Re: Why PHP ? - devil's advocate

"Martin A. Marques" wrote: > On Saturday 09 December 2000 20:49, Michael Kimsal wrote: > > > only works for us about 60% of the time. The other 40% it's > > > > ./configure > > make > > make install > > read INSTALL > > read README > > oops - it's README.TXT > > OK - 300 lines of crap that don't apply to my situation > > The problem is that with windows this crap doesn't exist, so when you need it > (and don't tell me you never need it!!!) you don't have it. > I never said I never needed it. Don't tell me you've *never* received a README file with a Windows package! :) They exist. But usually they don't have reams of compilation info, because they're often in binary form - it'll just run. Yes, I've already heard the argument that you should get source, but I don't always need it. If I want a graphics library that will draw circles and charts, I want circles and charts. I don't necessarily want the source, as *I* personally can't modify it enough to do anything useful. And you don't normally need the source if the product does what it's supposed to. > <clip> > > > make install > > WARNING messages thrown that scroll off my screen too fast > > (is it too much to ask MAKE files to log their errors someplace? I see > > PHP does it now, but I don't remember that always being the case). > > > > and so on. > > > > With a Windows situation, yes, even tho I pay for it, I can go grab > > a binary, unzip, place in directory, stop/start server, *poof* - it works. > > Not always. > Didn't say always - I said, in my case, around 85% of the time. Which is a higher success rate than my Linux software install rate. > > > My success rate installing objects/libraries on Windows has been about 85%, > > with failures getting resolve more quickly as the people we bought it from > > were either responsive or included better docs. > > Hey, one more thing! How about performace? Resets, hangs, etc. > It's a crapshoot - I've known Windows servers to be up for months at a time with moderately large traffic spikes, and others that needed rebooting every few days. Some of this is Windows, some is 3rd party libraries. It obviously works well enough for some people (even if it requires a lot of money and effort) otherwise no one would use it. I'm not saying Windows stuff is the best. I was speaking from a development standpoint that it's *often* faster to get required environments set up under Windows, at least for webserving purposes. It's a fairly homogenous system - people can distribute binaries and they pretty much just work. The majority of open source stuff I see is distributed primarily as source - compile yourself. This is where a large amount of frustration comes in, because there are *so* many different variations in platforms/compilers/linking/etc. It's not necessarily better or worse - just different. I've had many situations where having source files and compiling things myself was a godsend, but many other times where it's just a fantastic pain in the butt. Don't even get me started about kde2, although that's a good example. This is a PHP list, but I'll be glad to bore you with details offlist... :) YMMV ========================== Michael Kimsal http://www.tapinternet.com 734-480-9961