Re: PHP on .NET DLR

> 
> >  Normally, when a company hires a developer working on a 
> > project, the sane followup is to have him working on the same 
> > thing afterwards. 
> 
> The sane thing?  By who's yardstick?  Not if that is not what the company
> needs at the time.  

 It is all about productivity. You are taking off a developer from his core expertise, who has created something usable, and then dumping him into something that he has not previously worked on, it is a criminal waste of human resources. IN my opinion, that's not a sane thing.


> K T Ligesh wrote:
> >  The code is already there. It seems MS hired the devs 
> > specifically so that they would stop working on it. 
> 
> Do you see a conspiracy around every corner?  Couldn't it just be
> priorities?  That MS wanted an IronRuby and the Phalanger devs had the skill
> to make it happen so they hired them?  And Phalanger was just collateral
> damage? That'd be my vote.

 Then it is upto you to explain why. PHP has a larger enterprise reach. PHP is more popular. PHP has a more complete .NET implementation. There has to be some reason for MS to backtrack.


> 
> > developer work on the project. So writing code does not even 
> > enter in as the problem. 
> 
> What Rasmus said.  The code is available at
> http://www.codeplex.com/Phalanger/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=337
> 5 and you've got C skills; what's stopping you from picking it up and
> running with it?

 First of all, Windows is not my native platform. I tried with Mono, but last I checked they had some problems, which I couldn't work around. And even then the entire windows platform is alien to me, and it will take some time before I can get a hang of the philosophy.


> > with Phalanger, so it is a pure managerial decision to not 
> > let them work on it.
> 
> MS is paying their salary, so MS gets to decide what they work on. Plain and
> simple.  (BTW, I generally dislike Ruby too, so I'm not a fan of their
> direction either, but I'm realisitc.)

 But it is a waste of years of work already one, and the expertise that the Phalanger devs have acquired working on it. Now all their previous experience has to be ported to ruby, which while easy, is still not trivial.

> Have you considered that they have finally realized that the C heritage is
> becoming legacy as COBOL became?
> 

 Except for VB, Python, Ruby, all the main languages have C based syntax, that's php, perl, C#, c++, java, javascript. You have absolutely no point there. It is not merely that people are using C, but the new languages that come up are also following the rules of C.

 If C was a burden, then the people would have designed the new languages differently, but instead, what we have is that the more popular of the new generation languages are all like C. The legacy argument doesn't work at all here.



> > I might rather move to a dynamic C# rather than Ruby. 
> > I am incapable of coding in a language that's not delimited 
> > using braces. I have this parser embedded in my brain that 
> > can execute C style language automatically once it is 
> > properly syntax highlighted in Vim.
> 
> Frankly I despise semi-colon delimited languages because they force you to
> use syntax for the normal case instead of the abnormal one.  Braces are
> silly when compared to a language like Python that is elegant and has no
> need for them.
> 
> That said, I am not incapable of coding in languages that I don't prefer,
> when needed.  And evolution has shown that the more adaptable species are
> the ones more likely to survive.

 It is about productivity. I have even done extensive elisp programming, and I am comfortable with it. But what we have here is not whether a person can do something or not, but how much productive is he going to be. We are in a business. We are talking about applications with 200,000 lines of code. When it comes to large applications, an inherent ability to parse is an advantage.


> 
> > C is a horrible language, but somehow it has some kind of 
> > charm and never seem to go away. 
> 
> Yeah, charm like a root canal.  It won't go away because most people only
> envision small permutations of what they are familiar with.

 The 6 of the most popular are like C. So you have no escape.

> 
> > So I think being comfortable 
> > with C and C like languages is the safest bet you can make in 
> > the Computer Industry. 
> 
> They used to say that about COBOL.

 COBOL was a SINGLE language. Here we have 6 languages--the most popular ones, being like C. Including all the libc functions.

>  
> Yes, familiarity.
> 
> > So that's it? 'Nobody cares' (tm)? 'You can switch to Ruby 
> > if you want to, and nobody's stopping you'? Or am I on the wrong list?
> 
> Actually, it's 'Nobody gives a damn (tm)'.  (Sorry, just jerking your chain.
> :)

 "Nobody cares" an uncyclopedia definition. http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Nobody_cares


> Listen, if Silverlight becomes big enough someone will pick up Phalanger or
> otherwise port PHP.  Frankly I see a lot of reasons why Silverlight won't
> become big; they are making a lot of wrong market choices.  And I'm not the
> only one who thinks so. http://inelegant.org/silverlight/  and
> http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/05/02/silly-season  But then I'm
> soured on MS these days. :)
> 

 Yes. But we already lost the desktop battle. The same arguments--Proprietary, MS controlled crappy interfaces--didn't prevent MS from completely taking over the desktop. Yes, Server is different, and MS never got it right with .NET, but what I am seeing with MS is that philosophy of improving and learning from mistakes. They have rectified two of the primary problems with .NET--the lack of dynamic languages, and the inability to have desktop like controls--even though it took them 10 years.

 Anyway, as I have said earlier, Silverlight is merely one more reason. The key idea is php on .NET. and the contrast with Ruby community's attitude toward IronRuby.


 I am of the same opinion of Miguel. Somehow the open source folks never learn, and are always dismissive of the competing technologies, even though they have pathetically lost out in the desktop front, and now has a pitch battle in the server side.