[ot] Where is everyone?

PHP
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Mods: Please consider this topic before removing it. I know this is off topic but I want it somewhere the relevant people will see it and it’s not like this forum is busy these days and this will push down relevant topics. I’d really like to know what’s going on here.

We used to have a lot of very good discussions here about advanced topics. For the last few months it’s been pretty dead. What happened to everyone? There’s a few people still around, popping up in topics here and the PHP forum, but over all, this forum seems to have died. We’re lucky to get one topic a week now and as someone who likes discussing these advanced topics it’s kind of disappointing and I wonder what happened. We just seem to be lacking posts and people providing input. Seeing other people’s views which often conflict with my own is generally enlightening and forces me to think in a way I otherwise wouldn’t. I’ve learnt so much from this forum and the people who used to post here regularly.

Are people still around? In particular, those who used to post here frequently and provide insightful posts: webaddictz, oddz, lastcraft, Ren, Cups, sunwukung, crabby80, PCSpectra, Czaries, logic_earth, kyberfabrikken, Salathe, Mastodont, Chroniclemaster1 to name but a few, along with the many many others I’m forgetting. Is it just the lack of questions around here recently or have people become disinterested?

It seems Michael Morris and I are the only ones who still post here and we tend not to agree :wink: Not that I have a problem with that, Michael, I enjoy bouncing ideas around here and having you critique them, you usually have a totally opposite perspective to me and that’s a good thing. It lets me see things I wouldn’t normally.

I miss you guys, all of you! What happened :frowning:

Again, mods: I know this is really a community discussion but I’d like the relevant people to see it so I’d prefer you didn’t move it. It’s not like this one topic is going to push relevant topics to the second page these days, is it? :stuck_out_tongue: I’d just like to know what happened to the PHP Application Design gurus. :frowning: You guys rock. I’ve learnt so much from all of you and I’d like to get this place back to the form it’s been recently lacking.

Tom

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Forums in general are on the decline for discussing programming. Programmers.SE and [url=http://stackoverflow.com/]StackOverflow have insightful commentary on virtually anything you could want to talk about, and you’re likely to bump into former SPF regulars if you read enough.

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Hello TomB,

I am still here but current topics are of less or no interest for me (and often should be in another forum). Second, time flies by, interests are changing and children are much better companions than PC …

Thanks for membership in list, very pleasant.

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Ditto, thanks for the callout.

I have my own observations on the decline of the PAD forum.

When the Program your site / General Application Design and Theory forum was launched it was suggested that some discussions would be better off in there. That caused some resentment at the time and some said they would leave. I don’t remember who, but I remember that sentiment being aired.

Many of the great discussions on here were inevitably about the various parts of MVC frameworks, and I think that discussion has naturally died off as 5 or 6 big PHP Frameworks seem to have been adopted by the industry now. Most discussions now are about which one to choose for a particular job, not how to wire your own up. Also, each of those Frameworks have their own support networks which are better suited to focussed Q and A on their own products.

I started off by thanking you for the callout, but to be honest I hardly ever posted on this PAD board because I found some of the members who haunted it to be a) very clever but also b) very caustic - this did provide great sport of course, but I found the place rather intimidating - and hence I rarely got involved in discussion.

While I agree with Dan about SO, I think there will always remain a place for Forums such as these where it is possible to follow a smaller number of posts which tend to stay in your conscious for days or weeks at a time. I really miss the design pattern discussions.

Maybe the pump needs priming again, and if we care enough, we will do something about it …

I have seen some posts in the General PHP forum which could have possibly been better aired on this PAD board, perhaps we should keep an eye open for them and have them flagged for discussion in here earlier?

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My experience is these things come and go in waves. Also, I’m a bit preoccupied trying to find a new job because I’m absolutely sick of my current one.

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oh! I thought its just me feeling the forum activities is especially low compare to the past! YEah, what happened so suddenly?

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Hi.

Thanks for the mention, much appreciated. Yeah, I’m still alive 'n kicking, though mostly lurking on sitepoint, not posting. I’m guessing this is because I don’t see a lot of really interesting topics any more, and there are other places (SO, like others have mentioned) which do have the topics I’m after. If there are interesting topics over here, I’ll surely and happily contribute to the post :slight_smile: After all, this is a place where I have learnt a lot from, and I’m most thankful for that.

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Like the others, I’m here but by far most of my time is spent lurking.

The vast majority of threads here (in App Design and the normal PHP forum) of late hold little interest to me, or seem to be really awfully posed questions where the real work is actually getting to the bottom of what the OP wants to know, and they’ve usually been answered already anyway by the time I come along… the net result being, I mostly follow Anthony around. (:

Give me threads that are nice to be involved with and I’ll participate without hesitation.

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Hi (from the past)…

Still here, but only drop by once a month now. I joined the forum when it was the “Advanced PHP” forum, a nice self selecting title. By the time I joined it was centred on mostly OO, patterns and unit testing issues. It rapidly blossomed into everything you need to think about to be a better PHP programmer. For some reason it reached a critical mass where people would bring half formed ideas to the table to be bounced around.

You don’t often know why something started growing in your garden, but if it’s nice you feed and water it and keep it going. You certainly don’t mess with it. The forum rename and the spinning off of the clashing forum (the general design - uh?) messed with it.

With more people leaving than coming in, it was going to die. I think I campaigned pretty strongly against the changes at the time. I think the other factors mentioned could have upset the delicate balance too. The move to frameworks, the inter operation with other languages, the luck of ebb and flow maybe? Also the caustic stuff used to be pretty absent (with maybe one exception).

The stupid way threads are/were cross posted (no longer properly accessible in the original forum) didn’t help either.

Sadly design issues abound in the PHP community at the moment - the rise of the micro frameworks, designing with closures, inter operation with other languages/systems (Erlang, Node.js). We could do with an active forum.

Sigh.

But I’m still here. What do you want to talk about? :slight_smile:

yours, Marcus

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I am still around and do drop by occasionally, but there is so little activity here that it seems less and less worthy of my time. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but some of the issues Marcus outlined are likely contributing causes.

Most of the topics I have seen in the more recent times here have seemed to just serve as ego-driven arguments of design pattern knowledge and what is “right” vs “wrong” rather than talking through the issues and presenting well thought out solutions that work for the given situation. That is a big part of why I stopped being so active here.

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Hi TomB

I must say I was pleasantly surprised to be in your list of members! :cool:

I now understand everything, so I don’t need to use these forums…haha!

Truth is, I’ve just been way to busy at work and with family life etc etc

More often or not I need to find an answer/solution quick and there are so many resources out there now that help you do so, but, I do miss some of the great conversations that have taken place, I need to get back on the scene, the forums are a fantastic resource and I’ve learned loads from them over the years…I’m coming back!!!

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Hi TomB,

Thanks for NOT including me (an I truly mean that :)) as my help in this particular forum over the years has been less than helpful.

I do however miss the often engaging discussions and agree with others like lastcraft, Czaries and others that many factors influence this decline. The decline is saddening as for someone like myself that has remained more marginal over the years than many others that have reached more enlightened understandings; I have relied on this to help with my occasional forays into php application design. But I think that people like me may be part of the problem, because we litter or watered-rdown ideas that begin to frustrate those that understand - this can only last so long before goog people will slowdown or stop participating.

I can’t say enough how much I have appreciated all that many have done here and will try to do my part by not asking dumb questions. But then again that may be too late

Regards,
Steve

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same here… :scratch: