<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:02 AM, L. V. Lammert <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lvl@omnitec.net">lvl@omnitec.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
At 10:43 AM 2/1/2010 -0500, you wrote:<br>
<br>
>Etc. Leading to the question, if PHP is so bad, why is it so prominently<br>
>used? Why are so many willingly using garbage? Or,why is it that some<br>
>think it's good?<br>
><br>
>So why PHP? Is there something unique that only it does? Or is it maybe<br>
>that finding people that know something about it is easier than finding<br>
>people who know something about a better approach?<br>
<br>
Many reasons:<br>
<br>
1) It runs on all web platforms, even, gasp, Windoze;<br>
<br>
2) It requires no overhead (i.e. no compiler like C or assembly, no module<br>
files like CPAN, no external library modules for the base install, ..).<br>
<br>
3) The syntax is fairly simple, and close enough to C for a newbie to use<br>
previous programming knowledge.<br>
<br>
4) You can get anything you want as a project already - projects such as<br>
Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Silverstripe, & phpMyAdmin make thousands of<br>
hours of functionality readily available.<br>
<br>
et al<br>
<br>
PHP is not bad in itself, *some* projects or implementations are just known<br>
to be poorly maintained or badly designed; if there IS a problem with PHP,<br>
it's that there is no structure to force good programming practices.<br>
<br>
Lee<br>
</blockquote><div> Which is why some people when to ADA</div><div>and COBAL in the past. Maintainability was</div><div>the key factor. Programmers hate the </div><div>regimentation, which also gets to the heart</div><div>
of the matter. I doubt that a proliferation of</div><div>languages is helping much. The issue being</div><div>whether a new variation on the same </div><div>functionality has any real payoff long term.</div><div><br></div>
<div>One could argue that whatever floats to the</div><div>top is best, but that can simply be a result of</div><div>what courses people take in school, the </div><div>instructor's take on what is good, and of </div><div>
course what provides employment later on.</div><div>50 years ago what was best was what IBM</div><div>said was best. Different forces for different</div><div>times. Probably none more fundamentally</div><div>significant than the others.</div>
<div><br></div><div> -- Bob</div><div><br></div></div>