Martin Alterisio wrote: > Well, it was my intent not to say that in particular because is rather > personal. I just wanted to pass on all the things that may be of some use to > another developer.
Sorry I didn't mean to drag it out of you :) > If you must know, there are three reasons why I'm distancing myself from > PHP. > > 1) I'm tired of web development as a whole. Too many clients which do not > understand what the web is. Too many opiniologists who should know what the > web is but talk about a second web, which is nothing more than the old web > with logos on shiny floor. It feels like the bubble all over again (luckily > I was too young to be affected when the first happened, now I cannot say I > won't be affected). That's fair enough really. I'm still enjoying it, even if I'm not always at the bleeding edge! > 2) I started in the business of software development with a dream that I was > told afterwards it was childish and immature. Now I've learned enough to > know that my dream, being a game developer, it's neither childish nor > immature, totally the opposite, it's probably the most serious and important > job in the whole software development industry. I wanna give it a try > chasing that rainbow. Absolutely. I have a lot of friends in that industry and it's definately a market in which there are lots of opportunities in many different areas of testing etc. It's hard work and from what I hear long hours, but it's certainly rewarding in terms of work enjoyment :) > 3) I'm not so sure anymore if PHP is profitable as a language choice for web > development. The small and medium projects market is becoming infested with > developers who I cannot compete anymore in terms of cost, and software > quality is something this market did not yet got a grasp on. Big projects > market has scalability requirements that aren't easily met on PHP grounds, > and if it does, the cost is code quality or performance, two things that > this market doesn't easily overlook. I think it depends on how you use PHP to be honest. If you're playing about on small to medium sized projects for clients PHP is an excellent choice IMO. With the right approach and understanding PHP is also an excellent choice for large scale projects (Facebook anyone??). One of the interesting points you make about code quality I think is true but that's simply because of the low barrier for entry into PHP coding. Lots of people are self taught and their PHP projects are often their first programming projects. Even if they've had a programming background, web projects are often quite different. I know a lot of my code is crap and I'm now working hard to replace the old bits with new designs and approaches and am becoming increasingly happy with the potential for scalability and maintenance etc. so I'm happily sticking with PHP for the time being for most of my projects. > Right now, the future of web development is mostly uncertain, too many > things are happening too fast. If I had to I would bet on Java for server > technology and Flash for client technology. The performance of Java6 have > left PHP and the many other scripting languages panting for air way way > behind. And its scripting API has engulfed all the good things about > scripting languages into its domain. And yet the most important thing about > Java is its scalability. Let's be honest, how can anyone expect to beat Sun > in its own turf (networking)? Anyway, PHP developers, remember this word: > "Quercus". Well I think this is true to an extent but there are always going to be several platform technologies out there and I think PHP will continue to be a major player in that area, regardless of the success of JSP/ASP/RoR etc. > And the Flash guys pulled a rabbit out of the hat and called it Flash 9. > They broke every compatibility known to developers, but finally developing > for Flash doesn't suck. And also, they are going with the open-source > approach as the Sun guys did (I pity the poor graphic designer, he still has > to get a commercial license to author some content for the flash > environment). And we have now many tools to apply the AJAX technique and > DHTML easily, but I would still beat the crap out of anyone who thinks that > building a thick client on HTML DOM and javascript is a good idea. I think this is very true too, but not always. Flash is fine and I think it will play a key part in some applications I will develop in the future but I don't think DHTML+JS will die just yet. It really depends on your application - if you want a funky system for email or another desktop-like app, then Flash is a good choice, if you just want small bits of interactivity in your webpage I really don't have a problem with javascript (especially with the excellent jQuery). Flash has too many drawbacks in terms of accessibility and indexibility for it to be a general replacement for all things client side (not that you were suggesting that). So again, I think there is plenty room for all sorts of things out there. > On the other hand, there hasn't happened anything important on the PHP > frontier, except for the PHP4 EOL and the Zend Framework (IMHO the first > real framework for PHP). And the most annoying thing is this stupid marriage > PHP/MySQL that keeps on going. The moment was appropriate for PHP to end > this relationship and PDO was a good step towards this. You'll probably have > heard or will soon hear about mysqlnd, and many will think "yay! mysql > functions are again part of the core!!! and they're faster!!!" and I would > be thinking "damn! open source php projects will be tightly tied to MySQL, > AGAIN!". Well I quite like MySQL but I am very much in favour of PDO right now. I think healthy competition is needed in this area to ensure a good degree of innovation! I'm quite annoyed right now at some of the decisions MySQL have made regarding their development structure of late but such is life. > That's all. I don't think that rant may be of use to anyone, but at least it > felt nice to let go of some steam. I think it's useful to get other people's opinions on things and yours was very well written and thought out. Not everyone will agree with it all but some of your points will ring true with some (especially the non-PHP stuff!). Thanks for takign the time to reply with that info. Good luck in the games industry :) Col -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
