From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2003-05-06T00:42:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is PHP so popular?  What can we learn from the PHP camp?

Reasons for success

1) PHP has huge and really good library.
   It's perfect for integrating other services and databases.

2) PHP has perfect documentation.
   For Ruby there is nothing like this. We don't have any written
   language reference. Buying the O'Reilly "Ruby in a Nutshell" was a
   waste of time and money, because this is not a reference.
   It does not even mention that a ! or ? following the identifier in a
   "def" belongs to the name, it doesn't contain a BNF Grammer or something
   like this.

3) PHP has good and easy to use tools for professional development.

4) PHP was designed to do one job and is great with this.
   Ruby is a general purpose language, that is good in a lot of places
   and unperfect in all.

5) Ruby don't have a good Web Tool. Amrita is okay, ERuby is okay, but
   if you enter the professional level they fail. For example
   streaming output into memory and postprocess the output in the same
   script (for PHP users: obstack)

6) Rubies OO functionallity is not so important in CGI like scripts
   (this means scripts that start with no internal variables other
   then session variables).
   This would only be an important point if you use an application
   server, but there is none.

7) PHP is available everywhere.

8) Everyone can learn PHP in a week, because it is much simpler
   Even designer and low paid students, which is commercially
   important.

9) There is not this Perlish like line noise (source code) you find in a lot
   of otherwise not documented ruby libraries (and in the standart library).