Re: [PHP] the state of the PHP community

Nathan Rixham wrote:

> (shared) hosts and in developer+projects - but I also worry that it
> doesn't change with the times quick enough, + the core doesn't have
> the same hacker + iterative development focus anymore, contrast other
> languages which get major functionality added at minor revisions, and
> minor revisions every few days/weeks and there certainly is something
> to worry about.
> 
> This said, perhaps the worry is primarily on a personal basis with
> developers loosing time invested in PHP were they to move off to other
> languages.
> 
> Real worries in the PHP core for me, are the huge ignorance and lack
> of native support for HTTP (which is somewhat ironic), lack of support
> for NoSQL + RDF tooling, and also support + implementations of the new
> sets of webapps APIs.

None of that is very 'core' to me - it's the stuff for libraries.  When
there's a sufficient need, it'll appear.

> Overall, the general sentiment of 'if it can be done in userland, let
> it be done there' isn't always the best approach (although I
> understand the arguments to the contrary) - ultimately though, PHP
> does feel 'stale' comparatively.

If you look at PHP as a language with a set of libraries, the language
itself is as 'stale' as maybe C or Java or assembler - the language
shouldn't change all that often, nor should the core libraries, but
everything else is free to do whatever. 


-- 
Per Jessen, Zürich (17.0°C)