Re: PHP on .NET DLR

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 10:10:28AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> Beyond tech demos, which major web site has a Silverlight frontend
> today?  About as many as Adobe Air, I would expect.  But regardless, PHP
> is firmly entrenched as a scalable server-side web platform.  That's

 Silverlight is pre-alpha, at least, the one that allows you to write apps in .NET. The silverlight that is in RC is a glorified media player, and quite useless. I think MS introduced it only a couple of months back. Once the VS 2008 comes out, we will have every VB dev churning out rich web interfaces. Yes, it is still not easy as writing a desktop app, and the underlying principle is actually client-server, and I am sure MS will not succeed like they did in Desktop. In fact, .NET never really caught on outside of MS shops, because MS is a desktop company, and they never got Web development right, which is what they are trying to rectify using Silverlight. ONce MS realized they can't really get Web development right, they are completely changing the rules in their favor now.


> where our focus is and probably always will be.  I don't actually see a
> problem with a Silverlight/Ruby client speaking to a PHP server-side
> script.  Most RIA work today is cross-language in the sense that you
> have client-side Javascript connection to server-side PHP.  PHP doesn't
> need to be everywhere.

 Yes. The idea is productivity. We don't have infinite developer hours, and debugging two separate languages is lot of lost productivity. The entire point of silverlight is to allow people to write client and server side code in the same language, because the separate languages are the basic impedance to productivity.

> 
> But again, it comes down to the level of interest amongst developers out
> there.  If there really is that much interest, you shouldn't need the
> Phalanger guys.  Developers would be lined up to help make this happen.
> 
> I appreciate your enthusiasm for the Silverlight platform, but you need
> to recognize that there is a very large group of people out there who
> still have no idea what it is, and an even larger group who know what it
> is but have no use for it.  Until that changes, you are fighting an
> uphill battle.  It also doesn't help that the open source community is
> heavily Linux and OSX oriented and most of us can't even see Silverlight
> working while Adobe Air works fine on our platform.

 Of course, it is a technology that is in the alpha stage of development. But it is a nice addition to current php apps and I cannot really find any drawbacks. As the people in the forefront of technology, PHP community has to take pro-active steps right, and not just react much later?

 If we consider silverlight alone, we are too early to make any real pronouncements, but as I said, silverlight is merely ONE of the reasons. The core idea is PHP on .NET, which has many other advantages too, and not a single disadvantage as far as the language or the developers are concerned.

 So at least, we are in agreement that PHP on .NET is a good thing (tm), but you need someone to pick it up.

 Thanks.