RE: PHP on .NET DLR

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 08:59:24AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> K T Ligesh wrote:
> 
>
> Personally because it doesn't solve any problem I have.  I build large
> scalable web sites.

It will. You should create a silverlight frontend for at least some of the y
ahoo interface. It will be interesting. It will be really nice if you can do
 it in PHP itself. I have checked the Phalanger examples, and it is extraord
inarily trivial. I think w
riting a silverlight client for existing apps would be a matter of days work
 in PHP, especially if they are already ajax aware.

Unless of course, yahoo has a strict No-MS policy, I think it wouldn't hurt 
Yahoo to have an optional fancy graphical frontend. Yahoo interfaces are ver
y drab now. So maybe _yahoo_ will sponsor this? :-) hehe.



> But this is open source.  It doesn't matter what I
> think.  Open Source moves with the interest of the contributors.  If a
> couple of developers joined the project tomorrow to make PHP work great
> with Silverlight, then it would happen.  Just like how PHP got support
> for just about everything else.  Either an existing PHP developer needed
> it, or someone from the outside needed it badly enough to join the
> project and make sure it happened.  If either happens in this case, then
> PHP will get Silverlight support.

You will be able to write silverlight client in PHP and stream the data from
 a linux/apache/php server.  and it can always be made optional.

>
> So, if you really want to see Silverlight support in PHP, you need to go
> looking for someone who is interested in volunteering their time to make
> it happen and remind them that PHP is a very open open source project
> and it really isn't hard to contribute to it.
>

It was there. PHalanger was working nicely, and I was planning on contributi
ng once I could get my development environment--based on vim/screen/xterm/mu
tt--ported to windows, which became possible only with Vista. But the Phalan
ger devs got hired by MS,
and then they were not allowed to work on the project, which is really stran
ge, considering that MS has nothing to lose but a lot to gain from Phalanger
. The problem is again that the situation is not neutral. If it was, then PH
P was the first language on
.NET, even ahead of python. Phalanger had it working much before the ironpyt
hon got their first production release out.

And even now, there do exist a maintainer for phalanger, but it is not being
 taken seriously--in contrast to the enthusiasm that ironRuby has generated 
in the Ruby community. I can't still understand how a pre-alpha release of I
ronRuby is greeted much mo
re enthusiastically, while the fully working phalanger is abandoned.

What we need is to get MS let the old developers--Tomas and Lada--back to wo
rking on Phalanger. I am still trying to figure what actually made MS purpos
efully scuttle Phalanger by snatching the devs.

Beyond tech demos, which major web site has a Silverlight frontend
today?  About as many as Adobe Air, I would expect.  But regardless, PHP
is firmly entrenched as a scalable server-side web platform.  That's
where our focus is and probably always will be.  I don't actually see a
problem with a Silverlight/Ruby client speaking to a PHP server-side
script.  Most RIA work today is cross-language in the sense that you
have client-side Javascript connection to server-side PHP.  PHP doesn't
need to be everywhere.

But again, it comes down to the level of interest amongst developers out
there.  If there really is that much interest, you shouldn't need the
Phalanger guys.  Developers would be lined up to help make this happen.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the Silverlight platform, but you need
to recognize that there is a very large group of people out there who
still have no idea what it is, and an even larger group who know what it
is but have no use for it.  Until that changes, you are fighting an
uphill battle.  It also doesn't help that the open source community is
heavily Linux and OSX oriented and most of us can't even see Silverlight
working while Adobe Air works fine on our platform.

Compare: http://labs.infragistics.com/silverlight/
and: http://www.matchmine.com/

for example.  The first is a Silverlight app, the second an Adobe Air
one.  The first doesn't work at all on Firefox/OSX while the second
works fine.

