyone could have hoped for when learning to program, but in promoting php as well. when i saw php was featured at the open source convention in san jose, i knew things were moving along just fine. that's the kind of promotion i want to see. i believe 'the PHP people' should be allowed to promote php in a manner they are comfortable with. after all, it's their itch. ya know, making the best HTML-embedded scripting language seems a pretty noble goal to me. Regards, Manuel Lemos have a good one, mike -- mike cullerton -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 08:07 27-08-01, Robin Chen wrote: This is very true. I have a few ideas that I want to sell, but the only way that I can do it with PHP is to give out the source, and the user is expected to know how to install PHP and set up the script. If I can compile the PHP script, then I can sell the executables. The users would only have to copy the package into a directory and use it like a cgi, and I won't have to worry about people looking into my codes. Having executable takes care of 2 concerns I have if I want to sell a solution. First, with an executable, users don't have to install PHP on their system to use my solutions. Second, users cannot see my code. Executables that don't require PHP to be installed on the target machine are unlikely to ever happen, because going down that route, you end up losing many technical features that PHP offers you (performance, and certain degrees of functionality). Regarding source code hiding, you can use the Zend Encoder. Pricing wise, the lowest you can get it for right now is $50/month, which may be too high for certain developers. Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
So sprach »Zeev Suraski« am 2001-08-27 um 09:40:40 +0300 : Regarding source code hiding, you can use the Zend Encoder. Pricing wise, the lowest you can get it for right now is $50/month, which may be too high for certain developers. Uhm, really? I mean, if you don't make $50/month, the developer doesn't seem to be making a lot of money. And for such micro-projects that such a guy seems to be doing - why even care about hiding source code? Alexander Skwar -- How to quote: http://learn.to/quote (german) http://quote.6x.to (english) Homepage: http://www.digitalprojects.com | http://www.iso-top.de iso-top.de - Die günstige Art an Linux Distributionen zu kommen Uptime: 3 hours 47 minutes -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hi Manuel, Great post. I enjoyed the part where you said it would be a good idea to do some 'competition' with php programmers, sponsored by some company. For example, most times when I want a php script, either I go to Hotscripts.com or Sourceforge.net. Sf.net, by rebound, makes me remind of VA Linux. It is a good example of how to brand your name on the Open source community, by helping it. But back to the contests, I wish there was a large corporation that would promote it between developers. Something like: 1) We want to build a website for our B2B strategies. Then release the plan and specs for the whole world. Anyone can try to build. Only one scripting language allowed, any database, or something around these lines.. Later on, costs/time of development/features/security/etc... would be considered, and a 'winner' would be chosen. That would be hard to happen, since the folks at large corporations that make these kind of decisions hire a 'team' based on various aspects, specially what they heard that exists and recommendation of friends/companies. Analisys of 'case-studies' is hardly done. They won't browse the web to look for other solutions, either they will open the New York Times and read 'x-y-z did their site with (anything but php)'. So, what we need is to spread the word to the world that php was, and it is, used on large sucessful projects. By gaining larger clients, media will follow. But this opens a question, how to make the large corp see php (and of course, the people who use it) as something worth? Basically, have another large corp to use it. How to get out of this loop? This circle where something to happen it needs itself to happen? Maybe it is necessary to, contrary to what the community uncosciusly believes, empower with resources only ONE 'thing', either a company or a group of person. The common descentralization of power on open source might have to be reviewed, but as always, carefully planned to produce results. At least, it is an idea ;-) -- Julio Nobrega A hora está chegando: http://toca.sourceforge.net Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... Hello, Christopher Cm Allen wrote: I'm afraid that PHP is not yet very credible in that world. The truth is there is not great marketing force behind PHP like there is Sun behind Java or Microsoft behind .Net Good point, and how does one go about marketing a language that is open-source? If you don't know it is because you are not very motivated to do it. So, the first step is to convince and motivate yourself that PHP needs to be marketed. As for what to do, instead of suggesting new ideas, I would rather recall some old ideas that always seemed to work well. For instance, provide PHP users compensation. It does not need to be financial compensation. It may be moral compensation as long as it is real compensation. For instance, if I am not mistaken, Guido Van Rossum, the Python creator, sponsored a contest to develop software development tools with cash prizes. Only a few won, but the contest attracted a lot of people and was even mentioned in prestiged software development magazines like Dr. Dobbs. This required some investment, but if you look around you will not have much trouble to find a sponsor. Another point is that they managed to get the media on their side. It seems that in the PHP community there is little effort to appeal to media. That is a major waste of oppiortunity because they can provide some much marketing for free. One free way to provide compensation to any PHP user is to promote their work. 2 years ago I started a repository of PHP Classes of objects that basically allow anybody to contribute regardless of the quality and utility that you may attribute to what is contributed. The point is that once users that anybody can have some fame to have his work exposed to a large PHP audience (over 40.000 subscribers), they want to contribute as well and the site grows thanks to the moral compensation that it offers to any PHP user. There are other class repositories, like the official PHP PEAR repository, but the scope is different because the contributions are not accepted arbitrarily, so you don't get as many contributors. Other than that, PHP resources sites like these should be officially linked altogether with things like Web rings. It would cause a much better impression to newcomers or ceptic people as it would make PHP more credible exposing the real level of support that the whole PHP community can provide. Unfortunately, the maintainers of PHP main site and Zend site do not seem to agree that it would be a good idea to promote other PHP resources sites with banners to pointing to them like what is done with Web rings. Ok, these are just a few ideas that would help PHP to be better marketed. They are not new and have already been discussed
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 12:46 27-08-01, Alexander Skwar wrote: So sprach »Zeev Suraski« am 2001-08-27 um 09:40:40 +0300 : Regarding source code hiding, you can use the Zend Encoder. Pricing wise, the lowest you can get it for right now is $50/month, which may be too high for certain developers. Uhm, really? I mean, if you don't make $50/month, the developer doesn't seem to be making a lot of money. And for such micro-projects that such a guy seems to be doing - why even care about hiding source code? I won't try to *convince* you that the pricing is too high :) Zeev -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
