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Thread: PHP's hope for the future?
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Sep 14, 2005, 19:28 #1
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PHP's hope for the future?
Hi all,
I just stopped by John Lim's site and was pretty shocked really by the comments made by Derick on the ongoing issue of BC-breaking reference handling (great site, btw):
http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/?q=node/view/214
I mean, what hope does PHP have for the future when you have comments like that from internal developers? What is happening to the PHP we know and love? I completely agree with what John was saying on his site, all this leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth about the direction PHP is heading, not so much the language itself, but how they are handling such critical issues that affect many, many developers, particularly the "serious" developers that you find in here.
I am finding now that I am beginning to question whether or not I want to commit myself to sticking with PHP (in particular, PHP5). Perhaps this will all blow over, but like many of you, I now have legacy PHP4 code in place that *breaks* under PHP 4.4.0 and above due to the reference handling changes (yes, it breaks for some reason, so disabling errors is not going to help). Like many of you, I used references heavily for "serious" OO, i.e. to avoid passing copies of objects around. Now, I get *hundreds* of notice errors logged per page refresh, plus the code breaks.
I don't know, I just can't help but feel that all of this could have been handled a LOT better by the powers-at-be over at PHP. I don't *want* to give up on PHP, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty with some serious OO coding in PHP5 (only really been dabbling so far). But as lastcraft and others have been saying, what if something else like this happens in the future (i.e. a critical change to PHP internals)?
Your opinions?
Cheers,
{R}
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Sep 14, 2005, 19:40 #2
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I think every language has to evolve inorder to become better at the end. Sometimes in evolution, parts may have to be replaced or changed for a better result and thus breaking some backwards compatibility.
If it becomes a very serious issue, i'm sure they'll fix it in an update or something. You have to remember, PHP is opensource, you will not get the committment to backwards compatibility and whatnot like you would from a company like Sun or even Macromedia.
Last i read, referencing is automatic now in php5 or its supposed to be. (i've been writing without references for the past week)
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Sep 14, 2005, 20:59 #3
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Originally Posted by sybersnake
Originally Posted by sybersnake
Originally Posted by sybersnake
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Sep 14, 2005, 21:28 #4
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Originally Posted by {RainmakeR}
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Sep 14, 2005, 21:30 #5
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Originally Posted by {RainmakeR}
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Sep 14, 2005, 22:16 #6
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This is terrible. How can this be happening to the most widespread server-side language of all times? This is the kind of behaviour we are relying upon for our system-critical enterprise systems:
Instead of ranting about things, like Pierre is so incredibly good in, you should try to understand the engine instead. Then you see exactly what the problems are. If you don't want to spend time on that, then just stfu, okay?
I , like many others on these forums, am beginning to consider other platform choices because of problems like these. Ruby looks yummier and yummier by the minute.Garcia
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Sep 14, 2005, 22:24 #7
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I think what you're arguing makes perfect sense. I agree that on a dot release, code shouldn't get broke.
I have worked on PHP since 3 but not straight. I have also worked in ASP and some Java. I almost consider PHP4 and PHP5 different languages and I think that's the only way to think about it. PHP5 is like C#. A new language to tackle new problems. That's why I ask such dumb questions about it - I'm just trying to figure out best practices for a large application.
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Sep 15, 2005, 00:09 #8
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As I see it, the biggest problem with "just fix your code" is that it's extremely hard to do when we depend on code others have written. If I'm using PHP code from five or six open-source projects, am I supposed to fix all of them? Am I supposed to get the people on those projects to do it? What if it's a stable and useful package that no one is actively developing any more?
Dagfinn Reiersøl
PHP in Action / Blog / Twitter
"Making the impossible possible, the possible easy,
and the easy elegant" -- Moshe Feldenkrais
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Sep 15, 2005, 00:29 #9
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Like phpMyAdmin, raise your hand if you rely on it every day! (me)
Garcia
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Sep 15, 2005, 01:03 #10
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It seems to me that this whole situation has demonstrated that the PHP develpers have no idea how to relate to the community. They believe we owe them something.
It also demonstrates that they don't know how to maintain their own product. Their way of fixing a bug is to just throw an error and make us fix it for them.
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Sep 15, 2005, 01:13 #11
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Originally Posted by OzRoy
Dagfinn Reiersøl
PHP in Action / Blog / Twitter
"Making the impossible possible, the possible easy,
and the easy elegant" -- Moshe Feldenkrais
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Sep 15, 2005, 03:02 #12
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What is the pecking order? Those that pay the bills (Zend)? Those who give Zend money?
Being someone who's livelihood depends on PHP, and who works for a company that has a several million dollar turnover solely based on PHP products, this kind of thing makes my stomach lurch.
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Sep 15, 2005, 03:19 #13
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They believe we owe them something.
That help may come in a variety of proposals, such as bug fixes for example? For Gods sake, it's a community, not a business we have here. As to the future of PHP, well I can tell you that there is a future for PHP in one form or another.
For you to be part of that future is entirely upto yourself. Honestly folks, if your not happy using PHP, and if you cannot adapt to the changes that are happening around you, then move on.
We have a technology here (PHP) that is boundless. Boundless you hear, if you've got any kind of sense, you'll take advantage of that fact, instead of complaining all the time about how this doesn't work, or that doesn't work.
Anyways, rant over.
