Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release packaged

Hello,


> Picture this situation some time soon in a IT department next to you:
>
> Joe Webby, a paid Web developer rushes into his boss office:
[...]

In my opinion, Joe has the IQ of a handful of beer nuts, but that's a
different story. Here's another story: I introduced PHP in a company I work
for around one year ago. Today, the company uses PHP for several different
projects, and prefers it over ASP and Perl. However PHP was almost banned,
as on the first project we had to access a Database via ODBC, since that was
really poorly documented. "Arrogance towards Windows users" was one of the
nicer terms I encountered from colleagues scanning the documentation. The
problem was solved quite quickly after posting to the mailing list, but the
scepticism remained. Another project refused to continue working after
upgrading from 3.0.x to 3.0.y (I think that was around 3.0.12). The reason:
the infamous mail()-bug; if you omit the last, optional parameter for
mail(), mail() will not work on Win32 any longer. Thank god I very quickly
found the problem (and the solution) in the PHP online bug system, but it is
still not fixed in 3.0.16, and not documented.
I would consider myself quite a fan of PHP, and I don't think that
documentation has to be exactly as good as that of some commercial
programming language. I also would think that I can - with some effort -
write an example for the Flash support. However I also do think that I am
not the kind of person that has to be convinced of the power of PHP. The
people that have to be convinced are rather regular web developers that need
fast-to-learn, robust and flexible solutions. And fast-to-learn means, that
at least major bugs are properly documented, and that the vast majority of
functions is properly documented. As I said - I am already convinced of PHP,
but in order to reach more people, there's a lot to do, and there were
already some good ideas in another thread (keyword: marketing :-) ). So what
I want to say is - I have to support some of Manuel's points, even if I know
that it will be painful (and maybe even not possible in the next few months)
to implement them.
What really saddens me however is the reaction on the list. If Manuel tries
to point out what could hinder PHP from conquering the world, please don't
blame him for that. I know a lot of people that associate with PHP a certain
kind of arrogance of the supporters. Most of those people are Windows users,
so they are used to suffering with their OS :-) However I agree with them on
some point. The reaction to criticism may be justified (hey, if I was one of
the core people behind PHP, I'd kill everybody who'd say just one word
against it), but from a marketing point of view, it's sub-optimal. I think
everybody here respects the endless, unpaid hours of work that were put into
PHP and into php.net, but if there's no bug-free software, there's also no
error-free concept, and (constructive) suggestions to amend that should be
given a forum and should be discussed without bias.

Just my 2cents,
Christian