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/ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Zeev Suraski wrote: 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. Right. 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. The merit of what was achieved without financial resources is not in question. What is in question is what could and can be done even without financial resources to make PHP be more accepted than it is today. 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. I don't think we have the same understanding of what is marketing. For me, marketing is being proactive in terms of promoting something before the potential market. Seeing people advocating PHP or analysts covering PHP here and there is not proactive at all. It is a result of the evolution of PHP capabilities, but it was not something that was especifically planned. What I mean is there is a large potential market for PHP for which there is no specific plan to address, not just in technical terms, but rather in the message that that market is (not) getting about PHP suitability for their needs. You need to first watch the market and spot areas where people could be using PHP but their are not, realize why they are not using PHP to finally do something about it. As I said, it is not a technical problem, but rather a people problem. 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). I don't know what drawbacks do you see, but let's discuss it openly. 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. Ok, it is not fading out, but it is fading, meaning it is no longer the exciting thing that it seemed to be and was attracting some many people from everywhere. 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. Right, so be it, PHP will have to grow in the market without any giant force behind it, at least for now. Let's consider that one extra challenge for PHP future. 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
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
At 23:02 26-08-01, Manuel Lemos wrote: I don't think we have the same understanding of what is marketing. For me, marketing is being proactive in terms of promoting something before the potential market. Seeing people advocating PHP or analysts covering PHP here and there is not proactive at all. It is a result of the evolution of PHP capabilities, but it was not something that was especifically planned. Well, that's not quite true. The analysts that are beginning to show interest are a result of efforts being made in certain companies. As for advocating, I specifically mentioned companies and not people, which is what makes it pro-active. I think our definitions for marketing are quite similar :) 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). I don't know what drawbacks do you see, but let's discuss it openly. Well, not all of the sites are of the same quality and enjoy the same maintenance level. Such sites may have a good audience and may be a good service, but they won't necessarily do a good job at presenting PHP. They may (will) also overlap in content, which would also not look very professional either. Things like that are usually not that simple, or in other words, they're easier said than done. If done sloppily, they can have a negative effect. And doing them correctly requires substantial efforts. Ok, it is not fading out, but it is fading, meaning it is no longer the exciting thing that it seemed to be and was attracting some many people from everywhere. I disagree even with the toned-down version :) I think that the Web as a medium is one of the most promising infrastructures around. True, the hype is gone, but that's a good thing. I don't think the hype moved anywhere else, it's just gone (for now :) It is not a matter of loosing that focus, but rather enlarge the focus of PHP that is adverstised for things that some people are already using it seriously. By definition of the word focus (well, almost), there's no real way to 'enlarge' it without losing it. We can play with words forever, though :) Anyway, lets just concentrate on the Web development focus. Web development is not just Web scripts that are served by the Web server. Web development is also, installing and maitaining applications and also run processes that run separately from the Web server. You know you can run PHP from the command line to do things like run database installation scripts or run cron scripts that execute periodic tasks. The truth is that most people are not aware of this. They think PHP can only be run from the Web server to serve Web pages. I was suprised by the number of people that was telling me that Perl is better for running scripts from the command line. Duh?! Why? Because nobody told them otherwise! This very wrong perception of the current PHP user base needs urgent fixing! The fix needs not to be applied in PHP, but rather in PHP users minds. PHP needs to be advertised as tool than can run scripts from anywhere, like any other language. For starters, drop the designation of PHP CGI version. Could be. The truth is that PHP *is* lacking in command line features if you compare it to Perl, because it was indeed never brought up to be a command line tool... If people are already using PHP that way for serious purposes, why neglect that it can be used that way? That only lets other languages take over a space that PHP has already conquered. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I've yet to see projects like PHP-GTK being used 'seriously'. To make it clearer, I've yet to see an application which is actually written in PHP-GTK, and is being distributed or sold. The day may come, but unlike the Web ring where we hold a huge chunk, I find it very hard to imagine seeing PHP taking a considerable chunk of the GUI market, ever. The way I see, most people tend to only use one language at once. If they see an alternative to PHP not only serves well for Web programming, but also for non-Web programming, PHP will loose its user base there. It is a matter of time until a lot of PHP people will start seeing it that way. It's really an issue of different opinions. I think our focus should remain on the Web ring, because we can't enlarge it without losing it. We can foster additional projects, such as PHP-GTK, improved command line features, etc., but the way I see it, if you want to define PHP in one sentence, the best qualifying one would still be 'A Server Side, HTML Embedded Scripting Language' (sorry Andrei ;). It's true that it can be used in other ways, but that's the focus, and the rest are useful 'exceptions'. No, I mean executables that may be just like VB executables that basically contain PHP code compiled into Zend bytecodes or whatever is enough for most people
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
This is very true. I have a few ideas that I want to sell, but the only way that I can do it with PHP is to give out the source, and the user is expected to know how to install PHP and set up the script. If I can compile the PHP script, then I can sell the executables. The users would only have to copy the package into a directory and use it like a cgi, and I won't have to worry about people looking into my codes. Having executable takes care of 2 concerns I have if I want to sell a solution. First, with an executable, users don't have to install PHP on their system to use my solutions. Second, users cannot see my code. Robin Manuel Lemos wrote: No, I mean executables that may be just like VB executables that basically contain PHP code compiled into Zend bytecodes or whatever is enough for most people be stopped from copy source code directly. A lot of people give up PHP because it does not provide affordable conditions to let them sell whole applications that others can't still their code, when they can just spend only US$100 or less in VB, Delphi, Java, Kylix, etc... suite and compile programs that they can distribute or sell to others without risking their business. There are a lot more other things to say on these subjects, but these should give you enough to think for a while. :-) 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
