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IBM Backs PHP for Web Development
Christopher Reimer writes "C|Net is reporting that IBM will be getting behind the open-source language PHP for its WebSphere server software and tools. From the article: 'Big Blue's public commitment to PHP is significant because the company has the technical and marketing resources to accelerate usage of the open-source product.'" Evidently PHP is indeed becoming more popular.
I have to ask the same question. It seems to me that PHP gained popularity as an *nix/c-Syntax alternative to Microsoft's ASP. Like ASP - quick, dirty, cheap, and not-compiled. But for all its faults, ASP at least had Option Explicit .
:-\
However, the language seems lend itself to a lot coding flaws - explicitly defined variables, variables that can do quadruple duty as scalars, arrays, maps and references with no visual cue as to what they're for, abuse of global variables, no standard library resulting in 5+ functions that do the same thing - that result in unreadable, obtuse and convoluted code.
(Before somebody flames me about such things being a matter of "taste" - there are academic studies out there regarding human comprehension of coding styles. These things are quantifiable. That's why it's called Computer Science - not Computer Art)
Yes, bad progammers can make even the best language suck, but PHP really gives you free reign to be more sloppy than most. Yeah, a lot of php apps look slick (phpNuke, phpAdmin, etc) but under the hood they're a mess.