From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2003-05-06T21:22:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is PHP so popular?  What can we learn from the PHP camp?

>> 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.

> Why would a CGI application benefit less from OO than other types of
> applications?

Because a CGI script (or better any non application server like
script) starts with zero data. It loads all data, processes them and
outputs the data. With this constellation there is often not much to do
so no need for a technical better solution.

Okay if you refer to monster applications (for PHP) like PHPNuke or
MySQL then you find that they could be written in 50% of the code when
using good OO. But there are so less applications of this size
(written - not used) that they don't count for PHP popularity.


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

> I don't know PHP too much, but I'd say that ruby is pretty easy to take
> on.  As many pointed out, it's far easier than perl for example.

As someone who speaks 10 computer languages it is not easier for me to
learn PHP as it is to learn Ruby. But there are still a lot of people
who don't understand OO, who don't understand regular expressions, who
don't have the discipline for good organization of modules, files and
there contents. Now you simply say: Okay, they must learn. But this is
not an always "commerciall" way to handle this problems. You pay less
and expect less but they still got the things done. This ist mostly
the thing you do with smaller websites (< 2000 Euro) where the only
thing you can do is find a student and let them work.

There are professionals with > 60.000 Euros and experience of 10 years
and they can't write a good OO program.