-Rasmus

K T Ligesh wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 08:59:24AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: 
>
>  It will. You should create a silverlight frontend for at least some of the yahoo 
interface. It will be interesting. It will be really nice if you can do it in PHP it
self. I have checked the Phalanger examples, and it is extraordinarily trivial. I th
ink
writing a silverlight client for existing apps would be a matter of days work in PHP, espec
ially if they are already ajax aware.
>
>  Unless of course, yahoo has a strict No-MS policy, I think it wouldn't hu
rt Yahoo to have an optional fancy graphical frontend. Yahoo interfaces are 
very drab now. So maybe _yahoo_ will sponsor this? :-) hehe.
>
>
> 
>
>  You will be able to write silverlight client in PHP and stream the data f
rom a linux/apache/php server.  and it can always be made optional.
> 
>
>  It was there. PHalanger was working nicely, and I was planning on contributing on
ce I could get my development environment--based on vim/screen/xterm/mutt--ported to
 windows, which became possible only with Vista. But the Phalanger devs got hired by
 MS
, and then they were not allowed to work on the project, which is really str
ange, considering that MS has nothing to lose but a lot to gain from Phalang
er. The problem is again that the situation is not neutral. If it was, then 
PHP was the first language
on .NET, even ahead of python. Phalanger had it working much before the ironpython got thei
r first production release out.
>
>  And even now, there do exist a maintainer for phalanger, but it is not being take
n seriously--in contrast to the enthusiasm that ironRuby has generated in the Ruby c
ommunity. I can't still understand how a pre-alpha release of IronRuby is greeted mu
ch
more enthusiastically, while the fully working phalanger is abandoned.
>
>  What we need is to get MS let the old developers--Tomas and Lada--back to
 working on Phalanger. I am still trying to figure what actually made MS pur
posefully scuttle Phalanger by snatching the devs.
>

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 10:10:28AM -0700, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> Beyond tech demos, which major web site has a Silverlight frontend
> today?  About as many as Adobe Air, I would expect.  But regardless, PHP
> is firmly entrenched as a scalable server-side web platform.  That's

Silverlight is pre-alpha, at least, the one that allows you to write apps in
 .NET. The silverlight that is in RC is a glorified media player, and quite 
useless. I think MS introduced it only a couple of months back. Once the VS 
2008 comes out, we will ha
ve every VB dev churning out rich web interfaces. Yes, it is still not easy 
as writing a desktop app, and the underlying principle is actually client-se
rver, and I am sure MS will not succeed like they did in Desktop. In fact, .
NET never really caught on
outside of MS shops, because MS is a desktop company, and they never got Web
 development right, which is what they are trying to rectify using Silverlig
ht. ONce MS realized they can't really get Web development right, they are c
ompletely changing the rule
s in their favor now.


> where our focus is and probably always will be.  I don't actually see a
> problem with a Silverlight/Ruby client speaking to a PHP server-side
> script.  Most RIA work today is cross-language in the sense that you
> have client-side Javascript connection to server-side PHP.  PHP doesn't
> need to be everywhere.

Yes. The idea is productivity. We don't have infinite developer hours, and d
ebugging two separate languages is lot of lost productivity. The entire poin
t of silverlight is to allow people to write client and server side code in 
the same language, because
the separate languages are the basic impedance to productivity.

>
> But again, it comes down to the level of interest amongst developers out
> there.  If there really is that much interest, you shouldn't need the
> Phalanger guys.  Developers would be lined up to help make this happen.
>
> I appreciate your enthusiasm for the Silverlight platform, but you need
> to recognize that there is a very large group of people out there who
> still have no idea what it is, and an even larger group who know what it
> is but have no use for it.  Until that changes, you are fighting an
> uphill battle.  It also doesn't help that the open source community is
> heavily Linux and OSX oriented and most of us can't even see Silverlight
> working while Adobe Air works fine on our platform.

Of course, it is a technology that is in the alpha stage of development. But
 it is a nice addition to current php apps and I cannot really find any draw
backs. As the people in the forefront of technology, PHP community has to ta
ke pro-active steps right,
and not just react much later?

If we consider silverlight alone, we are too early to make any real pronounc
ements, but as I said, silverlight is merely ONE of the reasons. The core id
ea is PHP on .NET, which has many other advantages too, and not a single dis
advantage as far as the la
nguage or the developers are concerned.

So at least, we are in agreement that PHP on .NET is a good thing (tm), but 
you need someone to pick it up.

Thanks.

K T Ligesh wrote:
>  The code is already there. It seems MS hired the devs
> specifically so that they would stop working on it.

Do you see a conspiracy around every corner?  Couldn't it just be
priorities?  That MS wanted an IronRuby and the Phalanger devs had the skill
to make it happen so they hired them?  And Phalanger was just collateral
damage? That'd be my vote.

> If they hadn't hired Tomas, we would have a complete PHP
> on DLR by now. So there is little I can do. We need to get MS
> adopt the already existing phalanger code; or just let the original
> developer work on the project. So writing code does not even
> enter in as the problem.

What Rasmus said.  The code is available at
http://www.codeplex.com/Phalanger/R...x?ReleaseId=337
5 and you've got C skills; what's stopping you from picking it up and
running with it?