As a small business owner (partner, actually), I can address this question below: Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... AFAIK, it costs a lot more money to have any start and operate a e-commerce business than a telephone. What is the motivation to spend that much money? Internet hype? On our website, we use PHP/MySQL to serve up our complete schedule plus juggle event requests from different kinds of people, maintain the look of the site, and serve up audio clips. There's also a large backend component, including maintaining our contact lists (very important for a quartet), a database of all music we know and composers, in order to generate a quick program, our press kit, etc. The PHP end has over 4000 lines of code and MySQL has hundreds of tables. We aren't involved in retail, but that may change. To start up the website for my string quartet, there were a few sunk costs. The computer to develop on, the audio equipment to convert audio clips from recordings to streaming content, and then there is the monthly fee for hosting. I already owned the computer, as I use it for other things like having a computer in the house :). total extra cost: $0 I bought the audio equipment in order to enable the quartet to master our own CDs total relevant cost: $0 (in fact, we saved over what it would cost to go to a big studio) The hosting fee is $10/month. The registration fee for 2 domains (chiaraquartet.net/chiaraquartet.com) is $70/year internet access is free through the university we're in residence at. cost: $0 Total cost: $70+120=$190/year Total cost for phone line: $30/month without long distance. Total phone cost: $30*12 = $360/year There you have it. $360 is most definitely $190. Have we gotten any benefit off of the website? After a year of hosting (and not directly selling anything other than the quartet), several presenters have approached us through the website to offer concerts that paid much more than the cost of maintaining the website. We've gotten the same benefit from having a phone. So, it is definitely worth it, even for a business completely unrelated to technology or even retail sales. Regards, Greg Beaver -- The Chiara String Quartet http://www.chiaraquartet.net -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
hi rasmus: PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me personally, to make that happen is unrealistic; true, but who can afford java and .net? oracle..., certainly not the small and medium size companies certainly not african companies certainly not south american companies...and i really belive that's where promotional efforts should go; technology awareness is still low there but the potential is huge and we africans are looking just for this: cheap and reliable technology, that we can learn from which is exactly what open source is about... regards -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Good Morning(CST USA here :)) PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with the current state of PHP marketing in the technical community. Is there any marketing done at various universitys? Beyond the the tech market these are new recruits to the arena. Has there ever been a poll done on where the people have picked up PHP? How many people are exposed thru conferences-educational-facilities-book stores etc? Thanks, CCMA -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
This is an aside ... At 02:08 AM 8/25/01 -0400, Cristopher Daniluk wrote: After following this thread for a while, it seems like there is a lot of discrepancy between what is success and what isn't for PHP. I do not believe PHP will ever become the ubiquitous web language, if for no other reason than because it isn't always the right choice for your web based project. Ubiquity comes from having a hammer, and treating everything like a nail. A person uses the tool he's comfortable with, and knows its quirks and shortcuts. I do not believe, despite periodic resurgence, that there will ever be one master language. Past candidates were ... Modula, ADA, Smalltalk ... others? Remember the fifth generation computers? The competent craftsman either uses the right tool, or knows how to quickly bodge something together with what is at hand. Same for programmers, of whatever sex. PHP is already a strong option in many corporate environments. Really from what I've seen lately, the only reason it loses out to Java, ASP (uggh), or other similar options is that it is difficult to find a team of qualified PHP developers. Even if you can get the project off the ground, the continual maintenance is a problem. I believe this does a great injustice to the many fine programmers who have mastered one or more languages, but have not yet encountered PHP. Anyone who has a sound working knowledge of Java, ASP, Python or Perl, and is a competent programmer, would become productive very quickly in PHP. T'aint that difficult. Even a VB user may come to appreciate its brevity and conciseness. g As for the maintenance issue, that relates more to design and judicious use of comments. It is very easy, particularly with PHP or ASP, to produce pages with a horrible, hard-to-follow commingling of straight HTML and scripting language, so that maintenance, for anyone, is very difficult. It is also easy to end up with obfuscated code in any of the main line, structured, languages. Miles Thompson Simply put, I think this means we have great potential to have long term success, as far as penetrating the corporate market. As employers start finding the qualified people out there, and as people re-train/relearn, and as fresh meat comes out, the job market will sustain our growth. I would say we don't need the multi-billion dollar backing to be successful as well. Linux, as you particularly mentioned, is shunned by a lot of suits, but it has grown - and that growth has sustained itself over the last 10 years, more relevantly the last 4-5. It's starting to get a little more attractive to suits as bigger and bigger and bigger companies sponsor or use it. I envision PHP going down this road as well, though I obviously don't expect the same grandeur that Linux has received. We will achieve this by doing exactly what Rasmus said - developing a good product. Though I must digress on the subject of technical conferences. While they're valuable and by all means we should be there, I believe the true value will come when people do our work for us - we need to prove to the world that it is cool to use PHP, and they'll make sure all their friends are cool too :) Regards, Cristopher Daniluk President CEO email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] direct: 330/530-2373 Digital Services Network, Inc Unleashing Your Potential voice: 800/845-4822 web: http://www.dsnet.net/ -Original Message- From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 1:52 AM To: Manuel Lemos Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP So, it is very hard to convince the anybody to bet all the farm in PHP. You may have the technical arguments, but is not enough, I'm afraid. You in particular, may not need to convince others to bet on PHP, but it is nothing like that for most people that want to live from software development. They have to put up with work/business opportunities that the market offers to live from it. So, today, I'm afraid that you already still have an hard time to convince people to dedicate only to PHP, even those that know and believe PHP is that great. PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with the current state of PHP marketing in the technical community. PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me personally, to make that happen is unrealistic. Like Linux 5 years ago, PHP is adopted by the techies and somewhat shunned by the suits because they haven't read about it in their latest advertisement-sponsored magazine. We can't possibly hope to compete with Sun and Microsoft when it comes to suit-oriented marketing drivel. What we can do is concentrate on what we do best. Writing a solid and very focused tool
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hmmm. Manuel what's that you're smoking? Where can I get some? M -Original Message- From: Manuel Lemos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 24 August 2001 20:30 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Hello, Egan wrote: On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 15:34:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Many small businesses would like to do e-commerce, but can't afford expensive consultants, expensive hardware, and expensive software tools developed by huge corporations. e-commerce? You mean B2C? Can small business live from that? I'm afraid not! Maybe I am wrong. :-) 100 years ago you could easily do business without a telephone. But what percentage of businesses today operate without a telephone? A web presence with web commerce will become a utility like the telephone. Having it will be more important than measuring artificial distinctions between B2C vs. B2B. Huh? That's a nice marketoid speech for you to talk Internet-ignorant people to get into e-commerce, but what does that have to do with my question? Can small business live from e-commerce today? Look at all the large corporations bleeding money and cutting staff. Mega-corporations are in decline, and their era is ending. Long live the small business! What? Large business are being affected because the whole networking business is in recession. Large corporations don't know you or care about you as an individual customer. You're just an account number to them. The only thing they care about is the big sale to other big corporations. But even then, do they really care? Not in my experience. The networking recession is just one symptom of their disease. Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. Many Internet companies dried and without cash from the investors many went bankrupt. That affected all the small or big corporations that have grown and were dependent on the networking market. I don't think this affected much non-technological companies, big or small. So I don't think your anti-big corporations speech has much to do with this. 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello Rasmus, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: So, it is very hard to convince the anybody to bet all the farm in PHP. You may have the technical arguments, but is not enough, I'm afraid. You in particular, may not need to convince others to bet on PHP, but it is nothing like that for most people that want to live from software development. They have to put up with work/business opportunities that the market offers to live from it. So, today, I'm afraid that you already still have an hard time to convince people to dedicate only to PHP, even those that know and believe PHP is that great. PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with the current state of PHP marketing in the technical community. I think that is not the largest part of the PHP community. Let me explain: I believe the largest part of the community is made of those that develop Web sites and applications for some one else and do it for a living. Many of those don't always manage to make the technological decisions, their bosses do. There you have two problems: convince those bosses that PHP is still a superior technical solution to solve their development needs as they evolve, and then convince them that other languages/technologies that have been also evolving are not yet as good as PHP, despite they have been flooded of news from everywhere that they are much more advanced and better for the developer needs. 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. 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. PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me 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. personally, to make that happen is unrealistic. Like Linux 5 years ago, PHP is adopted by the techies and somewhat shunned by the suits because they haven't read about it in their latest advertisement-sponsored magazine. 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. 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. 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. We can't possibly hope to compete with Sun and Microsoft when it comes to suit-oriented marketing drivel. What we can do is concentrate on what we do best. Writing a solid and very focused tool. Building the grassroot community and being visible at all relevant technical conferences. If we continue to do this, I see no reason for any dropoff in PHP popularity which leads directly to more and more corporate acceptance. You believe in whatever you want, off course, but I think it is time to adjust course. Assumming that the future of PHP is just a technical matter, I'm affraid you are neglecting an important part of the equation: the people. The needs and beliefs change through time. I am try to show my current view of what people feel and need today that I don't see addressed. You can see that and work on the changes if you agree. I have more ideias if you care to work on that direction. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Christopher Cm Allen wrote: I'm afraid that PHP is not yet very credible in that world. The truth is there is not great marketing force behind PHP like there is Sun behind Java or Microsoft behind .Net Good point, and how does one go about marketing a language that is open-source? If you don't know it is because you are not very motivated to do it. So, the first step is to convince and motivate yourself that PHP needs to be marketed. As for what to do, instead of suggesting new ideas, I would rather recall some old ideas that always seemed to work well. For instance, provide PHP users compensation. It does not need to be financial compensation. It may be moral compensation as long as it is real compensation. For instance, if I am not mistaken, Guido Van Rossum, the Python creator, sponsored a contest to develop software development tools with cash prizes. Only a few won, but the contest attracted a lot of people and was even mentioned in prestiged software development magazines like Dr. Dobbs. This required some investment, but if you look around you will not have much trouble to find a sponsor. Another point is that they managed to get the media on their side. It seems that in the PHP community there is little effort to appeal to media. That is a major waste of oppiortunity because they can provide some much marketing for free. One free way to provide compensation to any PHP user is to promote their work. 2 years ago I started a repository of PHP Classes of objects that basically allow anybody to contribute regardless of the quality and utility that you may attribute to what is contributed. The point is that once users that anybody can have some fame to have his work exposed to a large PHP audience (over 40.000 subscribers), they want to contribute as well and the site grows thanks to the moral compensation that it offers to any PHP user. There are other class repositories, like the official PHP PEAR repository, but the scope is different because the contributions are not accepted arbitrarily, so you don't get as many contributors. Other than that, PHP resources sites like these should be officially linked altogether with things like Web rings. It would cause a much better impression to newcomers or ceptic people as it would make PHP more credible exposing the real level of support that the whole PHP community can provide. Unfortunately, the maintainers of PHP main site and Zend site do not seem to agree that it would be a good idea to promote other PHP resources sites with banners to pointing to them like what is done with Web rings. Ok, these are just a few ideas that would help PHP to be better marketed. They are not new and have already been discussed before. It is up to the people that have more active roles in the PHP community to open their minds and pick them up. I do it by not allowing FP like extensions on my server's. All of my custom apps are php or if need be I switch to C/perl. If I get pushed hard enough I will do c++ :) By your own words though , the volume of users of a non-marketed php, compared to the users of marketed Java et al. speaks for itself. Php holds its own.. But for how long? What if a group of developers/designers started marketing PHP? Marketing does wonders. I should not need to to tell you that. One problem seems to be some people in the PHP community have some kind of aversion to the idea of that somebody can make money from free software. That way you are ruling out people that can do a lot of good to the growth of the PHP market. I think it is a matter of being more open minded. The more opportunities you provide to others, the greater are the chances that opportunities benefit your goals, in this case a a wider acceptance of PHP making it more credible to people that basically ignore it. ok, that's just me trying to be more constructive. :-) 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Egan wrote: On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:32:10 -0500, Christopher CM Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hmmm, I might live in a smaller world than you but I find tons of small to middle businesses that have no clue as to why or how things are done in applications(primarily web). Sure they know the buzz words of Java etc but when I come in and tell them I work with a certain tool set and that I can get it done for less $ and time they really don't care if I have a hammer or a mallet. Many small businesses would like to do e-commerce, but can't afford expensive consultants, expensive hardware, and expensive software tools developed by huge corporations. e-commerce? You mean B2C? Can small business live from that? I'm afraid not! Maybe I am wrong. :-) There is a vast market for web developers who use free software tools like Linux/Apache/PHP, and offer their services to small businesses at modest rates. Look at all the large corporations bleeding money and cutting staff. Mega-corporations are in decline, and their era is ending. Long live the small business! What? Large business are being affected because the whole networking business is in recession. It was over-hyped for all these years because of the Internet, so now everything is being brought down to the reality because investors took the money from those companies. So, every other dependent company was affected to some extent, large or small. I thought this was clear to every body by now. