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YAPC – Yet another PHP Community ? Or is it …

28 Nov

I’ll start this of by saying I enjoy PHP, for no particular reason, but a few years into the past I looked at some tutorials, and generaly started working with it, having fun and money with it, and it (the last IT in this sentence, I hope :) ) grew on me. and I don’t think it’s perfection encarnated (not close), but I don’t think it’s (damn) inferiour to other interpreted programming languages, it’s just .. different. Also, my opinion is, most of the time, a humble one, when it’s not … I’ll put up a big red sign ;) .So, let’s call this a disclamer, and move on with things :D

During my EuroOscon, I was witness to two of the biggest differences between Perl and PHP, the sense of community and the general awe factor (symbolized in Perl-God Larry Wall and the amazing Damian Conway) that Perl has … and PHP clearly doesn’t. Perl members exude pride in it, Larry’s State of the Onion talk draw crowds, and Damian is just bloody brilliant :) . The PHP crowd however, is far more shy, people gave me that “oh dear” look when I said I was a PHP user ,the man who invented it, Rasmus Lerdorf, while being apparently open, strikes you as someone who works best alone, unlike Larry Wall, who I caught attending and having a good time in a good deal of presentations, and as for the majority (ok, all) of the PHP presentations they lacked … well .. a lot of things, they weren’t very interesting to tell you the truth.

So what’s the point of all of this? Well, the biggest point is that PHP has a bit of distance to go, especially on the human point of view, at least at a “user” level, exacly the level where most of us lie :) . At a depper (developer) level, I believe things are better, since the language is alive and kicking, so is there a problem that needs fixing? Well, probably not, but things could improve :) , for one, altough I do appreciate the effort that PHP (ok, zend has been doing in bringing PHP to the Enterprise (with Oracle, for instance) but what about grass-roots? Well, I googled it and there are some organized attempts, here and there, but in comparison, this is just a whole different game (take Portuguese representation for one) .

So what’s there to do? Well, we’re not saving the world or anything, but I’ve been entertaning the notion that change starts small, and o a very small level, I’ve been entertaining the thought that MAYBE some of you feel the same, and that we could actually do something about it :) . Think I’m crazy or just plain blind? Say so on the comment box :) , I dare you ;) .

 
8 Comments

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  • http://gridpt1.fe.up.pt/mlopes/blog Mário Lopes

    I agree with you, PHP is a wonderful language for doing RAD (Rapid Application Development) and no one should me ashamed of using it. On the contrary (but those who code in VB should be ashamed :-)

    But PHP’s lacking enterprise features that sometimes drive me to JSP/Servlets. We need decent OO (otherwise code tends to become unreadable as soon as complexity grows) and we need all those J2EE candies, like transactions, messaging service, etc.. Fortunately Zend is lending a hand but that’s not enough.

    Other thing that PHP lacks is a MVC pattern, like Apache Struts. Ok, say you have Smarty and other template systems, but they just don’t cut it. I’ve used them and when the project gets big you start wasting a lot of time for implementing an easy feature due to the extra-complexity Smarty adds (and also a small amount of overhead).

    Doing a PHP community in Portugal would be quite interesting. Count me in.

  • http://gridpt1.fe.up.pt/mlopes/blog Mário Lopes

    I agree with you, PHP is a wonderful language for doing RAD (Rapid Application Development) and no one should me ashamed of using it. On the contrary (but those who code in VB should be ashamed :-)

    But PHP’s lacking enterprise features that sometimes drive me to JSP/Servlets. We need decent OO (otherwise code tends to become unreadable as soon as complexity grows) and we need all those J2EE candies, like transactions, messaging service, etc.. Fortunately Zend is lending a hand but that’s not enough.

    Other thing that PHP lacks is a MVC pattern, like Apache Struts. Ok, say you have Smarty and other template systems, but they just don’t cut it. I’ve used them and when the project gets big you start wasting a lot of time for implementing an easy feature due to the extra-complexity Smarty adds (and also a small amount of overhead).

    Doing a PHP community in Portugal would be quite interesting. Count me in.

  • http://bpedro.wevel.com/ Bruno Pedro

    I totally agree with the idea of starting a PHP community/developer forum in Portugal. Let’s all work together on this!

  • http://bpedro.wevel.com Bruno Pedro

    I totally agree with the idea of starting a PHP community/developer forum in Portugal. Let’s all work together on this!

  • http://blog.centopeia.com/ Pedro Custódio

    Why not join your efforts to the obvious result? ;)
    It’s time you evolve yourself and learn Perl, which btw has a super user group in Lisbon, and the next metting is already next week! ;)

    Perl to conquer the world!

  • http://blog.centopeia.com Pedro Custódio

    Why not join your efforts to the obvious result? ;)
    It’s time you evolve yourself and learn Perl, which btw has a super user group in Lisbon, and the next metting is already next week! ;)

    Perl to conquer the world!

  • http://david.ragingnexus.com David Ramalho

    I was wondering when this sort of shameless blunted promotion would show up :D is it FEAR, muahahahaha … cof cof cof .. but never the less, maybe I should show up to take some notes ;)

  • http://songo.blackorange.pt/blog David Ramalho

    I was wondering when this sort of shameless blunted promotion would show up :D is it FEAR, muahahahaha … cof cof cof .. but never the less, maybe I should show up to take some notes ;)