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where is php headed? is it still worthwhile learning it?

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 1:42 am
by konstandinos
hello kind folk

i am a recent graduate in computer science. i'm starting off on my own in freelance software development. one of the areas i focus on is web applications.

ive hacked around in php a little bit, and found it rather straight forward (i love the way it embedds into html so smoothly). ive learnt the ropes with regards to mysql interfacing rather quick, and my html layout technique is strong. so i guess i am happy with it.

but ive been reading a lot around the net, and am noticing a strong movement towards languages such as rubyonrails and python.

if i am to focus on any one particular, why should it be php? or is this sort of thinking foolish? should i be open to all languages? isn't mastery of one a necessity though?

one wise coder friend said "stick to what you enjoy coding in". i try to keep that in mind.

just curious on your thoughts.

regards,
k

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 3:35 am
by Weirdan
but ive been reading a lot around the net, and am noticing a strong movement towards languages such as rubyonrails and python.
As of yet, it's still fuss over nothing.

Re: where is php headed? is it still worthwhile learning it?

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 6:58 am
by Buddha443556
konstandinos wrote:i am a recent graduate in computer science. i'm starting off on my own in freelance software development. one of the areas i focus on is web applications.
Good luck with freelancing.
konstandinos wrote:but ive been reading a lot around the net, and am noticing a strong movement towards languages such as rubyonrails and python.
It's not where your follow programmers are going that should concern you but where the money is to be made.
one wise coder friend said "stick to what you enjoy coding in". i try to keep that in mind.
I've programmed in plenty of languages I hate to pay the bills.

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 7:26 am
by patrikG
Weirdan wrote:
but ive been reading a lot around the net, and am noticing a strong movement towards languages such as rubyonrails and python.
As of yet, it's still fuss over nothing.
Arguably, but Google, for example, build a lot of their software in Python. The main advantage PHP has over Python is that PHP is much more proliferated - try finding a hosting company that offers Python out of the box compared rather than PHP.
Buddha443556 wrote:
konstandinos wrote:but ive been reading a lot around the net, and am noticing a strong movement towards languages such as rubyonrails and python.
It's not where your follow programmers are going that should concern you but where the money is to be made.
I think a healthy mixture of both professional as well commercial interest is a good combination.

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:10 am
by Buddha443556
patrikG wrote:I think a healthy mixture of both professional as well commercial interest is a good combination.
Yeah that's better said. :oops:

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 9:11 pm
by Ollie Saunders
PHP is still the best performing, most well suited, accessible, depolyable and easiest to learn of the lot. It also has prooven scalability, despite numerous false counter claims, just look at Wikipedia or Yahoo. That said there is a huge amount of bad PHP out there, you only have to look at these forums. Joe PHP and PHP done well are worlds apart. Although this isn't a particularly bad reflection on PHP but it just prooves that its easy enough to learn that non-programmers have a go. PHP does have a number of legacy issues (magic_quotes, register_globals, function library inconsistencies, error triggering instead of exceptions, namespace cluttering) but all of these can be managed or disabled in controlled PHP environments with well defined practices.

PHP 5 has a lot of the OO capabilities of Java with greatly improved polymorphism (through variable classes, method, properies, reflection API and overloading). I haven't used ROR but I know people move to it because of the lack of a standardized PHP framework and need for stronger typing to which PHP can now say Zend Framework and Type Hinting respectively. PHP is still, without a shadow of doubt in my mind, the best tool for the job or will be within 9 months (when the ZF is more mature and PHP 6 is out), although doubtless the other tools are pretty good too.

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:08 pm
by s.dot
like the other posts above me have stated, PHP isn't going anywhere for a while. even if it DOES go MIA, like some other languages, they are still highly available and worth learning.

Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:24 am
by Chris Corbyn
If PHP starts to die it just means people will pay me more money to write it! Anyway; it's here for a while yet. They're still writing the new release :)

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 4:56 am
by konstandinos
thanks for the insightful replies guys. i've been working in php over the last couple of weeks and am really enjoying it.

i like the straight-forward "hack where i want" approach to embedding it. i guess this isn't exactly best practise though. i'm still learning the ropes. i've been reading about, and have realise that many guru coders recommend separating php from html alltogether, using templates etc.

but in the mean time, while my code is still relatively small/managable, i'll stick to what i know.

cheers,
k

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:59 am
by MrPotatoes
there is just so much PHP out there that it's not going to die. compareitavly(sp, omg sp) i think it's the best out there for web dev. great licence for the source, wicked easy to learn and fast. holy crap it's fast.

i just wish it had a client side rendering engine within it. that would be the balls. other than that it's absolutly awesome

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:41 am
by onion2k
MrPotatoes wrote:i just wish it had a client side rendering engine within it. that would be the balls. other than that it's absolutly awesome
Like http://gtk.php.net/ maybe?

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:18 am
by MrPotatoes
acutally. yeah.

ok, i wish i would have known about that. i wonder if it'd be able to do that ajax stuff pretty easily. personally i think that if you can make it on there you can make it faster and more efficent depending on the browser but that is just my opinon. (btw, Opera FTW)

i'm gonna look through that some more. that's pretty exciting news for me lol

balls. it's not supposed to be for web applications. darnnit

Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 12:15 pm
by feyd
Of course it's not for web applications, why would it be?

PHP would need to be embeddable for that to happen. Too many security concerns and just not enough reason to do it in my book.

Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2006 4:21 pm
by BDKR
While I am late to the party here, I'll go ahead and throw in my 2 cents.

PHP seems to be starting on a swell that Java went through in the late '90's early 00's. There is a crop of Web 2.0 companies and others out there are that are really REALLY hip on LAMP these days. And so they should be. With the emergence of Linux in the '90's, the numbers of entrepenuers and decision makers making using it AND finding their way into decision making positions was bound to grow.

Anyway, I'm starting to see a good number of positions open up for PHP and MySQL people making very good money. Of course, how much depens on your amount of experience (nooblers need not apply). If you have around 5 years time in with PHP, you are in very good shape! I first started messing with it in '99 and I've had numerous contracts and a couple of jobs using it. As a result, I'm getting contacted on average of 3 times a week for differring jobs paying some very good rates. We're talking $60K to $85k annually.

So in short, LAMP may not have been the most lucrative in years past, but I think that's going to continue to change.

Python and Ruby are both very very good languages. I love Python personally. I suspect that the usage of these will begin to climb in years to come as Linux continues to make it's way into the Enterprise and even the desktop. Especially when you consider how disruptive MySQL (and to a lesser degree Postgres) have been, there is a very good chance that the long time ERP stalwarts will become threatened by combinations of the aforementioned.

I think this is inevitable as a matter of fact. When you consider that more and more CEO's and CIO's are starting to question the amounts of money they have to pay for closed source solutions, the writing is on the wall.

Cheers,
BDKR

Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 4:11 am
by freefall
I'm curious why you think python ror will be a better solution in enterprise level apps like erp systems?