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 15:34:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Many small businesses would like to do e-commerce, but can't afford expensive consultants, expensive hardware, and expensive software tools developed by huge corporations. e-commerce? You mean B2C? Can small business live from that? I'm afraid not! Maybe I am wrong. :-) 100 years ago you could easily do business without a telephone. But what percentage of businesses today operate without a telephone? A web presence with web commerce will become a utility like the telephone. Having it will be more important than measuring artificial distinctions between B2C vs. B2B. Look at all the large corporations bleeding money and cutting staff. Mega-corporations are in decline, and their era is ending. Long live the small business! What? Large business are being affected because the whole networking business is in recession. Large corporations don't know you or care about you as an individual customer. You're just an account number to them. The only thing they care about is the big sale to other big corporations. But even then, do they really care? Not in my experience. The networking recession is just one symptom of their disease. Why would anyone want to do business that way? If I can find a small business that sells the service or product I need, that's who gets my business first. If people ask how large my company is, I tell them We're large enough to handle your business, and small enough to care. Egan -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
I actually had a talk with my boss today... We discussed different technologies and why we chose them. The reasons we chose Java/JSP/J2EE etc: 1) Scalability (number 1 reason) 2) Different projects like EJB etc I had been talking about PHP a lot and he says he likes it to but... Jeff -Original Message- From: Egan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 2:53 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 15:34:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Many small businesses would like to do e-commerce, but can't afford expensive consultants, expensive hardware, and expensive software tools developed by huge corporations. e-commerce? You mean B2C? Can small business live from that? I'm afraid not! Maybe I am wrong. :-) 100 years ago you could easily do business without a telephone. But what percentage of businesses today operate without a telephone? A web presence with web commerce will become a utility like the telephone. Having it will be more important than measuring artificial distinctions between B2C vs. B2B. Look at all the large corporations bleeding money and cutting staff. Mega-corporations are in decline, and their era is ending. Long live the small business! What? Large business are being affected because the whole networking business is in recession. Large corporations don't know you or care about you as an individual customer. You're just an account number to them. The only thing they care about is the big sale to other big corporations. But even then, do they really care? Not in my experience. The networking recession is just one symptom of their disease. Why would anyone want to do business that way? If I can find a small business that sells the service or product I need, that's who gets my business first. If people ask how large my company is, I tell them We're large enough to handle your business, and small enough to care. Egan -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Egan wrote: On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 15:34:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Many small businesses would like to do e-commerce, but can't afford expensive consultants, expensive hardware, and expensive software tools developed by huge corporations. e-commerce? You mean B2C? Can small business live from that? I'm afraid not! Maybe I am wrong. :-) 100 years ago you could easily do business without a telephone. But what percentage of businesses today operate without a telephone? A web presence with web commerce will become a utility like the telephone. Having it will be more important than measuring artificial distinctions between B2C vs. B2B. Huh? That's a nice marketoid speech for you to talk Internet-ignorant people to get into e-commerce, but what does that have to do with my question? Can small business live from e-commerce today? Look at all the large corporations bleeding money and cutting staff. Mega-corporations are in decline, and their era is ending. Long live the small business! What? Large business are being affected because the whole networking business is in recession. Large corporations don't know you or care about you as an individual customer. You're just an account number to them. The only thing they care about is the big sale to other big corporations. But even then, do they really care? Not in my experience. The networking recession is just one symptom of their disease. Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. Many Internet companies dried and without cash from the investors many went bankrupt. That affected all the small or big corporations that have grown and were dependent on the networking market. I don't think this affected much non-technological companies, big or small. So I don't think your anti-big corporations speech has much to do with this. 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
There are big players who have an eye on the open-source market right now, IBM being the biggest contributor. HP recently released their own Linux version on their desktop PCs and is marketing them as we speak. Microsoft is planning on giving away just part of their source code in their future products to software developers. Everyone has felt the heat on Open Source technology, and everyone knows it is the way to go. The only thing that is missing from most Open Source products, probably excluding PHP, is user-friendliness. There are a lot of computer illiterate people out there that have gotten used to the click and drag features that make using an application so easy, but they never dream of going into a command line and typing in something. Right now Linux is easy to use thanks to the abundance of different GUIs out there, but there is no standard, like Windows has. Also it is harder to set-up for newbies than Windows is (not really, but for the newbie it's a whole different world). It is a new concept that users must grab in order to make good use of it. There must be a way that people can link MS-like features into Linux a bit more so that at least it will make it easier for people to make that transition over to a different OS and try it out. After it has the market share it needs, users will have gotten used to Linux or BSD or whatever and we can do what MS does, promote a bunch of Linux-specific features into the OS. By that time they will have grabbed the concept of free so much that Windows would sound ridiculously pricey (especially the licensing). MS can't afford to give it's OS away for free, just like it could give away it's IE browser and break Netscape. That's why Open Source is the first real challenge for MS in 15 years. THEN follows the marketing, where everyone will be backing up Linux because of it's popularity and low cost, compared to Windows. And we'll see Bill Gates crawling on his knees and selling his Ferraris to pay his mortgage. Wouldn't I love to see that, just kidding. Until Linux gets better at certain things, I think I have no choice but to stick with Windows for now (especially in the design area). Anyway, that's my two cents worth. Navid P.S. -- When I say Linux, I mean all Open Source products, including PHP. Linux is just the driving force. And Christopher, keep up the promotion of PHP, you have some great ideas. I want it to grow as much as you do. Thanks :) -Original Message- From: Manuel Lemos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 12:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP Hello, Christopher Cm Allen wrote: I'm afraid that PHP is not yet very credible in that world. The truth is there is not great marketing force behind PHP like there is Sun behind