Larry Wall on PHP [and other topics]

"I confess, I have a soft spot in my heart for inside-out languages like PHP. The first real compiler I ever wrote was for a sort of text-processing macro language in which the commands were embedded in the data. This is part of a more general class of programming languages in which a peculiar form of processing is assumed by default, such as the pattern/action syntax of awk that assumes an invisible outer loop. Perl can do that, but it's not the default. I think languages like awk and PHP hobble themselves in the long run by attaching themselves to a particular ecological niche, particularly when a generalist like Perl can effectively occupy the same niche. So I've never felt tempted to even try PHP. I'd only be speaking second-hand if I said that PHP has some serious namespace and extension mechanism issues. So I won't say that. :-)" URL: http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/06/1343222 -- Sebastian Bergmann http://sebastian-bergmann.de/ http://phpOpenTracker.de/ Did I help you? Consider a gift: http://wishlist.sebastian-bergmann.de/