RE: PHP on .NET DLR

K T Ligesh wrote:
>  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.

Productivity doesn't matter if a person is being productive on a project
that is not as much interest as another project which they also could do
well on.

> 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.

Rails has gotten more buzz lately and is driving lots of developer interest.
The local Ruby group is alive with energy and the local PHP group is
interesting but doesn't have the same energy.  Rails is hot and new, and is
also a single well known framework for Ruby.  PHP has lots of frameworks;
which to pick?   For many people, Ruby is more "fun" and you can't discount
that in even MS; they have managers but a lot of them are coders too.  The
MVC model of Rails is *very* productive.  

That said, what about this effort that focused on PHP first?   

http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/05/29/The-latest-on-the-FastC
GI-project-and-PHP-support-on-IIS.aspx  
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/10/31/PHP-and-the-FastCGI-Module
-for-IIS-7.0.aspx

You ignore that in your accusations against Microsoft.

>  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.

Then it amazes me that you currently think SilverLight is revolutionary when
people who have been on Windows for years like me are non-plussed.

> 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.

That's the nature of software.  It is a shame, but it's life.

>  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. 

"Besides that Ms. Lincoln, how was the play?"  Point is there are successful
non-C based languages.  Being C-based is not an anointment from God.

> It is not merely that 
> people are using C, but the new languages that come up are 
> also following the rules of C.

Because of prior influence, that's all.  

>  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.

That's a completely false dichotomy. There are other reasons which I keep
stating; prior influence.

>  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.

"Productivity" is a red herring; you can't objectively measure it in a
repeatable way. A good Ruby developer can be as productive as a good PHP
dewveloper, maybe more so because of the forme's ability to hide lots of
unimportant syntactical minutia.   And productivity is probably as affected
by attitude as by platform. 

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

So you are arguing the popularity at the current time is all that matters?
You said one should learn from history, maybe you should look at how once
popular technologies became eclipsed when better adapted technologies
appeared. That might be happening right now with Ruby and Python. For all we
know, languages that are not C-based may be at the tipping point. Simplicity
is the watchword these days, and C-based languages are decidedly non-simple.
Non-C based languages are certainly easier for non-programmers than C-based
languages because they omit aspects that make coding look so obscure. VB
succeeded for that very reason (and has declined for other reasons.)

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

There were many less programmers back then, there was no Internet to promote
distribution of new languages, there was no open source to speak of, and the
hardware couldn't support the tools we have today to make language
development easier.  

>  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. 

That was a different era.

> 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. 

MS of today is not the same MS of 20 years ago.  I was talking to a 3rd
party tools vendor in the MS space just two days ago and he lamented how MS
has changed; it's become very regimented with a command and control
management style and people are not allowed to make the same kind of
decisions, and many of the really sharp people have left.

> 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.

10 years too late.

>  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.

Sounds great!  Get a team together and make it happen!
 
>  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.

FYI, I'm not "an open source folk."  I come from 12+ years selling 3rd party
products to Microsoft developers.  The fact I'm disenchanted with Microsoft
and their ability to deliver for developers should be telling you
something...

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
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