Will PHP die out or Shine?
I’ve been using PHP for a few years. I love it and I think it’s a great language. Of course it has it’s soft spots, like naming convention for functions(like n2br(), strtr(), str_replace, etc.).
Though with the growing popularity of Python and Ruby, what’s going to happen to PHP? Ruby, a language built for convenience and Python, a powerful language built for speed both run over PHP in those two aspects. Is there a reason to stick with PHP? And why not switch to something more efficient? PHP scripts sometimes take longer to write and are also harder to debug. Ruby ranks as one of the highest in terms of maintenance and ease of speed. Python is portable, powerful and fast!
PHP’s strong points are it’s documentation, afford-ability, support and popularity
. A person with a business plan can rustle up PHP free-lancers pretty fast. PHP is that language that has almost always had support from hosting companies, and that being said, has always been more available to beginners. PHP also gets a rap for allowing inexperienced developers to create unmaintainable, messy code. Not as a Stranger video
This happens too many times, where code gets passed on and all you can do shake your head… At the same time experienced coders have developed some of the net’s most popular web applications.
The real test for PHP will come when they finally release PHP6, which has been anticipated for four or more years. By eliminating tons of crap, adding name spaces, better speed performance and more efficiency PHP6 will show what PHP is actually capable of. This will truly be PHP’s time to shine.
Please pass this on to your fellow developers.:)
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You forgot to mention the frameworks coming out that make php more valuable. Symfony and Zend put more structure into php5 allowing for more maintainable code. I think it’s php’s time to shine.
Givvy is written on top of Symfony, and is 99% php (we needed to use java for search, that saddened me greatly sfLucene wasn’t fast enough)
Yes that’s true. Thanks for bringing it up. As Rails becomes more popular so does, as you said, Zend and Symfony. Also CMSs, other frameworks(i.e. mine and tons of others).
Rails is popular and so are a few Python frameworks. But there’s just more support for PHP.
Thanks for the comment.
Please spread it around if your get the chance:)
Clinton
PHP will be around for a while yet. There’s a lot to be said for a large user base. See MySQL vs. Postgres. Windows vs. Linux
Though I don’t think PHP is inferior to Ruby or Python.
PHP as a language is a bit of a mess. There’s no defined structure for parameters of similar functions (is it $needle, $haystack or $haystack, $needle??) Some function names use underscores, some dont.
Namespaces stand to make frameworks more usable, especially with the ability to import and alias from other namespaces. Instead of Zend_Really_Long_Class_Name you alias it once and run with it.
These frameworks make up for a lot of the languages quirks by providing lots of functionality with a more unified style. I thought JavaScript was hopeless until JQuery made it usable…
As far as new programmers making a mess, this is true in any language. It’s impossible to avoid it unless they are operating in a very restricted environment with very limited functionality, but then they aren’t really programming. It takes years to become a decent coder, more years to become good, and more to become elite. Some aren’t capable of being elite, programming is not simple. Most start out writing scripts rather than programs, and that’s where much of the mess comes from if it gets any level of complexity. That along with ‘CTRL+C CTRL+V’ coding…
Enough rambling. PHP’s survival will ultimately depend on their ability to adapt. If death is in it’s future, it’s not likely to be soon.
I couldn’t agree more, Nick.
PHP’s user base isn’t going to just diminish over night. Tons of large frameworks have been developed on PHP.
If PHP were going to die, Symphony, Zend, Cake, Wordpress, PHP Bulletin and the thousands of other applications out there would NEED to switch or go out of business, which isn’t going to happen(at least not any time soon).
I appreciate the comment:)
Or will it possibly come with it? I need a new phone and would like to get the Nexus one when it comes out for Verizon but I really love the user interface on the Droid Eris (HTC’s Sense UI). Do you think that Sense will be available on the Nexus or not?
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