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> I think most developers don't understand how amazing PHP was compared to the competition and just how fast it acquired new features during those early years.
by anthony_doan 7y ago
> I think most developers don't understand how amazing PHP was compared to the competition and just how fast it acquired new features during those early years.
The only competition in those early years was Perl iirc.
I'm not entirely sure if PHP was fast at acquiring new features.
PHP didn't have classes until version 4 iirc. Namespace in 5.4? And 5.x is around NodeJS early days where RoR and Python Django/Pylon/Pyramid was around.
I think how easy it is to pick up the language to do things contributed to its success. The template is built-in and 1000 functions in the global namespace.
- jtreminio 7y agoProper classes in 5.0, "true" OOP in 5.2. Namespaces in 5.3 Javascript namespace/module handling is a nightmare, they should have copied PHP's.
- wvenable 7y ago> I'm not entirely sure if PHP was fast at acquiring new features. You really have turn back the clock; languages didn't have package management back then. They didn't have packages. The only exception, at the time, was Perl (which had CPAN). PHP acquiring features was not just about language features but also how quickly it's standard library grew to accomplish anything you needed on the web. > PHP didn't have classes until version 4 iirc. Namespace in 5.4? And 5.x is around NodeJS early days where RoR and Python Django/Pylon/Pyramid was around. I'm actually talking about the PHP3 era; by the time we're talking about PHP5 then there was already plenty of competition and the "early days" were already long over.