[UPHPU] Rails vs PHP

[Scott Hill]

On 3/26/07, Joshua Simpson <std3rr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> PHP is a poorly designed language any way you look at it.  The fact that
> PHP
> has no real naming convention for it's entire builtin function library,
> the
> fact that PHP dumps all of these functions (without a naming convention!)
> into the global namespace, and then expects you to work from this one
> namespace (without any sort of sub namespace solution;  unless you use a
> class hack), it's ridiculous include/require feature, which serves almost
> no
> point, without namespaces, in usage of pure PHP, it's inclusion of
> exceptions in 5, yet they're almost useless without a complete restructure
> of the language to include exceptions.... the list goes on.  I like PHP,
> but
> it's not an elegant language, it's not really a clever language, and it's
> certainly not well designed.


I agree with you on this.  Compared to C++ and Java, it doesn't hold
candle.  However, in all fairness to PHP, I don't think we're supposed to
compare it to any high level, structured programming language.  I't
basically a powerful scripting language.  I'm not sure it should have
namespace or even be object oriented (oh boy, here we go).  The magic of PHP
(IMHO) is how easy it is to get something reasonable through your browser.
This seems attractive to some developers because if you can deliver a decent
package through a browser, you instantly eliminate huge distribution
headaches.  Having said that, PHP does seem to be rapidly evolving (or
mutating) into something much more than a scripting language.  Maybe the
comparison should be PHP as a scripting language against the afore-mentioned
frameworks.

my humble .02.

-- 
Scott Hill

"May you solve interesting problems" - Author Unknown
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." -
Sir Winston Churchill