Re: The future of PHP

Could we cool it down a little ... maybe let a day go by before hitting "Send" once more on this thread? Attacking Rasmus and Zeev is counterproductive, and it's starting to sound pretty hostile. The whole PHP development team is doing a fantastic job. (Even though I didn't understand quite how shared objects work. <g> ) We're the other part of the team: implementers, developers and - yes - promoters. We're the ones which actually prove, not just that PHP works, but that it is effective, economical and productive. It's our responsibility to promote it and use it. We can do that by: - talking about our work and the tools we use to technical groups. - talking about our vision and the practical application of open source software to everyday business and scientific problems at meetings of Rotary, Chambers of Commerce, Kinsmen, Lions, etc.. - by always emphasizing the BENEFITS of PHP We're the ones on the ground, the evangelists. To reach business people we have to go and talk to them, expressing our goals in their language. Managers live by their ears, and are very responsive to what they hear, from sales reps, other managers at the same level, subordinates, general chat at association meetings, etc. They tend to not do a lot of reading, certainly they don't have time to browse a bunch of web sites. They are able to authorize pilot projects, just to see if something works or is as good as it claims to be. We have to create some buzz. Ironically, we don't necessarily do that by promoting PHP explicitly, but by emphasizing results and benefits from the sites we develop. We then have opportunity to promote the tools used to achieve those results. Regards - Miles Thompson At 02:46 PM 8/29/01 -0300, you wrote:

Hello, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

If you read my messages in the thread from the beginning you can see that basically the current problems of PHP in its acceptance are more with the people view of PHP than about its technical abilities. It is a known fact that PHP is very good for Web programming. The problem is that not everybody that could use PHP knows or is so sure about it. That is why PHP needs to be better marketed.

Well, at least some of us are spending a whole lot of time getting in front of people and showing them how useful PHP is. For the month of August I have seen my wife a total of 5 days. In July I saw her about 9 days. The rest of the time I was on the road and in front of people showing them how cool PHP is or sometimes I was home and she was on the road. Just to give you an idea. A list of recent talks and presentations: Nobody was questioning your commitment to promote PHP, but that hardly address the problem of making PHP a credible choice for development before people that could be using it with advantage but hardly are using it because they hardly know about it. The talks that you give are for people that already know about PHP. The people, in special the corporations, even don't know about PHP to be bothered to attend. You can't just expect people to follow you where you are if they even don't know PHP as a language with reputation, especially in the corporate world dominated by Microsoft stuff. That is what I telling you to address. Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net