5 ms·

The accessibility of PHP is its strength and downfall. There exist so many third party libraries because of the low barrier to entry. But as more people join t

The accessibility of PHP is its strength and downfall. There exist so many third party libraries because of the low barrier to entry. But as more people join the party, the party moves toward the average. The average third party library is an untested and undocumented mess. I do not think this is specific to PHP.

warfangle 15y ago
Especially when it comes to wordpress plugin land. I've done a few freelance projects in wordpress-land, and for what would seemingly be normal additions in functionality there certainly existed "five-star" plugins that almost got you to where you needed to be. Except they did everything in a non-ACID database table (or wholly non-wordpress-oriented). Or they weren't extensible at all. Or they were unmaintained piles of crap. Usually I ended up throwing my hands up in desperation and writing my own, customer-specific plugin that would get the job done. If the average PHP library is untested and undocumented, they're a couple steps ahead of the average Wordpress library. (also, I might say, the Wordpress documentation is horrific. Hell, the entire structure of that project is horrific to work within. It's built to be easy for noobs ["the loop"], but makes it difficult to keep anything organized or nicely packaged)
- 6ren 15y ago
  Sounds like disruption: lower quality on the metrics that mainstream programmers care about; and targeting non-consumption (i.e. making programming accessible to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to). People who don't have access to anything are delighted to have something. Therefore, PHP gets a foothold even though it's lower quality. This is the beginning of disruption. The next part of disruption is improvement. And PHP is improving. At the same time, other programming systems are improving - C#, python, ruby, objective-C even Java has improved (generics etc). So it might seem that PHP will never catch up - which is probably true. But the crucial disruptive insight is that it mightn't need to: programmers might not all need all the extra improvements in mainstream languages, for all tasks. One piece of evidence is that PHP itself is already good enough for some tasks. For any advanced functionality, it's often possible to think of use-cases that wouldn't benefit from it. This means that it's possible for mainstream languages to "overshoot" what most programmers require for most tasks (to "overserve" them, like serving more food to someone who's already full). But, you might say, mainstream users are increasing in their ability to use advanced functionality as they learn more, so they can use the extra functionality (the patrons' stomachs are getting bigger). The interesting possibility is that the rate of improvement of mainstream languages may be faster than the rate of increase in the ability of programmers to use it (the servings getting bigger faster than the patron's stomachs are) - disruptive research has found that this is usually the case. It's because companies developing competitive products work really hard at improving them (to remain competitive); but consumers don't like to change their behaviour that fast. The final stage of disruption is that programmers leave their mainstream language, and switch to PHP because although it's not as good, it's good enough for their task, and it has other benefits (not sure what they are for PHP, but for disruption it's usually: cheaper, more convenient, simpler - the latter two are true of PHP, but as it adds functionality, it would seem it must lose them. It will just copy mainstream languages). But I can't imagine this happening, so therefore either disruption doesn't apply in this case (perhaps because a company isn't running PHP? Or because programmers themselves are unusually competitive and early-adopting, and even if some don't want to change their behaviour that quickly, there's another generation coming up real fast? Or as I said above, PHP can't retain its simplicity of being a template language while adding advanced features) - or my imagination is lacking.
  - eropple 15y ago
    The alternative interpretation is that the concept of "disruption" is widely feted but might favor buzzword compliance over actually meaning something useful.
  - fmw 15y ago
    PHP doesn't attract smart people that want to use it for fun in the same way that Java doesn't. Sure, the HipHop work that engineers at Facebook are responsible for must be fun to hack on and the same goes for some of the things that are happening at Google and Twitter with Java, but the base of the PHP community is working on mediocre crap. Beyond these exceptions that prove the rule I can't imagine any good hackers using PHP for fun. Some might write PHP code as a day job, but will play with more enjoyable languages at night. Most just give up on the language entirely and move on to greener pastures. It is clear why hackers get frustrated with the language. It is inconsistent and extremely tricky if you want to write secure code. The core developers are mostly concerned with endless discussions about adding buzzword compliant features that don't add any real value (Zend seems to be obsessed with being a poor man's Java so they can sell their ecosystem to "the enterprise"). Also, the community is pretty mediocre with an awful noise vs signal ratio. So if hackers don't use PHP, who does? Clearly, PHP is very successful with people that want to tweak open source applications like Wordpress and aspiring developers or non-technical people that want something accessible that runs everywhere. Also, PHP developers tend to be cheap labor. There are plenty of them around, including in low cost outsourcing centers, that will charge you a lot less than more competent developers would. So it seems ideal to non-technical businesses looking for a cheap way to add some dynamic features to their website. Thankfully for PHP this group is a lot larger than the hacker community, so the language won't go away any time soon. Especially if you consider the fact that a lot of hackers learn their trade by writing little PHP scripts and customizing open source applications like Wordpress before moving on to something more interesting (I have to admit PHP was my first web scripting language too, back in 2000, but I quickly moved on to Python and now Clojure). Is this disruption waiting to happen? I don't know. In fact, PHP seems to be trending downwards[0] as the generation that picked up the language before frameworks like Rails and Django were available is switching to the current languages du jour. If anything, it is not the language that is causing disruption, but applications like Wordpress that are easily accessible to non-technical people. However, hosted/SaaS alternatives like Posterous seem to be disrupting the whole idea of non-technical people installing Wordpress (at least I hope so[1]). [0]: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... [1]: The main reason I might sound bitter about PHP is having to extinguish fires caused by idiots who write insecure PHP scripts or install open source scripts without bothering to periodically apply security fixes to counter the constant streams of exploits in said open source code while being responsible for some virtual hosting servers several years ago.

