From: james_b@...
Date: 2003-05-05T22:18:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is PHP so popular?  What can we learn from the PHP camp?

> So, what can we learn from the PHP camp?  What have they done right in 
> promoting their language?

Libraries and lots of full-featured, professional-grade apps.

I've tried to sell Ruby development to a good friend who has been putting up 
assorted sites.  He appreciates good language design, but appreciates even more
ease of job completion.  

Want to add an RSS feed display to your site? There's assorted PHP modules.
Want a calendar? Chat board?  Mailing list manager?   Online catalog with
credit-card processing?  All available.

So, while PHP is, in many ways, hackish and ugly, it makes it easy to
accomplish certain specific tasks.   PHP's dark side is revealed when
you try to customize any of this stuff; most of what I've seen makes 
poor use of whatever marginal OO features PHP might offer; poorly named 
global variables are everywhere.  Ruby is much much better
for any large scale web app dev, but at the moment it seems that
anyone looking for such stuff must start from scratch.


James