Java or Microsoft behind .Net Good point, and how does one go about marketing a language that is open-source? If you don't know it is because you are not very motivated to do it. So, the first step is to convince and motivate yourself that PHP needs to be marketed. As for what to do, instead of suggesting new ideas, I would rather recall some old ideas that always seemed to work well. For instance, provide PHP users compensation. It does not need to be financial compensation. It may be moral compensation as long as it is real compensation. For instance, if I am not mistaken, Guido Van Rossum, the Python creator, sponsored a contest to develop software development tools with cash prizes. Only a few won, but the contest attracted a lot of people and was even mentioned in prestiged software development magazines like Dr. Dobbs. This required some investment, but if you look around you will not have much trouble to find a sponsor. Another point is that they managed to get the media on their side. It seems that in the PHP community there is little effort to appeal to media. That is a major waste of oppiortunity because they can provide some much marketing for free. One free way to provide compensation to any PHP user is to promote their work. 2 years ago I started a repository of PHP Classes of objects that basically allow anybody to contribute regardless of the quality and utility that you may attribute to what is contributed. The point is that once users that anybody can have some fame to have his work exposed to a large PHP audience (over 40.000 subscribers), they want to contribute as well and the site grows thanks to the moral compensation that it offers to any PHP user. There are other class repositories, like the official PHP PEAR repository, but the scope is different because the contributions are not accepted arbitrarily, so you don't get as many contributors. Other than that, PHP resources sites like these should be officially linked altogether with things like Web rings. It would cause a much better impression to newcomers or ceptic people as it would make PHP more credible exposing the real level of support that the whole PHP
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:30:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can small business live from e-commerce today? What is the relevance of your question? Do businesses live from their telephone? Whether they do or not, they need it in either case. Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. One mean judge all by himself, caused the NASDAQ crash, eh? I am surely astounded to learn that! Good day and goodbye! Egan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Manuel Lemos wrote: Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. Many Internet companies dried and without cash from the investors many went bankrupt. That affected all the small or big corporations that have grown and were dependent on the networking market. I don't think this affected much non-technological companies, big or small. So I don't think your anti-big corporations speech has much to do with this. Regards, Manuel Lemos No, recesion on the new economy started as the fact that the .com (or dotcommers) companies did not develop with their market spectations. Shareholders then started to not give any more credit to bussines expectations and speculation stopped. Quarter after quarter with cash looses, and even worse return on investement expectations, made the shareholders move the money out of those companies and their confidence. It is the way the dotcommers made bussines and SE speculation what caused this problem. Just as a point travelprice.com just announced that this is the first quarter without losses before taxes. It just happened that they have applied normal bussines strategies and bussines models. Also the effect that this downturn is going through all the chain, from transportation to food and goods. And BTW most companies that caused this were startups not really big companies. Much more information on this can be found on the Wall Street Journal. Sean C. McCarthy SCI, S.L. (www.sci-spain.com) -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 14:40:47 -0500, Navid Yar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Until Linux gets better at certain things, I think I have no choice but to stick with Windows for now (especially in the design area). True enough, for now. Steam locomotives were an impressive technology, deeply entrenched with 100 years or more of history. They did not disappear from railroads overnight. But when the railroads realized it was cheaper to operate diesel locomotives, the end of the steam era was just a matter of time. Egan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 20:54:33 +0100, Sean C. McCarthy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also the effect that this downturn is going through all the chain, from transportation to food and goods. And BTW most companies that caused this were startups not really big companies. Much more information on this can be found on the Wall Street Journal. WSJ writers can believe whatever they like. But I believe this: Large corporations are like railroad steam locomotives whose era has ended. They may continue running for a while, but in time, many will disappear like the steam locomotive did. Egan -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Vie 24 Ago 2001 16:50, Egan wrote: On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:30:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can small business live from e-commerce today? What is the relevance of your question? Do businesses live from their telephone? Whether they do or not, they need it in either case. Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. One mean judge all by himself, caused the NASDAQ crash, eh? Even more: This person doesn't have the slightest idea of what he's saying. He knows nothing about the dot-com buissness, and why investment was heavilly done in that buissness, which was just vaporware. DOT-COM is why NASDAQ crashed, not a mean-judge, who did the right thing. Saludos... :-) -- Porqué usar una base de datos relacional cualquiera, si podés usar PostgreSQL? - Martín Marqués |[EMAIL PROTECTED] Programador, Administrador, DBA | Centro de Telematica Universidad Nacional del Litoral - -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. This is the most warped view-point I have heard... The NASDAQ crashed when investors finally figured out that all the dot-coms they had sunk billions into never had *ANY* revenue at all, and no real plan how to generate it, other than the IPO scam itself. At a certain point, even Wall Street realizes that there has to be some reality behind the numbers. There was no question in my mind there would be a net-recession dot-bomb -- I'm surprised it took that long for the VCs to wise up. Microsoft's problems had virtually nothing to do with the NASDAQ crash. -- WARNING [EMAIL PROTECTED] address is an endangered species -- Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Wait, you blame someone convicting microsoft for a recession? Give me a break. Things were on the way out before it started. Alan Greenspan was chasing the 'inflation' demon that didn't exist raising interest rates when things were going great. It came back to bite him in the arse with the collapse of the dot-coms. Now he's cutting them even further and we can barely break free. On 8/24/2001 3:30 PM this was written: Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. Many Internet companies dried and without cash from the investors many went bankrupt. That affected all the small or big corporations that have grown and were dependent on the networking market. I don't think this affected much non-technological companies, big or small. So I don't think your anti-big corporations speech has much to do with this. -- Thomas Deliduka IT Manager - New Eve Media The Solution To Your Internet Angst http://www.neweve.com/ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:25:08 -0400, Thomas Deliduka ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Wait, you blame someone convicting microsoft for a recession? Give me a break. Things were on the way out before it started. Was that the cause? Not really, there were many causes and that was just one of them. Was that when it started? Yes, that's the way I remember it. -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
