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Rambling On [PHP] Internals

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Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#11

Post by McGlockenshire »

dkhenry wrote: post #4

I think the only hope PHP has of continuing development is if someone big like Facebook can add some direction to it. Maybe they will but I think last I checked even they were giving up on using it for much more then a thin veneer to their back end services.

Even if a large company like Facebook did want to help add direction, they'd have to do so within the confines of internals and the RFC process.

The prehistoric luddites and trolls on the list would shout down any truly language-improving proposals in the same way they always do, regardless of source.

The only way to get rid of those unwanted elements would be a fork, but that would be unproductive. The remaining thing keeping PHP so popular is how amazingly ubiquitous it is. A fork wouldn't have that advantage, especially in comparison to languages and environments that are objectively better anyway.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#12

Post by 0x0 »

Is this just a case of meritocracy at play?

I haven't followed the full discussion and events leading up to here, but would it be very wrong to assume this just a case of a bystander starting a discussion that didn't really catch on with any of the active maintainers?

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#13

Post by maratd »

Supermighty wrote: post #5
Pxtl wrote: post #3

Any large community has these problems. This is the advantage to using forum engines that allow non-anonymous upvotes/downvotes over a naive mail-list - people can silently agree and separate the wheat from the chaff, and consensus becomes far more visible. You can even give the important contributors greater "weight" to the ups/downs (this is not a democracy, contributors are worth more).

He's not looking for up/down votes. He's looking for a discussion. Which well-meaning participants in an open source project should be able to have with some civility.

You can find discussion greatly facilitated when everyone has the power to silence the imbeciles by down-voting them into oblivion.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#14

Post by gesman »

PHP is addictive.

You can create whole web app in one PHP file from scratch and it will have everything including API and DB management layer and be secure and fully functioning.

And it will work on all servers and on all operating systems.

Millions are made by average developers developing themes and plugins for wordpress.

Hard to beat all that.

#drama is for queens :)

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#15

Post by slurry »

myko wrote: post #6
dkhenry wrote: post #4

I think the only hope PHP has of continuing development is if someone big like Facebook can add some direction to it. Maybe they will but I think last I checked even they were giving up on using it for much more then a thin veneer to their back end services.

Facebook isn't built with PHP (using hiphop-php) anymore?

Hip Hop is giving up on PHP internals while not having to throw out legacy code [immediately anyway]. They might for all I know still use plain PHP for some things but the Hip Hop project is not a vote of confidence.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#18

Post by Joeri »

0x0 wrote: post #12

Is this just a case of meritocracy at play? I haven't followed the full discussion and events leading up to here, but would it be very wrong to assume this just a case of a bystander starting a discussion that didn't really catch on with any of the active maintainers?

I've read about the toxicity of php-internals so many times, without any opposing views, that i'm quite willing to believe it. However, I'm not convinced other projects that aren't run by a benevolent dictator fare any better. This is just how projects get when everyone on the internet can throw their 2 cents into the game.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#19

Post by byroot »

dubcanada wrote: post #9
noelwelsh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PHP code is the tip of the iceberg. The real work in Facebook is done by the many systems behind it, which are very definitely not written in PHP.

Facebook is entirely written in PHP. It uses all sorts of databases and other systems to handle stuff, but so does every other website. It's still written in PHP. Facebook has their own PHP fork, which they use/and modify. I do not believe that Facebook pushes their modifications to PHP as a whole.

AFAIK it's not true. First they don't use raw php: https://github.com/facebook/xhp/wiki

Then they use it only for the view layer, it only pull some data from memcache to render HTML.

But all the hard work is C++ / Java / Tornado / etc

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#20

Post by MBCook »

dubcanada wrote: post #9
noelwelsh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PHP code is the tip of the iceberg. The real work in Facebook is done by the many systems behind it, which are very definitely not written in PHP.

Facebook is entirely written in PHP. It uses all sorts of databases and other systems to handle stuff, but so does every other website. It's still written in PHP. Facebook has their own PHP fork, which they use/and modify. I do not believe that Facebook pushes their modifications to PHP as a whole.

The front end is PHP, but I thought they used other languages (such as Scala, Erlang, and C++).

I found a page from 2010, but I couldn't find a more up-to-date source.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-work-nuts-bolts-techno...

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