PHP ain’t got no respect
Lately I’ve been reading about how PHP developers feel like second class citizens among programmers. Check out some of the comments on this SitePoint post. This sentiment of course is nothing new. The barrier to entry for people to use PHP is virtually zero. However, downloading some “kewl scripts” from the Internet and hacking them up does not make someone a PHP professional. Yet that is the impression among “real programmers” about PHP developers as a whole. I’ve said for a long time that PHP gives people more than enough rope to hang themselves: register_globals, gpc_magic_quotes, etc.
I’ve also written about the silliness of predictions of PHP’s imminent downfall. PHP is not without its warts, but it also supports a vibrant ecosystem of frameworks (Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony, etc.) as well as high profile open source software (WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, ZenCart, etc.). I really doubt that PHP is going away any time soon.
One fact that is troubling is the slow adoption of PHP 5. Since it does break backward compatibility with several features of PHP 4, Web hosting companies have been reluctant to upgrade for fear of breaking thousands of their clients’ creations. Some companies like Dreamhost give customers a choice of PHP 4 or 5 on a per domain basis (an excellent idea if you ask me). PHP 5 really is a major improvement over PHP 4 and the reality now is that PHP 6 is on the horizon and promising even more improvements and new features. I’ll be watching the market share of the various versions closely in the next several months. One interesting tidbit for you: the Zend Framework only works with PHP 5.1+.
So what can be done to bolster the wounded egos of the world’s PHP programmers? Probably not much that will have an immediate effect. The long-term solution is to continue to innovate, collaborate, donate time to open source projects, and make application security a top priority. PHP has a reputation for security issues that is not entirely undeserved.
Fight the good fight one line of code at a time and don’t pay too much attention to self-important Java, .NET, and C++ programmers. Try to ignore the Rails devotees completely unless you want a good laugh. They say some funny stuff about PHP.
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2 Responses to “PHP ain’t got no respect”
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I use PHP in a lot of projects and, frankly, I don't really care what people think about the language from a high level software debate. It solves my problems.
Ed,
I think that's the bottom line. PHP has always worked well for me in my five years in this field. I think its future is bright (*cough* Zend Framework *cough*) and I see no compelling reason to switch horses.