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Zend Taking PHP In the Wrong Direction?
dvanatta writes "Is Zend taking PHP in the wrong direction? Ian Felton asks 'Why is PHP become more like Java, when the PHP developer community seems to
want anything but that to happen? What is Zend thinking?'" From the article: "Data from a Zend survey completed in June 2003 (when PHP5 was still in major development) showed that the characteristics of the PHP community didn't necessarily match up with what was developed in PHP5. For example, with the ability to list three primary programming languages, only 18% of respondents named Java."
I use PHP across a whole bunch of websites, including version 5 - how is it anything like java? Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but all the 'old' scripts I have still work pretty good - without stopping any browser for 15 seconds (java) while it does its thing.
(I did read the article too)
The future isn't here yet. It might not be all gloomy.
In the Zend survey, 93% of respondents listed PHP as a primary language and 69% listed HTML.
People who think HTML is a programming language really have no business setting the direction of PHP.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Exactly. For a good example, take spreadfirefox.com for instance. Currently there is an article about cnet's take on IE 7 and Firefox and Asa asks people to state their opinions for the media or others who might be reading this to get an idea about what the Mozilla Community is like. Well I was reading most the comments and every single one had a HUGE grammatical mistake. Now in most situations I don't proof read my comments such as a case like this but when someone tells me my comments will be read by a great number of people and influence the way Firefox looks to others then I would be a little bit more serious.
Neways ya PHP is nothing like Java. I've been using it for 7 years and if they mean by OOP that its more like java then they aren't too clever because PHP isn't making OOP the required way of programming or anything. They are simply providing people with more options to program and they still allow people to choose what they want. People still find OOP scary it would seem and although there are arguments for an against it, I think its up to the individual if they want to use it and that seems to be the way the PHP development is taking it.
I'm always puzzled by technology "insiders" writing about groups that are "destroying products" that "mainstream developers" want to use.
Reality check: "Mainstream developers" are people who a) pay nothing to use the software and b) have no product alliegiance whatsoever.
People are using PHP because it's useful and it's free. But being free doesn't help Zend in any way. They're changing the direction of the product slowly so that they'll eventually make some profit off of either PHP itself or PHP-addons using their server language / server engine.
My Philosophy: Unless you're paying for a product, or actively developing for the product, don't bitch when the people who *do* need money because they're the ones making the product decide they want to change it.
By the way, I use PHP quite a bit, and haven't really noticed that much of a difference from PHP4 to PHP5. Some small things, but nothing earth shattering.
Because content is far more important than grammar.
In any case, for those mistakes that have been corrected, you wouldn't know about them. It's only the mistakes that stand out, which skews the viewpoint.
Humans are imperfect. Even Clippy can't help sometimes.
Since when is HTML a programming language?
I haven't written anything in PHP5 yet, but from what I've seen, I wouldn't call it "complex". If they find it "complex", they should just stick to HTML.
Yeah, they may run Windows as their desktop OS, but that doesn't stand for anything. Sure, they might usually check out their newest scripts in their desktop, but they all pretty much end up in their server, which is probably running some *NIX.
So? As long as the engine doesn't become slow or very resource hungry, more features are always welcome; the new OO model might help someone write better (e.g. cleaner) PHP code. If you don't like the new OO model, then just don't use it.
What does Linus have to do with PHP? Why would be care what Linus would do, seriously? Also, about that section mentioning all Zend people driving fancy cars and stuff, and the company trying to profit. Of course it's trying to profit; it's a company! I don't know of any companies that don't have profit in mind. They make a good engine, so PHP is based on it. Are you telling me that that shouldn't have happened because Zend is a company? Think again..
My $0.02
Exactly... and just as importantly it's easy to not use them if you don't want to. PHP used to have a pretty clunky object model. They improved it. So?
No artist tolerates reality. -- Nietzsche
People hate OOP, but complain about organization of code.
People hate writing the same things over an dover again themselves, but java has APIs for lots of things, so you don't have to do so.
So php is being pushed into an OOP direction, not a clean implementation, the APIs are being provided, ugly as they may be, and things were never unverbose/cryptic... so what's the problem again?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Why is PHP become more like Java, when the PHP developer community seems to want anything but that to happen?
;-)
That's because most of the PHP programmers are uneducated writers of throw-away code. They are people who use PHP because they can make dynamic pages without needing to really learn anything; people who mix HTML and SQL; people who never bother to check for errors; people who think register_globals was a great idea, because they didn't have to type "complicated statements" like echo $_POST['somevar']; and the list goes on and on.
The most common argument I hear against PHP becoming more like Java is that now there are so many new things you need to learn. But this is not due to changes in the language making it harder to write crappy code - that's just as easy as it was before. The main reason for needing to learn new stuff seems to be the increasing number of competent programers in the PHP community who put pressure on the incompetent ones, who in turn pound their little fists on the table and cry that PHP is acquiring too many features from other languages. I'm sorry, but knowing the difference between "if" and "for" statements does not make you a programmer.
Ripping off Java is probbably the only real chance for PHP to be taken more seriously in the business world. After all, it worked for C#.