He also said he likes how Java is OOP and has great error handling. sound more of a judgement on the staffs ability to program than the capability of the language. A great language can have crappy error handling if the designed doesn't program it in well. Dave -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Large corporations are like railroad steam locomotives whose era has ended. They may continue running for a while, but in time, many will disappear like the steam locomotive did. hmm not according to Marx. ;p Anyways, back on topic, how to promote php and who is going to do it? Who is in a position to offer a coding competition like Mr Lemos suggested? Who has the $'s that is willing to support it? Is this something that needs to be run through the PHP GROUP? --ccma -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Jeff Lewis wrote: I actually had a talk with my boss today... We discussed different technologies and why we chose them. The reasons we chose Java/JSP/J2EE etc: 1) Scalability (number 1 reason) 2) Different projects like EJB etc I had been talking about PHP a lot and he says he likes it to but... Jeff What specifically about scalability and Java is he thinking of? I'm not saying at all that large scaleable sites aren't run under Java. But what does your company need to do that Java can that PHP can't? There may be some issues, but there may not. Scaleability costs money. Yes, perhaps Java can scale. If I had a six figure budget, PHP would 'scale' too - more hardware. But how much are people willing to spend? -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
I would't say that. he says it's modular and easier to code in OOP. Jeff -Original Message- From: Dave [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 6:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Michael Kimsal Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] The future of PHP He also said he likes how Java is OOP and has great error handling. sound more of a judgement on the staffs ability to program than the capability of the language. A great language can have crappy error handling if the designed doesn't program it in well. Dave -- 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] -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Can small business live from e-commerce today? Define small. Define e-commerce. How about this one, doing *EXTREMELY* well selling CDs online: http://CDBaby.com/ Of course, that has almost nothing to do with his choice of PHP (the language he could understand the easiest) and everything to do with intelligent business decisions on the back-side. No VC. No we'll make money later. Just great service at a fair price. I'm sure there are others out there. *CAN* it be done? Sure. Can the idiots who invested millions in companies with a business plan that involved *NO* revenue model make it? No. As far as the future of PHP is concerned, all I can say is: Scoreboard :-) Does Netcraft or e-Soft show JSP surpassing PHP? No. Do you really think PHP will go stagnant at this point? Try looking at the CVS logs. Are you going to convince some Java-kid that he's wrong? No. -- WARNING [EMAIL PROTECTED] address is an endangered species -- Use [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wanna help me out? Like Music? Buy a CD: http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm Volunteer a little time: http://chatmusic.com/volunteer.htm -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Egan wrote: On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:30:04 -0300, Manuel Lemos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can small business live from e-commerce today? What is the relevance of your question? Do businesses live from their telephone? Whether they do or not, they need it in either case. AFAIK, it costs a lot more money to have any start and operate a e-commerce business than a telephone. What is the motivation to spend that much money? Internet hype? Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. One mean judge all by himself, caused the NASDAQ crash, eh? I am surely astounded to learn that! Good day and goodbye! Maybe that is because I am not a native English speaker. Maybe if I change the word caused by the word triggered in my sentence it will be more accurate. Anyway, other than that, I read the messages ahead and it sounds that most people really forget the series of events that started NASDAQ crash. Maybe these links will remind you what happen after April 3, 2000: Bad news started here: http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/04/03/technology/microsoft/ The day after: http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/04/04/technology/special_techstocks/ If you were on vacation then and did not notice how did that happen, there's one more reason to blame Microsoft! :-) 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Most of my stuff is mingled right with the HTML. Heh. I guess I haven't advanced to the all-code-no-html formatting. :-) Mainly it's like that because I work with a team of designers, They make the shell of the site, I then have to fill in the code. I'm sure many of you will say y'all do it the same way but don't mingle your code. I guess I have to figure it out. On 8/24/2001 6:37 PM this was written: PHP can be extremely sloppy or coded extremely modularly. I think it's a shame that most tutorials on PHP (and ASP, from what I've experienced) show comingling of code and HTML - far more than we ever do in day-to-day PHP work. People get the impression that that's the only way to do stuff, and it's not. It's often the QUICKEST way for small projects (I needed a quick contact form yesterday and built one in a couple minutes with PHP. I don't think it would have been that painless under Java.) But we use PHP on some very large projects too - it requires you to plan ahead - but that should be the basis for any project, regardless of technology. :) -- Thomas Deliduka IT Manager - New Eve Media The Solution To Your Internet Angst http://www.neweve.com/ -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Michael Kimsal wrote: I've asked for help on this before, and will ask again - I've got a framework up at phpshowcase.com which allows people to post their own project details about PHP deployments, large and small. A growing information store there would be one avenue to help promote PHP. So many times on this list people say 'I want a list of big PHP sites'. Let's pool that information into one area. Anyone else care to contribute their info? If you read my previous message about marketing PHP, notice how I try to highlight that you really need to motivate people to contribute. 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Hello, Richard Lynch wrote: Can small business live from e-commerce today? Define small. Define e-commerce. How about this one, doing *EXTREMELY* well selling CDs online: http://CDBaby.com/ Of course, that has almost nothing to do with his choice of PHP (the language he could understand the easiest) and everything to do with intelligent business decisions on the back-side. No VC. No we'll make money later. Just great service at a fair price. I'm sure there are others out there. *CAN* it be done? Sure. Can the idiots who invested millions in companies with a business plan that involved *NO* revenue model make it? No. What is doing extremely well? Do you know that from facts or you have just been told? If they are really doing so well because they have a business plan with a revenue model, why do they succeed when others that also have a business plan with revenue model don't? Would their model work outside the US? As far as the future of PHP is concerned, all I can say is: Scoreboard :-) Does Netcraft or e-Soft show JSP surpassing PHP? No. Do you really think PHP will go stagnant at this point? Try looking at the CVS logs. Are you going to convince some Java-kid that he's wrong? No. All I can say to you is that there was then, then there is now and later we'll see. Meaning, in the past PHP has grown its user base because it was advanced for Web development compared to other languages, now other languages are catching up, later we'll see if PHP will keep its popularity when there is nobody marketing it assuring that PHP is a credible brand as programming language. Anyway, once in a while I bother to make (intentionally) constructive criticisms to the way PHP development and its community are going. Usually I get a some of nay -sayers, tipically in denial, trying to contradict me. So, I am kind of used to it. Depite of that, it is interesting that given some time I can see some positive reaction towards what I say, although not admiting that I influenced their views. Never mind, as long as people end up listening and taking some positive action, it was worth spending my very scarce free time. :-) 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
