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Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

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Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#31

Post by cellis »

tentonova2 wrote: post #20
breck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make a valid point. Maintaining PHP apps can be a pain and the language isn't the prettiest to work with. However, PHP has created a world where millions of people can create basic web applications, which has led to the creation of tens of millions of new sites and applications, some of those which have changed the world. PHP has allowed more people to code, which has allowed the world to test many more i…

This sounds like a false dichotomy: - A world that has PHP and enabled web developers. - A world without PHP in which only Java EE-enabled engineers can write webapps. I think that's a demonstrably false assessment. A language as poorly designed and implemented as PHP isn't necessary to be accessible to "millions of people" -- in fact, does the opposite in enabling them to make serious and expensive mistakes.

I don't think you're looking holistically at the environment of building a dynamic website with no experience at all programming, which is what I think this conversation is about.

If you can, put aside all that you know about language design, frameworks, and software engineering, and try to think from the perspective of a person just wanting to "get something up". Say you want an online store. An online store requires a shopping cart. You ask google how to do this, and google tells you: How to build a shopping cart with PHP. For whatever reason, php was chosen by the internet gods to be the beneficiary of a positive feedback loop: beginners use php, find it easy to use, write tutorials. Tutorials attract google, which means the community is likely to be less of the programmer type (programmers would already know how to do these things in python) and more of hobbyists/internet entreprenuers with little technical skill. Because this community is comprised of less technical people, they are more understanding of the shortcomings of n00bs. They turn away less "stupid" questions, write more tutorials and abstract more of the academic attributes of programming that "make it work". By virtue of attracting so many people, inevitably, there will be some truly capable practitioners that will go on to have success. Derek Sivers of CD Baby fame is one I can think of.

The point i'm really trying to drive home is that the accessibility of a language isn't just about being easy to learn, but about having a welcoming community and environment that helps new users.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#33

Post by jawngee »

jrockway wrote: post #15
nir wrote: post #10

Rasmus Lerdorf created the most popular language for building web apps. Websites that changed the world were built with this language, and most newcomers seem to choose it as well. It managed to get a substantial share of a market that companies like Microsoft or Sun put huge resources into. On top of all that, he actually remains a pretty cool and down to earth guy, as far as I can tell from reading his online stuff…

But it's not intrinsically good; every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages, without all the downsides. PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. It's certainly an accomplishment to create popular software, but this popular software is not necessarily something that should be u…

How do you get anything done? You seem so hung up on the tools versus creating stuff with tools. I guess it makes sense because you're the maintainer of a web framework ... for perl ... a language saddled with a checkered history of generating some pretty unmaintainable shit. And my guess is that you will respond saying "you can write maintainable code in perl!" And, of course, one would counter that you can do the same with PHP. Which boils this whole discussion down to being about the developers and the quality of developers, and less about the quality of the languages.

So why are there so many crappy PHP developers? Because anyone can make it do something approximating what they are envisioning it doing, no matter the skill level. That seems pretty powerful to me. And, in the end, it's really about the results instead of how one necessarily got to those results. You can't make money if you don't deliver a product. And if history is any indication, only a tiny fraction of the masses care about quality. The dominance of Wal-mart and MySpace are proof of this. My guess about your guess is those millions of lost man-hours have been made up with the millions of hours beating competing products to market due to the rapid nature of PHP development. I mean if we are throwing around unverifiable assumptions, let's do it, let's get crazy with it.

"A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop." - Robert Hughes

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#35

Post by siegler »

jrockway wrote: post #15
nir wrote: post #10

Rasmus Lerdorf created the most popular language for building web apps. Websites that changed the world were built with this language, and most newcomers seem to choose it as well. It managed to get a substantial share of a market that companies like Microsoft or Sun put huge resources into. On top of all that, he actually remains a pretty cool and down to earth guy, as far as I can tell from reading his online stuff…

But it's not intrinsically good; every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages, without all the downsides. PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. It's certainly an accomplishment to create popular software, but this popular software is not necessarily something that should be u…

every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages

Speed in a shared hosting environment. I've read about developers running multiple commercial sites from a single Dreamhost account e.g. http://www.pseudocoder.com/archives/2009/01/04/how-much-mone... . That's not realistic with Java, RoR, or Perl.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#36

Post by docgnome »

rams wrote: post #27

He also reportedly said,"Humans can't write thread-safe code. It's simply beyond us". (Can't find the source). I have heard him say at a conference that, PHP is for week-end warriors.

I've heard Joel Spolsky say that. https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W29083

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#37

Post by jawngee »

tentonova2 wrote: post #14
Asa-Nisse wrote: post #8

This makes me love PHP more. If that was possible. He just gets it. If you want to spend your days drawing UML, writing documentation and unit tests. That is dandy, but you're in PHPLand now. This is our land, and we dont care about no freakin' memory leaks.

Do you have any concept of just how much time and money hacked-together PHP has cost? Do you know how many aggregate human lifetimes are wasted on the simple act of regularly upgrading PHPBB, WordPress, MediaWiki, et al? It's mindboggling. It's sad. It's penny wise, pound foolish.

Yet Wordpress is still the most widely used blog software ever. PHPBB and it's ilk still run the forum game. Wikipedia has yet be unseated.

If it's cost > it's profit, why is it still used so widely?

I recently replaced a C#/.NET app with a PHP version and saved a company close to a million a year in licensing, servers, staffing and development costs. Not to mention it took my team a third of the time to develop as the original application, yet performed better and had more functionality. There was a significant gap in LoC as well.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#38

Post by gruseom »

jawngee wrote: post #33
jrockway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not intrinsically good; every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages, without all the downsides. PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. It's certainly an accomplishment to create popular software, but this popular software is not necessarily something that should be u…

How do you get anything done? You seem so hung up on the tools versus creating stuff with tools. I guess it makes sense because you're the maintainer of a web framework ... for perl ... a language saddled with a checkered history of generating some pretty unmaintainable shit. And my guess is that you will respond saying "you can write maintainable code in perl!" And, of course, one would counter that you can do the s…

You undermine your argument by making it personally aggressive.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#39

Post by shmichael »

mcantelon wrote: post #18
jrockway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not intrinsically good; every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages, without all the downsides. PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. It's certainly an accomplishment to create popular software, but this popular software is not necessarily something that should be u…

>PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. Could you give some examples of this? I'm not a huge fan of PHP, but it generally works, as folks like FaceBook have proven.

It greatly depends on what you compare PHP to, but to highlight a handful of disadvantages,

* PHP is considered extremely weak performance-wise

* There is poor to no support of multithreading

* There is no eventing system

* As a web framework, it sins in mixing code & design (opposed to e.g. Django-Python or Ruby on Rails)

(If the term "framework" seems unfit, think of "web-targeted toolkits")

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#40

Post by dangrover »

shmichael wrote: post #39
mcantelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution. Could you give some examples of this? I'm not a huge fan of PHP, but it generally works, as folks like FaceBook have proven.

It greatly depends on what you compare PHP to, but to highlight a handful of disadvantages, * PHP is considered extremely weak performance-wise * There is poor to no support of multithreading * There is no eventing system * As a web framework, it sins in mixing code & design (opposed to e.g. Django-Python or Ruby on Rails) (If the term "framework" seems unfit, think of "web-targeted toolkits")

PHP is not a framework.
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