It’s easy to complain about PHP. For instance, why didn’t they choose ☃ as their namespace resolution operator?! As a developer with lofty opinions, I’m not a big fan of PHP. To me, it’s an argument against allowing accretion to determine the design of a system. I don’t think it’s controversial to call the PHP language, core library, and ecosystem “inconsistent” and “a matter of curious histories”. A language feature here, a library function there, year over year, and you’ve got a “quaint” design. Yes, those are scare-quotes.
Whenever I feel a big rant about PHP shortcomings approaching, I try remember a few important facets of its success:
- PHP made programming web applications accessible to lot of people for whom writing CGIs with Perl, Python or Java servlets was overwhelming. Myself included!
- You still can’t beat the simplicity of PHP’s deployment model: acquire commodity web hosting, upload source files, and done.
- Due to its accessibility and ease of deployment, a whole new kind of person started building stuff with code. Jason Kottke called part of this Liberal Arts 2.0. Less mathy programming, more craftsy.
Fast forward to today. PHP is still doing fine, though lots of people switched to Ruby or Python many moons ago, depending on personality type. And lots of those have since moved on to other things. The technology hype curve is an overlapping, ongoing thing.
Of those that switched, many ended up with JavaScript, in the guise of browser-side frameworks or server-side Node (and its ilk). I think there’s a huge opportunity here. JS is not without flaws, like PHP. But its sort of backed into really broad reach. Embedded, games, applications, mobile, probably more that I don’t even know about. That could make it compelling for an even less math-y demographic of people building stuff with computers.
And yet, there is no single JS community. There’s browser people, there’s server people. The future may hold mobile, gaming, and device people. That creates dissonance and some uphill battles.
But maybe that’s the really cool part. The JavaScript communities will have to slog uphill a bit to make accessible the previously intimidating domains of mobile apps, games, and embedded software. And that could raise the boat for people who aren’t building web apps but could be building software.
