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I think the author has missed the larger problem. The PHP development community is completely dysfunctional. I don't think that a project of the magnitude of PH

by pbiggar 17y ago

I think the author has missed the larger problem. The PHP development community is completely dysfunctional. I don't think that a project of the magnitude of PHP 6 is possible without fixing that fundamental problem. Why is it dysfunctional? - every discussion leads to bikeshedding (and almost none of the bikeshedders actually commit code to the Zend engine) - there are 'rules', but they don't apply to most people (ie the 5.4 thing in the article) - no firm hand to guide them (Rasmus has deliberately not provided this) - the mailing list has a complete lack of civility - highest concentration of poisonous people to non-poisonous that I have ever seen - votes for everything - patches are not discussed, either pre or post commit, so the code is bad, and people won't work on it. I was so glad to be the hell out of there.

jrockway 17y ago
Dude, it's PHP.
- pbiggar 17y ago
  This is the root cause of the problem. Since it's PHP, you can't get really good developers to work on the core. The people who love PHP and the people who have both the desire and skill to do the work described are separate groups.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Considering that it is as widely adopted as it is though, you'd have to agree that they succeeded in spite of all these hurdles. PHP is a band aid, but as a band aid it served it's niche remarkably well, imagine if clojure or some other better designed language would attract such an enormous following and would be so easy to deploy. Even today mod_php runs rings around mod_wsgx in that respect (and it's already a lot better then mod_python). PHP has tons of shortcomings, but it is relatively good at what it does, and that's what drives it forward, not the people behind the project. Say python and everybody things 'Guido van Rossum', say Clojure and 'Rich Hickey' jumps to the foreground. As long as I've been using PHP I would have a hard time coming up with the full name of it's lead developer. That 'lack of personality' and the chaotic development process may actually contain some hidden benefit. Absent a strong leader there will be many people pushing and pulling in different directions, it may have gone too far but there is a lesson in there somewhere.
    - pbiggar 17y ago
      I'm not discussing the success of PHP. It has done well. However, if you are suggesting that PHP has been successful _because_ of its lack of a leader, I think you would need to justify that.

by pbiggar 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago

Dude, it's PHP.

pbiggar 17y ago
This is the root cause of the problem. Since it's PHP, you can't get really good developers to work on the core. The people who love PHP and the people who have both the desire and skill to do the work described are separate groups.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Considering that it is as widely adopted as it is though, you'd have to agree that they succeeded in spite of all these hurdles. PHP is a band aid, but as a band aid it served it's niche remarkably well, imagine if clojure or some other better designed language would attract such an enormous following and would be so easy to deploy. Even today mod_php runs rings around mod_wsgx in that respect (and it's already a lot better then mod_python). PHP has tons of shortcomings, but it is relatively good at what it does, and that's what drives it forward, not the people behind the project. Say python and everybody things 'Guido van Rossum', say Clojure and 'Rich Hickey' jumps to the foreground. As long as I've been using PHP I would have a hard time coming up with the full name of it's lead developer. That 'lack of personality' and the chaotic development process may actually contain some hidden benefit. Absent a strong leader there will be many people pushing and pulling in different directions, it may have gone too far but there is a lesson in there somewhere.
  - pbiggar 17y ago
    I'm not discussing the success of PHP. It has done well. However, if you are suggesting that PHP has been successful _because_ of its lack of a leader, I think you would need to justify that.