Marco Tabini's Top 5 List.
Marcus Whitney has posted another thought provoking piece on A/R/T. The article is titled Five Top PHP Mistakes and written by php|architect publisher Marco Tabini. It is an Op/Ed piece on what Marco believes are the top 5 missteps that PHP as a language has taken.
Marco takes the opportunity of his weekly “exit(0)” (How I do love the name) to discuss his Top 5 list. Unlike other recent rants about PHP and it’s premature death, this is an honest look at the language and what he feels are the missteps it’s made. The thing I like about this article is it’s pretty much devoid of politics. Marco lays it out honestly but without rancor. Oh yea, here’s a quote to wet your appetite.
Lately, PHP can’t seem to catch a break. People seem to enjoy complaining about how all the cool kids have moved on to Rails, how the PHP development process is controlled by a small group of elitists who completely disregard the community’s needs, or by corporations who care only about their financial well being, or little green men intent on weakening the human race in preparation for a full-scale invasion that will, undoubtedly, start any day now.
I can’t say I totally agree with Marco on all his points but I can say that his article is well worth a read. No sample code here, nothing that’s going make your brain hurt. It’s well worth the read.
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Comments
Also, can we please make the subject line optional?
Hi!
First, yea, I’ll look into making the subject line optional on comments. (It annoys me as well.) :)
Second, I’m not sure I disagree with him (upon further reflection) my only problem with the article is #5 on his list, “Objects in PHP 4”. I came to PHP from Java/Delphi/VFP background and was very used to working in OO. I started working with PHP seriously with 4. If 4 had not had some kind of OO model to it, I probably wouldn’t have used it. So while I will agree with Marco that the OO in 4 left a lot to be desired, if it had not been there, I wouldn’t be here. :)
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I'd would, however, question number 4. Is he complaining about function parameter order? Or function names? To be honest, I cannot tell. I'll have to assume he is referring to the multitude of built in functions within PHP.
Having never dealt with Unicode, I would shift point 2 and 3 up a notch in my list. Register Globals, imho, is the biggest mistake PHP has ever made. 7 years later and we're still plagued by this mistake.
I can see Marco’s point about register_globals not being as big of an issue as it used to be but if we are looking at PHP from a historical perspective, that’s gotta be #1 or #2 in my book.
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