warfangle 15y ago

Especially when it comes to wordpress plugin land. I've done a few freelance projects in wordpress-land, and for what would seemingly be normal additions in functionality there certainly existed "five-star" plugins that almost got you to where you needed to be. Except they did everything in a non-ACID database table (or wholly non-wordpress-oriented). Or they weren't extensible at all. Or they were unmaintained piles of crap. Usually I ended up throwing my hands up in desperation and writing my own, customer-specific plugin that would get the job done. If the average PHP library is untested and undocumented, they're a couple steps ahead of the average Wordpress library. (also, I might say, the Wordpress documentation is horrific. Hell, the entire structure of that project is horrific to work within. It's built to be easy for noobs ["the loop"], but makes it difficult to keep anything organized or nicely packaged)

6ren 15y ago
Sounds like disruption: lower quality on the metrics that mainstream programmers care about; and targeting non-consumption (i.e. making programming accessible to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to). People who don't have access to anything are delighted to have something. Therefore, PHP gets a foothold even though it's lower quality. This is the beginning of disruption. The next part of disruption is improvement. And PHP is improving. At the same time, other programming systems are improving - C#, python, ruby, objective-C even Java has improved (generics etc). So it might seem that PHP will never catch up - which is probably true. But the crucial disruptive insight is that it mightn't need to: programmers might not all need all the extra improvements in mainstream languages, for all tasks. One piece of evidence is that PHP itself is already good enough for some tasks. For any advanced functionality, it's often possible to think of use-cases that wouldn't benefit from it. This means that it's possible for mainstream languages to "overshoot" what most programmers require for most tasks (to "overserve" them, like serving more food to someone who's already full). But, you might say, mainstream users are increasing in their ability to use advanced functionality as they learn more, so they can use the extra functionality (the patrons' stomachs are getting bigger). The interesting possibility is that the rate of improvement of mainstream languages may be faster than the rate of increase in the ability of programmers to use it (the servings getting bigger faster than the patron's stomachs are) - disruptive research has found that this is usually the case. It's because companies developing competitive products work really hard at improving them (to remain competitive); but consumers don't like to change their behaviour that fast. The final stage of disruption is that programmers leave their mainstream language, and switch to PHP because although it's not as good, it's good enough for their task, and it has other benefits (not sure what they are for PHP, but for disruption it's usually: cheaper, more convenient, simpler - the latter two are true of PHP, but as it adds functionality, it would seem it must lose them. It will just copy mainstream languages). But I can't imagine this happening, so therefore either disruption doesn't apply in this case (perhaps because a company isn't running PHP? Or because programmers themselves are unusually competitive and early-adopting, and even if some don't want to change their behaviour that quickly, there's another generation coming up real fast? Or as I said above, PHP can't retain its simplicity of being a template language while adding advanced features) - or my imagination is lacking.
- eropple 15y ago
  The alternative interpretation is that the concept of "disruption" is widely feted but might favor buzzword compliance over actually meaning something useful.
- fmw 15y ago
  PHP doesn't attract smart people that want to use it for fun in the same way that Java doesn't. Sure, the HipHop work that engineers at Facebook are responsible for must be fun to hack on and the same goes for some of the things that are happening at Google and Twitter with Java, but the base of the PHP community is working on mediocre crap. Beyond these exceptions that prove the rule I can't imagine any good hackers using PHP for fun. Some might write PHP code as a day job, but will play with more enjoyable languages at night. Most just give up on the language entirely and move on to greener pastures. It is clear why hackers get frustrated with the language. It is inconsistent and extremely tricky if you want to write secure code. The core developers are mostly concerned with endless discussions about adding buzzword compliant features that don't add any real value (Zend seems to be obsessed with being a poor man's Java so they can sell their ecosystem to "the enterprise"). Also, the community is pretty mediocre with an awful noise vs signal ratio. So if hackers don't use PHP, who does? Clearly, PHP is very successful with people that want to tweak open source applications like Wordpress and aspiring developers or non-technical people that want something accessible that runs everywhere. Also, PHP developers tend to be cheap labor. There are plenty of them around, including in low cost outsourcing centers, that will charge you a lot less than more competent developers would. So it seems ideal to non-technical businesses looking for a cheap way to add some dynamic features to their website. Thankfully for PHP this group is a lot larger than the hacker community, so the language won't go away any time soon. Especially if you consider the fact that a lot of hackers learn their trade by writing little PHP scripts and customizing open source applications like Wordpress before moving on to something more interesting (I have to admit PHP was my first web scripting language too, back in 2000, but I quickly moved on to Python and now Clojure). Is this disruption waiting to happen? I don't know. In fact, PHP seems to be trending downwards[0] as the generation that picked up the language before frameworks like Rails and Django were available is switching to the current languages du jour. If anything, it is not the language that is causing disruption, but applications like Wordpress that are easily accessible to non-technical people. However, hosted/SaaS alternatives like Posterous seem to be disrupting the whole idea of non-technical people installing Wordpress (at least I hope so[1]). [0]: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... [1]: The main reason I might sound bitter about PHP is having to extinguish fires caused by idiots who write insecure PHP scripts or install open source scripts without bothering to periodically apply security fixes to counter the constant streams of exploits in said open source code while being responsible for some virtual hosting servers several years ago.