Slashdot Mirror

campuscodi writes: PHP7 and HHVM have been exchanging punches for a while via benchmarks. While the PHP supporters were always saying, just wait until the stable version comes out, well... the stable version is out, and a recent benchmark reveals that "HHVM beats PHP7.0 hands down." Compared on: WordPress, Magento, Drupal8, Laravel, PyroCMS, and October CMS. You can still be a "PHP supporter" and favor HHVM, which "serves as an execution engine for the PHP and Hack programming languages."

An anonymous reader writes: PHP 7.0 RC2 was released on Friday. In addition to the new language features, PHP 7.0 is advertised as having twice the performance of PHP 5. Benchmarks of PHP 7.0 RC2 show that these performance claims are indeed accurate, and just not for popular PHP programs like WordPress. In tests done by Phoronix, the PHP performance was 2~2.5x faster all while consuming less memory than PHP 5.3~5.6. Facebook's HHVM implementation meanwhile still held a small performance lead, though it was consuming much more memory. PHP 7.0 is scheduled to be released in November.

tgeller writes "Drupal developer Ben Buckman attended the BostonPHP Framework Bake-Off with the hopes of pitting the CMS against CakePHP, Symfony, Zend, and CodeIgniter. He was told that he couldn't because Drupal is 'not a framework,' a response he felt was 'coder-purist snobbery ("it's not a framework if you build any of it in a UI").' So he decided to unofficially compete in the back of the room by accepting the challenge of building a job-posting app in 30 minutes, while the official competitors did the same from the stage. He recorded the results, which are impressive. In the process he raised the question: What is a framework, anyway?"

gbulmash asks: "Recently, I began working on a graphics project and wanted to use ImageMagick. As a PHP coder, I figured I'd use MagickWand for PHP. But after some investigation, I decided that an alpha at 0.1.8 with sparse documentation just wasn't going to be good enough for production use. I decided that PerlMagick would be a much better API, but I didn't want to code the whole project in Perl. In the end, I found a cool package for embedding Perl code in PHP scripts (with an article on its use) and it went to a 1.0.0 release, earlier this year. I think I've found my answer, but before I make a final decision and go ahead with it, I thought I'd ask the knowledgeable Slashdot crowd: Is there a better way of interfacing Perl with PHP so you can get the best of both worlds?" So you've got Perl in your PHP, is there a way to do PHP in your Perl?

banetbi writes "The new Zend Collaboration Project website is finally online. Included in the site is a completely new PHP Developer Zone and a pre-release of the Zend Framwork."

banetbi writes "The new Zend Collaboration Project website is finally online. Included in the site is a completely new PHP Developer Zone and a pre-release of the Zend Framwork."

ficken writes "Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen recently announced his prediction that PHP will be more popular than Java for building web-based applications." From the article: "Wooing programmers is nothing new in the computing industry, where players constantly jockey to establish their products as an essential foundation. Indeed, many credit Microsoft's success to its highly regarded programming tools, which make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows. PHP has caught on widely. About 22 million Web sites employ it, and useage is steadily increasing. About 450 programmers have privileges to approve changes to the software. Major companies that employ PHP include Yahoo, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online." Meanwhilie, Piersky writes "Zend has announced its rival to .NET and J2EE, with the Zend PHP Framework. In a press release, they stated that it will be 'A Web application framework which will standardize the way PHP applications are built. The Zend PHP Framework will accelerate and improve the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications'. This will for part of Zend's PHP Collaboration Project"

ficken writes "Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen recently announced his prediction that PHP will be more popular than Java for building web-based applications." From the article: "Wooing programmers is nothing new in the computing industry, where players constantly jockey to establish their products as an essential foundation. Indeed, many credit Microsoft's success to its highly regarded programming tools, which make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows. PHP has caught on widely. About 22 million Web sites employ it, and useage is steadily increasing. About 450 programmers have privileges to approve changes to the software. Major companies that employ PHP include Yahoo, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online." Meanwhilie, Piersky writes "Zend has announced its rival to .NET and J2EE, with the Zend PHP Framework. In a press release, they stated that it will be 'A Web application framework which will standardize the way PHP applications are built. The Zend PHP Framework will accelerate and improve the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications'. This will for part of Zend's PHP Collaboration Project"

Dozix007 writes "Uberhacker.Com reports : Zend Technologies quietly announced last week the final release of the open source PHP version 5. An interesting article reports the different strengths and weaknesses of ASP vs. PHP, and it becomes quite clear that with the release of PHP5, Zend has taken a shot at ASP's heart. The differences from PHP4 to 5 has created a clear advantage for the new preprocessor over Microsoft's proprietery ASP."

