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In the 90's people used to make exactly the same types of comments about Perl. Perl and Perl Devs were the whipping boy of the language snobs.

Perl was rightly whipped, but it was whipped for different things. There was some intersection (as in, dubious design decisions promoting unmaintainable code), but in general, Perl got the flak because it had too many ways to do the same thing. As far as consistency goes, though, I don't think it's an issue there. It's complex (and consequently powerful), but it's consistent. PHP is not complex, but it's not consistent either.

The fact of the matter is PHP *is* one of the most productive languages around otherwise it wouldn't have absolutely blown Perl away in less than 4 years from when it was introduced.

PHP didn't blow Perl away - by the time PHP was strong, Perl was long blown away by ASP and (raw) JSP - and PHP killed those two, because they were too primitive, yet at the same time too heavyweight, specifically with respect to web development, in comparison.

Python and Ruby will always be niche as they are developed by ideology, not by practicality.

The ideology of Python is practicality, that's practically what the entire language is about. Practicality, however, includes such not quite obvious bits as writing maintainable code by default - it's utterly practical, but unfortunately often ignored. PHP became popular among that crowd in particular because it made it easy to ignore such matters, and focus on cranking out KLoCs.

Then also, Python - a niche language, really? Why don't you go tell Google? or, say, RedHat?

Finally PHP doesn't need to be compared to Perl or Python or Ruby, it's now at a place and running some of the biggest sites in the world along side Java a place where Perl once was and Python and Ruby will *never* be.

There used to be that insanely popular language for developing in-house desktop applications - went by the name of Visual Basic. Version 6 was especially huge.

Then 2002 came, and that little thing called ".NET Framework" was released. And where are those coders who thought VB is so good (well, it must be good because it's so popular, surely?) it'll never end? Well, the smart ones moved on. Those even smarter saw the writing on the wall with Java, and already had all knowledge necessary to jump ships as soon as C# arrived. The rest? Signing petitions to bring back their days of glory.

Let that be a warning to all of us.

Such is the state of reality at this point from a Java first / PHP second / Occassional-Python (the more I use it the less I like it) Assembly for microcontrollers, very Ex-Perl programmers point of view.

In my 8 years of experience, I've seen huge code bases of C++. They aren't going away any time soon. New stuff? So long as it's on Windows, it's mostly .NET - and you'd be surprised as to how many of that is out there, even if you go by the stats.

PHP is huge, no doubt, but it's not the only big player.

And, yes - Python and especially Ruby are catching on fast, specifically on the web. Elsewhere it wasn't even a contest, as there wasn't anything as sucky as ASP for PHP to come and kill with a slow poke there; and on its merits, it can't really win against the alternatives.

I mean, how many GUI apps written in PHP have you seen? how many of them didn't suck?

Now ask the same about Python.

Because one of the first clauses in any OSS license states that the software comes with NO WARRANTY, meaning that if it fucks your shit up, no one can be held accountable.

Do you mean, like this one?

G. NO OTHER WARRANTIES. The limited warranty is the only direct warranty from Microsoft. Microsoft gives no other express warranties, guarantees or conditions. Where allowed by your local laws, Microsoft excludes implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. If your local laws give you any implied warranties, guarantees or conditions, despite this exclusion, your remedies are described in the Remedy for Breach of Warranty clause above, to the extent permitted by your local laws.

And the remedies for the few things that the warranty does cover:

D. REMEDY FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY. Microsoft will repair or replace the software at no charge. If Microsoft cannot repair or replace it, Microsoft will refund the amount shown on your receipt for the software. It will also repair or replace supplements, updates and replacement software at no charge. If Microsoft cannot repair or replace them, it will refund the amount you paid for them, if any. You must uninstall the software and return any media and other associated materials to Microsoft with proof of purchase to obtain a refund. These are your only remedies for breach of the limited warranty.

(emphasis mine)

There is also the fact that there is no contractual obligation to continue support for the software.

I couldn't find anywhere on that EULA where are they in a contractual obligation to continue support for the software. I didn't look very hard, though.

Oh, sure, "It's open source, you can fix everything yourself!" This is one of my favorite idealistic arguments of FOSS proponents that doesn't take into account the man hours that would be required not only to learn and understand the code base, but then to make the required modifications. So, your safest option is to purchase a support contract, which of course means that you're "throwing" money at FOSS.

You have the option of throwing money at a support company if you need to, to deploy your own programmers if you consider it to be a more cost-effective solution, or not having support at all. And if you choose to pay a company, you will be getting your support in no uncertain terms, unlike the vague fuzzy feeling that just becuase you paid for a user license, the authors will provide you the support you need with no additional cost.

At this point, there is no real inherent benefit to using FOSS, and your choice in software is going to be based on it's quality and technical merits.

Yeah, there is no value whatsoever in being able to chose your support venue, instead of having to rely on petitions to the software maker when they decide to shut down theirs.

Yeah! What up with Basic these days? VB classic is dead, and VB.Net is C# in disguise, with the need to define "using system.standard.feature.math"-like things. The best feature of Basic was that it was, well, basic. Assembler, C and Basic were quite a good spectrum of programming languages, spanning all the needs of control over what happens vs. ease of programming.

Java and .Net and all this object orientedness is a nice concept when you have to manage humongous projects, but they neither give you ease of programming that Basic had, nor the superb level of control that C has. As far as developing a massive system in C only, it works, look at Win32 API. As far as security and buffer overflows go, there should be ways to fix those without changing paradigms. Instead of C++++ (i.e. C#), we need a C----.

Exactly. Look at what is happening to the VB community. They have no where to turn because MS made their whole code base legacy with VB.NET If VB were open source, they could just fork the project. Instead, they have to petition MS, and MS isn't listening as of yet.

This is the petition right here. It is signed by many VB MVPs.

http://classicvb.org/petition

Clearly, you, who accuse the people who signed the VB6 petition of not wanting to learn a new language, don't understand the issue at hand.

The problem is with having to completely re-write old working code to ensure that it will still work in the future and to make it interoperable with the new code (which they, by the way, are happy to write in VB.NET, C#, etc.).

How would *you* like to rewrite those gigantic masses of old code that took you a long time to write in the first place and that still works well? And while you're doing it, think at the same time of all the other people who, unlike you, are doing new development, or improving their software in a new programming language or in an old one.

http://classicvb.org/petition/faq.asp

For those of you that wish for Microsoft to continue developing classic VB, Sign the Petition! It's too popular a language to just toss aside and break everyones existing code.