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Sep 15, 2005, 03:42 #14
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Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
DouglasLast edited by DougBTX; Sep 15, 2005 at 04:14.
Hello World
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Sep 15, 2005, 04:50 #15
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Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
I'm also concerned about the effects on the quality of the PHP language when bug reporting is handled as badly as it seems to be.Dagfinn Reiersøl
PHP in Action / Blog / Twitter
"Making the impossible possible, the possible easy,
and the easy elegant" -- Moshe Feldenkrais
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Sep 15, 2005, 05:12 #16
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PHP's hope for the future, crossed fingers ?
Damn derick, quote
Feel free to fix the whole engine though with a patch...
As for your source code, there is no source code.
python.org/
www.ruby-lang.org/
Derick was it the MySql/Sco merger that dragged you down ?
Or just a bad day at the office ?
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Sep 15, 2005, 05:23 #17
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But I am very much concerned about the caliber of the people who seem inclined to do so. Marcus in particular. And I'm surprised that you don't see that.
A lot of people, have made a lot of money (hard cash) from PHP, and thus in my view, people should have more respect. Is that asking too much huh?
As to Marcus, full respect to the man, but Marcus is but one person. Sure, he carries some influence around these forums, and so do a lot of other people. For one, I don't develop PHP or not based on what Marcus and others have said in these forums.
I take an adjective take on what Marcus posts on these forums, ie What people post to these forums, the people have their own ulterior motives for example. Today, for example, my ulterior motive is to defend PHP, as it appears that there are very few of us on these forums who are prepared to do so.
Which in my view, is not only a disappointment, but two faced, since people on these forums are developing with PHP in the first place. And then they slag it off because of a slight bump in the road
Again, rant over.
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Sep 15, 2005, 05:33 #18
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I'm far from slagging off PHP; I've too much invested in it to do so. And I'm not naive enough to think that just because of a major hiccup, and a few comments by a developer, that PHP isn't worth that investment. But I am concerned that someone on the inside has such an abrupt attitude about something that affects just about every large scale application... of which there's a hell of a lot of money invested in by so many different parties.
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Sep 15, 2005, 05:46 #19
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> But I am concerned that someone on the inside has such an abrupt attitude about
> something that affects just about every large scale application
Right. This is exactly what I was thinking first when I read through the reply of Derick. It's not a tragedy, but face the fact: Derick represents the "php internals", and giving a statement like this is like a slap in the face to the community that has given PHP the chance to rise and become the worldwide most used Server scripting language.
This statement is unacceptable IMHO, and I hope that this Derick guy was just in a bad mood or had some trouble elsewhere, this would maybe excuse it.
I don't want to develop in a language where the core developers tell me that I have to accept anything they say and to stfu if I'm not pleased with the way things are going. This is unacceptable in a closed source language like Java, and it's even more unacceptable for an OS language, where the core developers get their benefits through the people who are using their product and participate in the development process.
I hope this is not the general attitude of the core developers of PHP, but in conjunction with the "submitting bugs to php internals"-topic it does not let them shine.
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Sep 15, 2005, 06:12 #20
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Another question which I'm not particularly qualified to pose but somebody should ask it: how will hosting companies react? I'm not using them, so I don't have the experience, but the first one I find in a quick Web search says:
We can convert your entire webspace to PHP5 or you may optionally have PHP4 + PHP5 support in the same webspace. (Files with the .php extension are processed by PHP4 while .php5 files are processed by PHP5)Dagfinn Reiersøl
PHP in Action / Blog / Twitter
"Making the impossible possible, the possible easy,
and the easy elegant" -- Moshe Feldenkrais
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Sep 15, 2005, 06:18 #21
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Originally Posted by dagfinn
Well, they will tell their users to turn off error_reporting for E_NOTICE or rant about it like we do, what else could they do?
They could also stop supporting the PHP4.4 branch and tell their users to start thinking in PHP5 which
<conspiracy>
would make things a lot easier for the PHP core developers
</conspiracy>
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Sep 15, 2005, 08:02 #22
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I get the feeling that it wouldn't make much difference what version of PHP they used. Moving to PHP5.x, they'll proberly find something wrong with that as well
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Sep 15, 2005, 08:11 #23
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I am GLAD PHP is finally beginning to straighten out some of these issues, especially the referencing bugs. That said, the attitudes of some of the internals folks is totally unacceptable. The fact that they release a maintenance release (4.4.0) with no mention of a backward compatibility break, that will in fact break a LOT of production code is inexcusable. If you're going to break BC, fine, sometimes it has to happen, but at least warn everyone. Or possibly offer another version (4.3.X) that has the other bugfixes without the BC break. Then again, that's just my opinion, and since I am nowhere near qualified to be telling the internals folks how to do their thing, I'll deal with it as it comes.
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Sep 15, 2005, 08:34 #24
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Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
I guess everyone can accept it. But still, it's unacceptable how the core developers (speking of Derik in special) deal with the reports and submissions they receive from the users: "this is bogus, won't fix" on the one hand and then on the other hand ignoring a workaround that makes this bogus thingy work makes me feel like the developers are a bit overworked.
I mean, did you follow the discussion on the internals list when Jessie Hernandez proposed his namespace patch? The proposal was followed by a ridicolously, nitpicking discussion about an additional ini-parameter in contrast to the already existing include_path-parameter... *sigh*
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Sep 15, 2005, 09:17 #25
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Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Originally Posted by Dr Livingston
Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson
Garcia
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