Richard Lynch wrote: Do you really believe that? As far as I can recall, this recession started when a mean judge convicted Microsoft for anti-trust practices. That caused NASDAQ crash that scared people away from investing in tech company stocks. This is the most warped view-point I have heard... The NASDAQ crashed when investors finally figured out that all the dot-coms they had sunk billions into never had *ANY* revenue at all, and no real plan how to generate it, other than the IPO scam itself. At a certain point, even Wall Street realizes that there has to be some reality behind the numbers. There was no question in my mind there would be a net-recession dot-bomb -- I'm surprised it took that long for the VCs to wise up. Exactly. :-) Microsoft's problems had virtually nothing to do with the NASDAQ crash. You do know that Microsoft conviction started NASDAQ crash, don't you? (see the links in my other message) Of course, Microsoft did not cause it (unless you believe in the theory of conspiracy ) :-) 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
personally I would say the same about PHP... I include a select collection of pages with functions that have been preprogrammed... interacting with other files, sites ,server programs, databases... and so forth as necessary. select the right function, enter variables... the only real work done is in fine tuning or developing new master functions... to each thier own Dave -Original Message- From: Jeff Lewis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 6:22 PM To: Dave; Michael Kimsal Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] The future of PHP I would't say that. he says it's modular and easier to code in OOP. Jeff -Original Message- From: Dave [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 6:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Michael Kimsal Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] The future of PHP He also said he likes how Java is OOP and has great error handling. sound more of a judgement on the staffs ability to program than the capability of the language. A great language can have crappy error handling if the designed doesn't program it in well. Dave -- 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] -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
PHP can be extremely sloppy or coded extremely modularly. I think it's a shame that most tutorials on PHP (and ASP, from what I've experienced) show comingling of code and HTML - far more than we ever do in day-to-day PHP work. People get the impression that that's the only way to do stuff, and it's not. It's often the QUICKEST way for small projects (I needed a quick contact form yesterday and built one in a couple minutes with PHP. I don't think it would have been that painless under Java.) Often I have found though that those asking questions are limited in their ability to understand the finer programming methods though... you give an explanation that uses arrays and functions and end up getting a I don't understand or why does that do that... and I consider those two the bare essentials for working smartly with PHP. Dave -- 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]
Re: [PHP] The future of PHP
So, it is very hard to convince the anybody to bet all the farm in PHP. You may have the technical arguments, but is not enough, I'm afraid. You in particular, may not need to convince others to bet on PHP, but it is nothing like that for most people that want to live from software development. They have to put up with work/business opportunities that the market offers to live from it. So, today, I'm afraid that you already still have an hard time to convince people to dedicate only to PHP, even those that know and believe PHP is that great. PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with the current state of PHP marketing in the technical community. PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me personally, to make that happen is unrealistic. Like Linux 5 years ago, PHP is adopted by the techies and somewhat shunned by the suits because they haven't read about it in their latest advertisement-sponsored magazine. We can't possibly hope to compete with Sun and Microsoft when it comes to suit-oriented marketing drivel. What we can do is concentrate on what we do best. Writing a solid and very focused tool. Building the grassroot community and being visible at all relevant technical conferences. If we continue to do this, I see no reason for any dropoff in PHP popularity which leads directly to more and more corporate acceptance. -Rasmus -- 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]
RE: [PHP] The future of PHP
After following this thread for a while, it seems like there is a lot of discrepancy between what is success and what isn't for PHP. I do not believe PHP will ever become the ubiquitous web language, if for no other reason than because it isn't always the right choice for your web based project. PHP is already a strong option in many corporate environments. Really from what I've seen lately, the only reason it loses out to Java, ASP (uggh), or other similar options is that it is difficult to find a team of qualified PHP developers. Even if you can get the project off the ground, the continual maintenance is a problem. Simply put, I think this means we have great potential to have long term success, as far as penetrating the corporate market. As employers start finding the qualified people out there, and as people re-train/relearn, and as fresh meat comes out, the job market will sustain our growth. I would say we don't need the multi-billion dollar backing to be successful as well. Linux, as you particularly mentioned, is shunned by a lot of suits, but it has grown - and that growth has sustained itself over the last 10 years, more relevantly the last 4-5. It's starting to get a little more attractive to suits as bigger and bigger and bigger companies sponsor or use it. I envision PHP going down this road as well, though I obviously don't expect the same grandeur that Linux has received. We will achieve this by doing exactly what Rasmus said - developing a good product. Though I must digress on the subject of technical conferences. While they're valuable and by all means we should be there, I believe the true value will come when people do our work for us - we need to prove to the world that it is cool to use PHP, and they'll make sure all their friends are cool too :) Regards, Cristopher Daniluk President CEO email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] direct: 330/530-2373 Digital Services Network, Inc Unleashing Your Potential voice: 800/845-4822 web: http://www.dsnet.net/ -Original Message- From: Rasmus Lerdorf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 1:52 AM To: Manuel Lemos Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] The future of PHP So, it is very hard to convince the anybody to bet all the farm in PHP. You may have the technical arguments, but is not enough, I'm afraid. You in particular, may not need to convince others to bet on PHP, but it is nothing like that for most people that want to live from software development. They have to put up with work/business opportunities that the market offers to live from it. So, today, I'm afraid that you already still have an hard time to convince people to dedicate only to PHP, even those that know and believe PHP is that great. PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with the current state of PHP marketing in the technical community. PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me personally, to make that happen is unrealistic. Like Linux 5 years ago, PHP is adopted by the techies and somewhat shunned by the suits because they haven't read about it in their latest advertisement-sponsored magazine. We can't possibly hope to compete with Sun and Microsoft when it comes to suit-oriented marketing drivel. What we can do is concentrate on what we do best. Writing a solid and very focused tool. Building the grassroot community and being visible at all relevant technical conferences. If we continue to do this, I see no reason for any dropoff in PHP popularity which leads directly to more and more corporate acceptance. -Rasmus -- 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] -- 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]
