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Rambling On [PHP] Internals

blog.ircmaxell.com

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Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#51

Post by McGlockenshire »

protomyth wrote: post #38
McGlockenshire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

> 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. Initially, I believe you are correct, but I am not sure long term. PHP is easy for a system admin to install. Other than perl, I am not sure if there is anything out there that is as easy. I would imagine a fork,…

It's not just ease of installation by sysadmins, but ease of use on shared hosting and ease of script installation by non-developers.

I can walk my mother through installation of a PHP script. I can almost walk her through installation of a CGI script in any language, really. But unless that shared host has already set up a Python or Ruby environment (few do; I can count the ones I know on my left hand), I'd never, ever dream of trying to walk her through setting up something in other languages.

Making running scripts as easy as dropping them onto a filesystem would be perhaps the killer feature for other languages to target, if they want to take a bite out of PHP's consumer market share.

Of course, then there's another battle: shared hosting providers. The vast majority are running some sort of third-party control panel software with very opinionated hooks deep into every bit of configuration on the machine. Unless that killer feature can be baked into that software, and unless the shared host actually updates their software, there's no hope.

You wouldn't believe how many shared hosts are running ten+ year old installations of everything, not giving a crap that they're out of date. And hey, that ten year old version of PHP still installed there is still going to work just fine with the majority of scripts...

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#52

Post by McGlockenshire »

danudey wrote: post #34
gesman wrote: post #14

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 :)

As someone who's had to deploy PHP apps to various servers on various operating systems, I can guarantee you that your third line is absolutely not the case. You can deploy much code to many servers on some operating systems, but it's far from universal.

It's only universally deployable if the developers knew what they were doing.

The same can be said of any language, it just happens that PHP makes it a bit easier than the others.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#53

Post by jlgreco »

Pxtl wrote: post #47
jlgreco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reinvented Usenet should be client agnostic, otherwise it is just going to eventually succumb to the same problems that we already have with web forums.

In which case it will eventually succumb to the problem of RSS - the biggest client will decide to drop it in favor of moving to a proprietary system.

(Well I suppose that is what you get for using a webclient that you are not paying for....)

What is the alternative here though? Instead of making it client agnostic, make it not client agnostic? How does that not make the situation even worse? Being client agnostic means that it doesn't matter if one particular client is discontinued. That is practically the entire point of being client agnostic...

Any solution that will be viable in the long-term needs to be decentralized and client agnostic. Otherwise you are not reinventing Usenet, you are just reinventing web forums poorly.

Edit: Aaaah, I need more sleep.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#54

Post by Pxtl »

Pxtl wrote: post #47
jlgreco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reinvented Usenet should be client agnostic, otherwise it is just going to eventually succumb to the same problems that we already have with web forums.

In which case it will eventually succumb to the problem of RSS - the biggest client will decide to drop it in favor of moving to a proprietary system.

@jlgreco

I was actually just griping.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#55

Post by willvarfar »

maratd wrote: post #13
Supermighty wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a long time I've thought that rather than absolute up/down votes, collaborative filtering might work better.

I've tried to drum up attention to it before now:

http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-...

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#56

Post by eksith »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #48

The author is complaining about lack of vision, leadership and regulations. And most of us can perfectly understand that, except: those are exactly the things that set PHP apart from most other major open source projects. It is by far the most anarchic and disorganized major OSS project and yet it still thrives . It still moves forward, it still gets better. Yes, it's design foundations as a language are not particul…

Death by a thousand cuts is still a death (and a slow and painful one at that). I'm hopeful that this is just the kick in the pants the project needs to get its act together.

It's unquestionably gotten better in recent years, but it still has a long and seemingly never ending list of warts. I don't see PHP getting forked anytime soon, but I do see developers moving to other languages routinely. And that's a shame since PHP is still, for better or for worse, the easiest language to get into for the novice.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#57

Post by kbenson »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #48

The author is complaining about lack of vision, leadership and regulations. And most of us can perfectly understand that, except: those are exactly the things that set PHP apart from most other major open source projects. It is by far the most anarchic and disorganized major OSS project and yet it still thrives . It still moves forward, it still gets better. Yes, it's design foundations as a language are not particul…

PHP as an emergent phenomenon that is forcefully evolved by the sheer amount of need presented by the massive user base, in which any large scale forced reorganization would break the cycle and cause it to die (or at least fork)?

I can see that.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#58

Post by ErikAugust »

protomyth wrote: post #38
McGlockenshire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

> 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. Initially, I believe you are correct, but I am not sure long term. PHP is easy for a system admin to install. Other than perl, I am not sure if there is anything out there that is as easy. I would imagine a fork,…

A lot of things are becoming extremely easy to install though. With the growth of AWS and cloud-services I'd guess there will be movement away over the next 5 years.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#59

Post by MrZongle2 »

citricsquid wrote: post #22
MrZongle2 wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who feels like this is a temper-tantrum of somebody who wanted to be in charge of more toys, punctuated with some salient (but obvious) points about PHP?

ircmaxwell has contributed a hell of a lot to PHP recently, this is not some worthless shmuck complaining, this is someone that can and does provide significant value to the community.

Who said he was a "worthless schmuck"?

Geniuses can have temper-tantrums, too. Just because he has made worthy contributions doesn't mean that he isn't acting like a drama queen.

Re: Rambling On [PHP] Internals

#60

Post by jrabone »

gngeal wrote: post #30
gesman wrote: post #14

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 :)

Common Lisp is addictive. You can create a whole web app in one CL 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. Also hard to beat that.

Just need to find a CL developer for hire...
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