I entirely agree and have said on other occassions that PHP's popularity is both strength and weakness.arborint wrote:But he misses the filp side that is the power of scripting languages. Most of those open source PHP projects would not exist unless they were very, very, very badly coded.
No, I don't have any personal issues with someone who programs. What I care about is my time. And if I get a solution to a problem that's built crappy, I am wasting my time and I am considering if the money spent on a commercial solution wouldn't be worth it after all.aborint wrote:The key here is that "very, very, very badly coded" is the subjective judgement of some programmers. They will never accept that scripting languages evolved as a reaction to "coding well" for the simple reason that "coding well" is one of the major impediments to, of all things, CODING.
The fact that so many very, very, very bad programmers produce so much very, very, very bad code that is so very, very, very useful is just, just .... infuriating to them. Why? Because they have elevated programming above what it is: a medium to turn ideas into programs.
Christopher
On the other hand, I would expect anyone to strive for becoming better at what they're doing, especially when your work is published to the world, as OS projects are. But it seems that for years now they have pretty much remained at a certain level - I believe it will change in the future. The problem seems to be extremely prevalent with PHP projects. You can download fantastically coded servers, databases, browsers, email-clients, FTP-programs, network tools, data-administration tools, whole office applications and so on. I don't know if they are programmed in a procedural or object oriented way, and I don't care because they work fast, effiently and beautifully. They are indeed successful projects.
It's much harder to come up with an equally impressive list if you start thinking about PHP, even though PEAR is being overhauled and it has a number of very good classes.
I do get the impression that those PHP applications out there are first-generation OS. Projects like Firefox, for example, use an entirely different model, despite being open source. They have enjoyed the backing of AOL/Netscape and set up a foundation dedicated to their products while offering their them for free. Amazing. It seems that this kind of OS business model, where the core product is given away for free rather than created by enthusiasts who are learning about what they are doing as they are doing it, produces much better results.
What I am keen to see is PHP projects that are offered like that. There is, probably the (hopefully not only) shining example of ezPublish - and the company behind it gives it away for free and live off the commercial "halo" around their core product. But what else is there?