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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."
I have been an avid user of php, I have even made my own website using PHP. It is so good that big sites such as mine use it. For all serious developers, PHP is the best choice for all php programming.
Do you play with your Willy?
there are several classes, including the PEAR DB class, that provide a DB abstraction layer.
Ceci n'est pas un post
What the hell is PHP?
Probably a troll, but just in case anyone else doesn't know: PHP is a scripting language designed for generating dynamically created web pages. It functions by mixing its scripting in with the HTML, thus allowing programmers to reuse existing page designs. The scripting APIs are centered around those commonly used on Unix systems. PHP is usually bundled with Apache, so no installation tends to be required.
PHP Homepage
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You've done such a wonderful job that it's time you stop now and let something better take over :)
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
I've made my living for the past 3 years as an independent PHP developer. I don't care what anybody thinks of PHP, it makes me money to live.
Meh.
http://bbspot.com/News/2000/6/php_suspend.html
Technoli
Yes, that simple thing which is overused for learning and coding pratices. In the times when you are have to look for good perl manual, PHP manual from the very begining was perfect. That's it. And second best thing came when they added those comments for user experience.
:)
So, in any way, PHP is such thing which just works.
Congrats!
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Dude, you need to provide links. I had to *gasp* Google it! ;-)
:-)
For others, PEAR can be found here:
PEAR Class Repository
The Database classes of PEAR appear to be documented here:
Database Package
Looking over the DB classes, it looks like they provide a fairly decent abstraction. Thanks Quinto, that will definitely be nice for future PHP projects.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You wrote an OGG Vorbis decoder in PHP? Maybe I'm missing something, but why? That doesn't strike me as a very good language to be doing such a thing in. The "PHP Way" is to leave heavy processing like that to an external library such as libogg/libvorbis. You can then use PHP as a frontend for presenting info, streaming the data, and uploading files.
:-)
I realize that PHP can be cool at times, but one has to use the right tool for the job at hand.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
PHP has long followed the KISS principle
Are you smoking crack? PHP is more inconsistent than any other language I've encountered. I'm not disrespecting the team, as I'm sure they've worked hard, and it's great to celebrate ten years of an admittedly very useful language, but PHP is not an inherently easy language.. it's just one that lets you code sloppily and get away with it.
For a start, PHP functions seem to have no consistency at all. Sometimes you get verb/object, sometimes object/verb. Sometimes you get underscores, sometimes you don't. Consider.. is_object but isset. str_rot13 but strpos. php_uname but phpversion. There are hundreds of these. It's the reason I could never learn PHP, it's like learning Chinese, but I found Perl (and now Ruby) easy due to their relative consistency. Sometimes PHP uses "to", sometimes it uses "2".. huh what's that about?
Unlike Perl which has a few regular expression constructions and a handful of modifiers.. PHP has a whole glut of regular expression functions which have confusing names, some of which take certain modifiers, and some that don't. As someone who has mastered Perl's regular expressions I find it a major struggle when I have to tackle something in PHP (I admit, I've never 'learned' PHP, but I find it a very hard language to make quick fixes on for other people.. compared to, say, C, VB or Python, languages I don't know intimately but can easily hack).
PHP has thousands of core functions.. nuts! And why does PHP have such a bizarre lack of abstraction? PHP often has about 10 functions compared to other languages' single function.. with each of the 10 doing a slightly different thing. When it comes to being overly wordy and inconsistent, I doubt anything can beat PHP, but, well, I'd like to see someone bring up a language that is!
So if you were going to call any language "KISS", it'd be Ruby or Python.. but PHP? No way.
I think it is obvious why PHP has become so popular:
1. It is very easy to learn
2. It is easy to use (unlike ASP.NET) and relatively simple
3. The syntax is derived from C and perl
4. It is free
Just a quick point--you can use Perl's regular expressions in PHP. And that's usually what I see people doing. As a matter of fact, it is recommended in the PHP documentation that Perl's regular expressions be used: Note: preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to ereg().
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
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.
I've been developing website backends in PHP for 3 years, and large enterprise-scale apps for the past 1 year. It's a common misconception that PHP isn't appropriate for large applications.
It's all in how you use it. Do you hack together a bunch of pages with isolated scripts talking to html forms and databases in an ad-hoc manner? Or did you start with a solid application design model from the start and follow through with time-tested methodologies?
PHP gets a bad rep because of the large number of inexperienced developers using it with poor results. I've developed full CRM and ERP apps with it including invoicing and ticketing systems that scale beautifully and are a dream to maintain. PHP is fast, free, and easy to use.
It's the responsibility of the developers to use more mature practices when developing large apps- and to recognize the fact that small site admin areas often evolve into larger apps. Plan and design!