A Decade of PHP

digidave writes "It was slow to catch and a lot of people didn't get it. A lot of people still don't get it, but you can't argue with its success. June 8th, 2005 marks the tenth anniversary of PHP. Here's to ten more wonderful and exciting years."

Comments

PHP vs JSP

[SamSeaborn]

Congrats to PHP for its success, but I'm one of those who doesn't get it.

I tried PHP, but I didn't feel it gave me the rigid OO structure and sophisticated APIs I get from Java, JSPs & Servlets.

Not trolling, just saying I'm surprised that Java and Servlet hosting isn't as popular as PHP. I'm obviously missing some key point.

Sam

Re:Congratulations are in order!

[rho]

I've never understood the fanaticism of database abstraction. There's good reason to hardcode to a specific database, especially if you hardcode to a Free database like PostgreSQL.

For example, if you use a database abstraction, you have to make a lot of performace- or feature-robbing choices. There are still hosting situations where MySQL is still on 3.23, so you can't use the better parts of the InnoDB storage engine. So no foreign key constraints, no stored procedures.

On the other hand, if you do hardcode for PostgreSQL, you put a burden on the end user, sure--but in return, you're giving them a more robust, more featureful application that is easier to support and maintain. I personally like PostgreSQL because it seems less haphazard than MySQL, but you could very easily do this with MySQL, so long as you restrict yourself to the later, non-crippled versions.

The Arsdigita folks did this with Oracle. Leaning on a $tens-of-thousands database application may put you out of the realm of everyday developers, but it's far from insane.

This is "all the time I've spent dealing with other people's code that doesn't have a foreign key to be found and all integrity checking is done in the PHP code" talking. It's infuriating.

Re:Congratulations are in order!

[AKAImBatman]

I completely agree. The primary reason why native code would be nice is that a bundled API would help put peer pressure on coders to use it. Which means that we'd see fewer "quick hacks/prototypes" (that always turn into production sites) using database specific code.

Re:mysql_escape_string

[joebp]

mysql_escape_string is deprecated and should never be used in production code! The replacement is the hilariously named mysql_real_escape_string.

Your "not that hard" comment is rather amusing with this in mind.

Still broken.

[Pingster]

Ten years and the == operator is still completely broken. Any hope of fixing it in the next ten?

% cat test.php
<?php if ("spam" == 0) print "I am insane."; ?>

% php test.php
I am insane.

%

Suppose A equals B, and also B equals C. Any reasonable person would expect that A equals C, right? Oh yeah?

% cat equality.php
<?php

$a = 0;
$b = "eggs";
$c = "spam";

print ($a == $b) ? "a == b\n" : "a != b\n";
print ($b == $c) ? "b == c\n" : "b != c\n";
print ($a == $c) ? "a == c\n" : "a != c\n";
print ($a == $d) ? "a == d\n" : "a != d\n";
print ($b == $d) ? "b == d\n" : "b != d\n";
print ($c == $d) ? "c == d\n" : "c != d\n";

?>

% php equality.php
a == b
b != c
a == c
a == d
b != d
c != d

%

Try explaining that to a first-time programmer.