TheTomcat writes "After years of anticipation, PHP 5 was released today. This release represents a milestone in the evolution of PHP. It sports the new Zend Engine II, a completely re-worked object model, and many many new features. Check it and the changelog out." In other PHP news, remote_bob writes "There have been many attempts, like BinaryPHP and PASM, but finally there is a complete compiler for PHP. The Roadsend compiler produces standalone, native executables, and supports the entire PHP language (but not all extensions). It uses Bigloo Scheme to do its job, a variant of Lisp, the language that Paul Graham writes about. Benchmarks say that performance is pretty good. Is this another sign that dynamic languages are the future?"

joeldg writes "With the new Zend coding contest getting underway, a lot of PHP coders are hacking out some amazing new test code. In that vein and in response to the lack of skinning with PHP-GTK apps, I just finished up writing a tutorial with source code for doing skinnable desktop applications in PHP that run on both Linux and Windows."

HitByASquirrel writes "Just doing the rounds and I found that Zend has released PHP 5.0 Beta 4: 'This fourth beta of PHP 5 is also scheduled to be the last one (barring unexpected surprises, that did occur with beta 3). This beta incorporates dozens of bug fixes since Beta 3, rewritten exceptions support, improved interfaces support, new experimental SOAP support, as well as lots of other improvements, some of which are documented in the ChangeLog.' Hopefully they won't have any 'unexpected surprises' and we'll see this before summer!"

acostin writes "Some open survey results were published about PHP usage in the enterprise on the InterAKT site. An alternative survey on the PHP open source mouvement can be found on Zend site. See how we've evaluated the PHP market size($$$), what people think about PHP as an alternative to Java and .NET, and what should be done in order to have your large clients adopt open source solutions."

TRS-80 writes "Hurry up! Linux.Conf.Au registrations close tomorrow. While you can register on the day, you're likely to miss out on a t-shirt and bag. Some of the speakers at the conference will be: Slashdot's Jeff 'Hemos' Bates, Alan Cox and Telsa Gwynne, Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee, Syslinux author H. Peter Anvin, PHP's Rasmus Lerdorf and of course 'Rusty' Russell. Don't forget the educationaLinux, Debian, IPv6 and Linux Gaming mini-conferences before the main conference."

Henry Birdwell contributes the following review of Wrox Press's Professional PHP4. Read on for his impressions, and to see if this book is right for your own dynamic web programming tasks. Professional PHP4 author Luis Argerich et al pages 975 publisher Wrox Press rating 9 reviewer Henry Birdwell ISBN 1861006918 summary Comprehensive print resource for working PHP programmers.

PHP is an open source server-side HTML-embedded web scripting language for creating dynamic web pages. Outside of it being browser-independent, PHP offers a simple and universal cross-platform solution for e-commerce, complex web, and database-driven applications. Professional PHP4 will show you exactly how to create state-of-the-art web applications that scale well, utilize databases optimally, and connect to a backend network using a multi-tiered approach.

Almost an year since its release, this book has stood the test of time, and proved to be what it promised -- an up-to-date, advanced book on PHP -- a category in which there are very few worthwhile entries to date.

It provides a solid, fast-paced drill on the rudimentaries of PHP (although the fast-paced installation instructions come in the form of classic compendia -- worth 100 pages) for seasoned programmers, before it plunges head straight into the more advanced areas of the language. Each chapter reads a bit like a tutorial on a particular area of advanced PHP development.

If you are a competent programmer in just about any other language or have grappled with HTML before, then this book will teach you PHP from scratch . It will also introduce you to many of the more advanced areas of PHP programming, and is a treasure trove for information on diverse tasks possible with the language.

Notable topics include:

• Object Oriented Programming
• Sessions and Cookies
• Coding an FTP Client
• Sending and Receiving Email and News
• Networking and TCP/IP
• Non-Web Programming (including GTK)
• PHP and XML
• PHP and MySQL/PostgreSQL/ODBC
• Security
• Multi-tier development
• Optimisation

The code for the examples presented in the book is available for download, from the publisher's web site.

Although this book is reasonably complete, it lacks sufficient depth for experienced PHP developers who want to wade into the depths of specific PHP related tasks. Having said that, the publisher has provided information (of course at a separate cost) on specific areas with their second level PHP titles -- Professional PHP4 XML , Beginning PHP4 Multimedia Programming , Beginning PHP4 Databases and Professional PHP Web Services .

Suffice to say that the book has packed together a lot of diverse information (in 975 pages).

