RE: [PHP-DEV] The PHP Platform

I hear you on the call to make PHP more recognisable. That's why we have the php-evangelism project, where we are putting together documents and facts as to why choose PHP over other languages. Really advocating PHP. I invite you - and anyone else interested - to join. Secondly, as to why PHP sucks because it doesn't have a soap extension (bla bla bla). It doesn't suck. The beauty of PHP is that it carries from C something really special. A lighweight basic environment for getting things done. You don't need ext/soap or ext/java -- you can do a whole load of these things without needing to have to leave PHP userspace, as Shane has demonstrated with his excellent PEAR SOAP classes. That's the beauty of PHP -- you can do everything within the language. We're even getting to the stage in which you can use PHP to write things that you would traditionally use perl, or c (eg, irc bots, email handlers, even ide's - with php-gtk) to handle. It has been mentioned before -- "what is there left to do to PHP?" -- and I believe that we could just fix up all the bugs left, and then work on writing add-ons in pecl or pear. Really, lets stop turning this language into bloat-ware with all the latest plugins and gadgets (that make other languages hell to learn), and stick with our original principles : and easy language to learn and extend. james