Re: The future of PHP

Hello Rasmus, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: > > > So, it is very hard to convince the anybody to bet all the farm in PHP. > > You may have the technical arguments, but is not enough, I'm afraid. > > > > You in particular, may not need to convince others to bet on PHP, but it > > is nothing like that for most people that want to live from software > > development. They have to put up with work/business opportunities that > > the market offers to live from it. So, today, I'm afraid that you > > already still have an hard time to convince people to dedicate only to > > PHP, even those that know and believe PHP is that great. > > PHP is represented at every important technical conference right alongside > Perl and Python. When you hear someone talk about scripting languages, > they will usually say Perl, Python and PHP. I don't see any problem with > the current state of PHP "marketing" in the technical community. I think that is not the largest part of the PHP community. Let me explain: I believe the largest part of the community is made of those that develop Web sites and applications for some one else and do it for a living. Many of those don't always manage to make the technological decisions, their bosses do. There you have two problems: convince those bosses that PHP is still a superior technical solution to solve their development needs as they evolve, and then convince them that other languages/technologies that have been also evolving are not yet as good as PHP, despite they have been flooded of news from everywhere that they are much more advanced and better for the developer needs. The first problem is technical. You just keep developing PHP to satisfy the user needs as soon as you perceive them and that's it. The second problem is marketing. It doesn't matter for people that have to make the decisions how much better PHP in fact is if people don't hear about it. Even if they hear about it, it may not be enough if they hear much more from the rest (Java, ASP.Net, C#, , whatever). Here PHP looses bigtime. You may not want to believe me, but I am afraid that unless PHP is better marketted, soon or later its market acceptance will be weakened. > PHP is not marketed the way Java and .NET is. There are no multi-billion > dollar corporations behind PHP and asking us, and apparently me That's not my point. Some marketing is better than no marketing at all which is what you do today. There are plenty of ways to do some marketing on PHP that don't even cost money to you. > personally, to make that happen is unrealistic. Like Linux 5 years ago, > PHP is adopted by the techies and somewhat shunned by the suits because > they haven't read about it in their latest advertisement-sponsored > magazine. oh, man Linux was a different story. Expecting a similar future for PHP I'm afraid it may be wishful thinking. PHP is mostly focused on Web development. Web market is fading out. Even if you can do non Web programming with PHP, most people are not aware of that. You need to do some marketing to put in evidence that PHP is as much capable for non-Web programming. There you have another big problem that is there is no affordable way to compile and generate executables from PHP programs. I know that historically you never liked this ability into PHP programs, but that is a vital need for people that will want to distribute their programs like VB or Delphi programs. > We can't possibly hope to compete with Sun and Microsoft when it comes to > suit-oriented marketing drivel. What we can do is concentrate on what we > do best. Writing a solid and very focused tool. Building the grassroot > community and being visible at all relevant technical conferences. If we > continue to do this, I see no reason for any dropoff in PHP popularity > which leads directly to more and more corporate acceptance. You believe in whatever you want, off course, but I think it is time to adjust course. Assumming that the future of PHP is just a technical matter, I'm affraid you are neglecting an important part of the equation: the people. The needs and beliefs change through time. I am try to show my current view of what people feel and need today that I don't see addressed. You can see that and work on the changes if you agree. I have more ideias if you care to work on that direction. Regards, Manuel Lemos