Related Links

• The official PHP web site
• Zend - the PHP scripting engine

You can purchase Professional PHP4 from bn.com. (You may also be interested in the Slashdot review of Professional PHP XML of a few months ago.) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Twintop writes: "PHP.net has released the a new version of PHP 4 to include the new Zend 2 Scripting Engine. This alpha update adds more increased support for Java and .NET technologies. More can be found on PHP.net and Beta News.com."

rbolkey queries: "I've been looking for a comparison between Zend's PHP IDE, NuSphere's PHPEd, and Maguma's PHP4EE, but have failed to find any. Does anyone know how these IDEs compare? Are they useful? Are they worth the price?" We last handled this question over a year ago. PHP has changed since then, and I'm sure more development tools for PHP have been released since then. What recommendations do you have for PHP coding environments? What features do you find the most useful?

An unnamed reader writes: "From an email from the webmaster of PHPBuilder.com, Tim Perdue: 'Hello - I'm writing to let you all know that I am no longer with PHPBuilder.com, as internet.com has slashed the budget and the site is no longer actively maintained.' For the rest of the story, check out the article here: NewbieNetwork.net It's a pretty sad day when one of the biggest PHP sites is no long being supported, and essentially bails out. You have to wonder what is going on at Internet.com that they can't support PHPBuilder? Thankfully, there are still several good PHP sites out there for information and support, including Zend."

onnerby writes: "Zend finally has released Zend cache. It looks like a great booster for commercial sites.
They also have released a IDE for PHP-delevopers."

onnerby writes: "Zend finally has released Zend cache. It looks like a great booster for commercial sites.
They also have released a IDE for PHP-delevopers."

It seems that the latest version of the most popular module for Apache, PHP, has been released as PHP 4.0.3. There are some interesting changes, including some security fixes and extensions in shared memory handling. Of special note are the changes in htmlspecialchars/htmlentities and the ENT_COMPAT mode which allows you to reenable the pre-4.0.2 quote translation matrix. Get yours now!

mjgamble writes: "PHP 4.0 Release Candidate 2 is out. Check it out here. From the site: Highlights of this release include support for new Web servers (Zeus, Netscape Enterprise, Apache Win32 module), improved portability of the Unix build framework and tons of bug fixes. We expect this to be the final release candidate before PHP 4.0. " I've found the PHP4 RCs to be extremely stable. If you are only familiar with PHP3, take a look. You should also look at the Zend site, to read more about the engine behind PHP4.

Zelphyr writes "PHP version 4 Release Candidate 1 was released to the public yesterday. Go check it out! Also, Zend Technologies released the second beta of their Zend Optimizer as well. "

dlc writes, "Zend has an article about Michael "Monty" Widenius, of MySQL fame, which focuses mainly on the evolution of MySQL and its relationship with PHP. "

dlc writes, "Zend has an article about Michael "Monty" Widenius, of MySQL fame, which focuses mainly on the evolution of MySQL and its relationship with PHP. "

It's been a week now since ApacheCon 2000 ended. There's been some discussion over the events, with the release of Apache 2.0a being the main topic of conversation. But AC2K was more than just the venue that 2.0a was announced. It was an important and noteworthy conference in it's own right. If you're curious about what happened at AC2K, read on. At this point I think it's prudent to make people aware that I was on the AC2K planning committee, but I'm not speaking for no one but myself. Also, I won't be giving a complete chronological account of AC2K. As the title says, these are my reflections on AC2K.

AC2K was held at the Caribe Royale in Orlando, Florida on March 8-10. Many people may have wondered about the choice of location, but in fact it was an extremely nice facility. Since the conference center and the hotel suites were located on the same campus and within easy walking distance, it kept the conference local and personal. The facilities had an extremely resort-like feel about them, most likely because ... wait for it, wait for it ... it's an actual resort. It was nice to be able to take a quick swim in the pool between sessions.

The conference started on the 8th, and there were many more walk-in registrations than anticipated. As a result, there weren't enough of some goodies (most noteworthy being the cool ApacheCon bags) to go around. In some ways, this was a Good Thing, since it meant that more people would be attending than originally expected, but it's never fun to run out of giveaways. Still, I got my share of coffee mugs and t-shirts. I think most people did as well :)

The conference opened with a plenary session of the Apache Software Foundation. AC2K boasted the biggest concentration of ASF members of any recent event, and provided the opportunity for many members to meet for the first time. The plenary also allowed for a nice Q&A session between the audience and the ASF. The big topic of interest was 2.0, and it was at this time that that a release of 2.0-alpha was promised by the weeks' end, or the following Monday at the latest.

Meanwhile, in the hallway of the conference center, Apple was busy setting up its Internet pavilion. The pavilion provided over a dozen Macs as well as several Ethernet drops for laptops. The entire pavilion was wired to the Net. Personally, I hope the pavilion was a success for Apple, because once it was set up, it was pretty much in constant use. The hotel also had Ethernet Net access in many of the suites. Unfortunately, the access was pretty flaky at times. When it worked, though, and when it wasn't overloaded, it was pretty nice.

