Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP-CVS] cvs: php4 / TODO From: Zak Greant (zak <email protected>)
Date: 10/12/00

I think that the development path that the PHP team has taken is just about
perfect. There is a nice balance between making PHP more useful and making
it more robust.

Like many developers, I use PHP because it is simple and offers many useful
features. One of the reasons that I stay with it because it is much
reliable (and functional) than the other technologies that I have used.

I too believe that PHP needs to keep growing - who knows where the web will
be in another couple of years - but for now, I think that everyone's
efforts should stay focused on strengthening and building the resources
that the language already has.

I don't see our greatest weakness as being the language's lack of support
for any particular feature. Instead, I believe that we need to cultivate
better user involvement and provide more support for the core developers.

For everyone who is reading this message and agrees that PHP needs feature
X or functionality Y, get involved! There is much more to helping out than
writing code - write documentation, edit the manual notes, work on the
quality assurance team, hunt bugs, update the FAQ, etc... This certainly
is not easy work (anyone who has followed my fumbling with the QA team will
certainly agree to this :) - but it is very rewarding and will certainly
help the language meet all of our needs more effectively.

  -- zak

At 03:46 PM 10/12/00 -0400, Jim Jagielski wrote:
>Here are my own personal comments, directed to no one in general
>and certainly in response to nothing in general :) :)
>
>There is that unfortunate mindset, that's repeated often: that
>PHP is only good for small and medium sites. PHP, and Java and JSP
>and just about anything you can think of, are tools, designed to
>do something, and do it well. Are there shortcoming in PHP? Sure.
>But I tend to believe that there are more in Java. The fact that
>a saw can cut, but a hammer can't, doesn't make the hammer a
>worthless tool ;)
>
>Is the object model what's really required? No, not really. But PHP 4
>was designed to not break compatibility with PHP 3. I don't think
>anyone is incredibly happy with it. But PHP isn't designed to BE
>an object oriented language.
>
>There are very few things intrinsic to Java/JSP that make it "better"
>suited to large, complex sites. One here's that it's "impossible
>to separate the business logic from the display logic" a lot. But
>what is it specifically, for example, in JSP that _does_ allow it?
>For real separation, it shouldn't matter _at all_ what is being used
>for either implementation. If it does, then the whole idea of separation
>is bogus.
>
>Not to say that PHP shouldn't continue to grow and evolve. There should
>be an abstraction that PHP isn't so server-resident. Better Java
>interoperability is good. Taking some clues from the transaction
>nature of Java application servers is wise as well.
>
>But saying PHP != Java and therefore for PHP to succeed, it must become
>more Java-like... well, I think that's foolish and will end up
>with PHP being a cheap Java clone. Heck, it's not like Java is
>perfectly suited to what it's being assigned to do, either from
>an application or design standpoint, although certainly resources are
>now being put in that directly. So Yes to growing PHP! But No to making it
>Java: "... And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left
>the path of wisdom" :) :)
>--
>Jim Jagielski << jim <email protected> >> | http://www.jaguNET.com/
> j a g u N E T A c c e s s S e r v i c e s, L L C
> Voice: 410-420-0140 FAX: 410-803-2258
> "Ah! I see you have the machine that goes Bing!"
>
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