Re: Disheartening Rant on TrueAsync RFC (was Re: [PHP-DEV] [PRE-RFC] Runtime modules)

> > > Folks, I'm going to be blunt. If you want PHP to be the next COBOL, this > is how you go about it. COBOL went from one of the more important languages > out there in 1980 to a joke by 1995. PHP can fall just as fast. We've all > seen the "PHP is dead" threads on LinkedIn. Knives are out. > Gonna age myself, but I actually used COBOL, and its "death" has nothing to do with OO but a plethora of other reasons, many tied to the great programming languages that followed and it is not dead. I can understand the hesitation of adopting something this major. People > remember the PHP 6 unicode disaster well. But there was never a fully > working implementation of PHP 6. Async has a working implementation. > There's rough edges, but there's something here. > > Change is scary, but it's the only constant. Async operation is the norm > now. Object Oriented Code had become the norm by 1995. COBOL ignored it, > and died as a result. Will PHP do the same now > Async is a useful function no doubt, but in the context of a primarily web programming language like PHP, I would argue the practical utility of the functionality is relatively limited. That is not to say PHP should not have Async, I think it should, but not everything needs async and it is best a solution where doing things in parallel makes sense, ie slow db queries or http/api requests (although this can already be done with curl). -- Ilia Alshanetsky Technologist, CTO, Entrepreneur E: ilia@ilia.ws T: @iliaa B: http://ilia.ws