From: jason_watkins@... (Jason Watkins)
Date: 2003-05-21T07:34:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is PHP so popular?  What can we learn from the PHP camp?

PHP got where it is mostly by being old, and not being perl. While we
could learn from them, ruby's current problem is not to duplicate what
PHP did, but instead to figure out what it needs to do now in order to
achieve the same kind of critical mass.

I've done a fair amount of PHP, ASP and JavaServlet programming. I've
done enough PHP to know I wish to do no more :P. So, now that I've got
some web projects again, I intend to use ruby. So, as a relative
beginner, my direct impressions are:

1.) Single source for all documentation info, with user added
comments, ala php's manual. Very important that the cannocal way of
doing something is illustrated somewhere in this document, much like
php.
2.) A single "does all you need for ruby web programming" package.
Preferibly this would be what mod_ruby turns into, so that if you have
mod_ruby, you know you have what you need, at the most just a
--configure-with-blahblahblah away
3.) CPAN, nuff said
4.) A critical mass of tutorials on the web that assume zero prior
knowledge.
5.) Speed bragging rights

All these are important, but for attracting new users, #4 is
absolutely killer. The huge volume of PHP tutorials is what led me to
it originally. We need to get some folks from onlamp and elsewhere to
discover "hey, ruby is cool". But they likely won't until the other
things are wrapped up.

And #5 is certainly a falacy... however, even if they don't really
need performance, users often *think* they do, and so bragging rights
would do an amazing amount to bring people over to ruby. Stupid but
true. Another point here is, the bigger ruby sites need to be fast as
well. I know that the ruby-talk archive seems a little pookey, and
people can and will conclude that this means "ruby blows". While
php.net does go down disturbingly often with that lovely php error
message, when it's up, it is fast. People base their opinions on such
silly things.

Ruby is so great that if people move towards addressing some of these
things, it's sure to gain users. I haven't used ruby in 2 years, and
the other day it literally took me 2 minutes of browsing "the book" to
remeber everything I needed to write prettymuch anything I should
want. That's awsome.

In general, if Ruby could combine the power of Java Servlets with the
initial learning ease of PHP, with performance joe user would respect,
then it would be the killer web language.

Ohh, and thanks for the tip; always looking for good mexican food in
ptown :).