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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
by 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 agoConsidering 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 agoI'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.