There were three keynote addresses at ApacheCon. The first was given Thursday by Alfred Spector of IBM. Alfred talked about IBM's involvement in Open Source, Apache and Linux, stressing IBM's work in helping to make Apache 2.0 a reality. He also emphasized the need for developers to have easier access to tools and code to help them do their work. His keynote also included some talk of IBM's Websphere.

The 2nd keynote, also on Thursday, was given by Brian Behlendorf, President of the ASF. Brian spoke about what the ASF is, what it was designed to do, and what it's doing to help the various projects under the ASF umbrella. Key to the ASF is providing the infrastructure required to allow each project to focus on coding and development.

The final keynote was delivered Friday by Patricia Sueltz of Sun's Java Software Group. Patricia noted Sun's commitment to Open Source, citing Sun's release of code to various Open Source projects, such as the Tomcat servlet engine.

All three keynotes were extremely well-attended and, I think, extremely well-received. One of the common comments heard at AC2K was that although self-described "geeks and nerds" are Pro-Apache (and Pro-Open Source) that it's hard to convince "management" to move in that direction. At the very least, having heavyweights like Sun, IBM and Apple behind Apache should provide some justification to the movement.

Apache 2.0a was released at the conference's closing ceremony. The announcement was unique: Before the crowd of attendees, the announcement article was posted on Slashdot. When the main Slashdot page was refreshed, and the article was displayed, the crowd started to applaud. "There it is... we've announced 2.0a." At the same time, announcements were being sent to the various Apache mailing lists. During the closing plenary, the audience provided feedback regarding the conference while we all monitored the load and downloads on the Apache site on the viewscreen. It was all very geeky.

On Thursday and Friday, AC2K held an Expo with quite a number of vendors. Even the ASF had a booth, where nifty pins and luggage tags where given out. It was a great opportunity for the ASF to meet more personally with developers. I know I had a great time in the "ASF kissing booth." The Expo hall also had an area set aside for Expo vendors to do short presentations. The most popular presentation, IMO, was the one from ZEND by Zeev Suraski. It was standing-room-only, and there was even applause at the end of his presentations, an usual sound at Expo exhibits.

In general, the quality of the actual Conference presentations and speakers were quite good. Some audiences contained a mix of newbies and experts, so it was difficult for the speaker to get the right "technical level," but I think that everyone most likely left whatever presentation they went to with some new information. The "Birds Of a Feather" sessions were also very successful, since they were more brainstorming get togethers.

All in all, the conference was a great success. The feedback at the closing plenary certainly seemed to reinforce that. Sure, there were things that could have been done "better" and these will certainly be "fixed" in later ApacheCon's. But this was the first ApacheCon actually coordinated directly by the ASF. When all was said and done, there were more than 1000 attendees -- again, more than anyone expected. Of course, the feedback from those 1K attendees is very important. Attendees were encouraged to fill out "feedback/survey" forms, and one will be available online at the ApacheCon site soon. If you attended, please be sure that you are honest and thorough in your feedback.

Almost as important as the technical intercourse ("heh heh heh, he said 'intercourse'"), was the social aspect of the conference. It was great meeting so many Apache developers face to face, and having the opportunity to socialize with them. The 2 AC2K "social events" were some very bright spots of the conference. A lot of development happened right there while drinking a beer or munching on some buffalo wings.

With one successful ApacheCon under their belt, the ASF has no intention of not taking advantage of the momentum. ApacheCon Europe was announced at AC2K, and will be held October 23-25, 2000 in London, England at the Olympia Conference Center. Very soon, there will be a call for papers/presentations. Keep your eye on the ApacheCon site for more info.

Long live the feather!

cybermalandro noted that Zend now has a Web site. The company is helping support the very popular PHP Web scripting language that powers freshmeat and Server 51 among countless other sites.

The PHP Group announced today the latest and greatest beta version of PHP 4 (download here). PHP 4 is a rewrite of PHP 3 and incorporates the super-fast Zend engine. Noteworthy in this beta is built-in XML support, a PHP core repository and better session tracking. There's also a bunch of bug fixes as well. According to Netcraft, mod_php is the most popular Apache module in use.

Emphyrio writes "Today, the first beta of Zend (php 4.0 scripting engine) was released. Php 4.0, in combination with the Zend scripting engine, is supposed to be a faster, more efficient, and enhanced version of php 3.0. Benchmarks between php 4.0/Zend and ASP have been made, giving _very_ good results, and showing php 4.0/Zend to outperform asp greatly. Php 4.0 is the first public php release using the Zend scripting engine, wich is relased under the QPL source license. More information about Zend and php 4.0 can be found on the Zend home page and the Php 4.0 homepage. . "