2006/5/12, JupiterHost.Net <mlists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> It's a fact that I can't deny any of the bad points you have exposed
about
> PHP. I even agree with you that most of this problems are really awful
and
> it's pointless to hide them. But the fact that PHP is by preference the
> language for developing small and middle web solutions aimed to be
economic
> and rapidly developed is also undeniable. All languages have their pros
and
> cons, and trying to compare them outside of the context of the target
> market
> is pointless. It just happens that PHP pros fit better the desires of
the
> web solutions market, and they also don't care much about current PHP
cons.
Most people aren't aware of the cons, thats my point :)
Developers are aware (well most of them). Designers are not, project leaders
are not (with the exception of a few), marketing people are not, and all the
people higher up in the administration are not. This is mostly our fault,
there really aren't enough effort applied to educate those outside the IT
world.
For example:
If Mr. big wig was aware that phpBB has a history if being uber
hackable and even being used in a rootkit scheme a time or two he'd not
choose PHP. But its shiny so he says "go with that it looks nice".
That is how its popularity has grown, ignorance of the facts.
> Anyway, this market is evolving and its needs are changing, so it's
normal
> for developers to try and anticipate future development needs and try to
> make PHP fit into other philosophies, methodologies or technologies it
was
> not designed to work with, and everyone who has tried this (including
me)
> have started to hate PHP in a certain way. But that's all there is to
it, I
> hate not having a proper application framework, I hate not having
> namespaces, I hate the overhead of working with OOP, I hate magic
quotes,
> but I still use PHP because it is still the most appropiate development
> enviroment for a small or middle sized web solution.
Why not use Perl, it has all the "pros" but does not have the cons :)
Because it has cons, and lots of them. It's not a language who was designed
for web development and this becomes a hassle. Its language constructions
are not as intuitive as other languages, there are too many ways of doing
the same thing, and too many different "code conventions" (if they can be
called as such). So it really becomes complicate to make one perl developer
work with another perl developer. There are too many basic data structures
for a scripting language, PHP arrays work better in almost any situation,
are easier to understand and use. Debugging a perl application requires a
higher level of programming skills.
In fact, I use it for several high volumn websites:
- with persistent database connections and persistently running
instances of the script
(which is the *only* positive PHP has, except it means running PHP
as "nobody" and with really really bad permissions)
- without doing *anything* with apache
- works with SuExec so it runs as the user so the permissions can be
700 and config files 600 - try that with PHP without days of fiddling
and breaking stuff and finally giving up ;)
Now you have the only "benefit" of PHP (but better) without *any* of its
downside.
> I'm guessing this part, but I think you think alike and that's the
reason
> you're still on this list and trying to make a point out of your bad
> experiences with PHP. We can still hope that this problems will be
solved
It won't, for "backwards compatibility" they'll have to keep the cobbled
up mess. Or else make it new from scratch and remove the crap, but in
that case itd be a brand new langauge and would have all the problems
inherent with that :)
I think they have proved they don't care too much about backward
compatibility. You have just to see what happened to the [] and {} string
operator: deprecated, undeprecated and so on. They only care about keeping
the core features of PHP (those that really made the language stand where it
is).
Thanks for sharing your opinion and concerns, I really appreciate them.
My pleasure, I've been managing hundreds of servers for nearly a decade
and PHP has always had seriouse drawbacks. I've really honestly tried to
make a go of it but its just to much overhead to be worth it, IMHO :)
PHP doesn't have too much overhead when it's used in its most primitive way.
Everything procedural, everything on arrays and only load what you need.
This way it can run as fast as anyone. But this can only be used for small
solutions and some medium web solutions, it isn't applyable to every need.
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