>  Normally, when a company hires a developer working on a
> project, the sane followup is to have him working on the same
> thing afterwards.

The sane thing?  By who's yardstick?  Not if that is not what the company
needs at the time.

> Here what we have is MS hiring Tomas and
> Lada, but then moving them into ironRuby. So there is a some
> serious stuff going on. I am sure Tomas and Lada would prefer
> to work on PHP itself, since they have done a really good job
> with Phalanger, so it is a pure managerial decision to not
> let them work on it.

MS is paying their salary, so MS gets to decide what they work on. Plain and
simple.  (BTW, I generally dislike Ruby too, so I'm not a fan of their
direction either, but I'm realisitc.)

> I think MS, even though they do have a firm commitment to
> VB, is primarily a C company, with C++/C#, for which I am
> thankful. Considering how they treated their VB6 devs by
> changing to VB.NET (which has no relation to VB btw), it
> would seem the C folks are the ones who are calling the
> shots.  so PHP's C heritage would suit them fine.

Have you considered that they have finally realized that the C heritage is
becoming legacy as COBOL became?

> I might rather move to a dynamic C# rather than Ruby.
> I am incapable of coding in a language that's not delimited
> using braces. I have this parser embedded in my brain that
> can execute C style language automatically once it is
> properly syntax highlighted in Vim.

Frankly I despise semi-colon delimited languages because they force you to
use syntax for the normal case instead of the abnormal one.  Braces are
silly when compared to a language like Python that is elegant and has no
need for them.

That said, I am not incapable of coding in languages that I don't prefer,
when needed.  And evolution has shown that the more adaptable species are
the ones more likely to survive.

> C is a horrible language, but somehow it has some kind of
> charm and never seem to go away.

Yeah, charm like a root canal.  It won't go away because most people only
envision small permutations of what they are familiar with.

> So I think being comfortable
> with C and C like languages is the safest bet you can make in
> the Computer Industry.

They used to say that about COBOL.

> Of top 10,
> 4--Java/C++/C#/PHP--languages are C based. So there must be
> something right about the braces.

Yes, familiarity.

> So that's it? 'Nobody cares' (tm)? 'You can switch to Ruby
> if you want to, and nobody's stopping you'? Or am I on the wrong list?

Actually, it's 'Nobody gives a damn (tm)'.  (Sorry, just jerking your chain.
:)

>  To be frank, with Silverlight, I don't think anyone has a
> choice now. The hype is too much, and the number of hits that
> ironRuby gives on Google is staggering, especially
> considering its nascent pre-alpha state. So PHP will be one
> of those things that didn't adapt to the changes and then
> loses the war.

Listen, if Silverlight becomes big enough someone will pick up Phalanger or
otherwise port PHP.  Frankly I see a lot of reasons why Silverlight won't
become big; they are making a lot of wrong market choices.  And I'm not the
only one who thinks so. http://inelegant.org/silverlight/  and
http://diveintomark.org/archives/20...02/silly-season  But then I'm
soured on MS these days. :)

--
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org - http://t.oolicio.us

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> 
>
> The sane thing?  By who's yardstick?  Not if that is not what the company
> needs at the time.

It is all about productivity. You are taking off a developer from his core e
xpertise, who has created something usable, and then dumping him into someth
ing that he has not previously worked on, it is a criminal waste of human re
sources. IN my opinion, th
at's not a sane thing.


> K T Ligesh wrote: 
>
> Do you see a conspiracy around every corner?  Couldn't it just be
> priorities?  That MS wanted an IronRuby and the Phalanger devs had the ski
ll
> to make it happen so they hired them?  And Phalanger was just collateral
> damage? That'd be my vote.

Then it is upto you to explain why. PHP has a larger enterprise reach. PHP i
s more popular. PHP has a more complete .NET implementation. There has to be
 some reason for MS to backtrack.


> 
>
> What Rasmus said.  The code is available at
> [url]http://www.codeplex.com/Phalanger/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=337[/ur
l]
> 5 and you've got C skills; what's stopping you from picking it up and
> running with it?

First of all, Windows is not my native platform. I tried with Mono, but last
 I checked they had some problems, which I couldn't work around. And even th
en the entire windows platform is alien to me, and it will take some time be
fore I can get a hang of t
he philosophy.

 
>
> MS is paying their salary, so MS gets to decide what they work on. Plain a
nd
> simple.  (BTW, I generally dislike Ruby too, so I'm not a fan of their
> direction either, but I'm realisitc.)

But it is a waste of years of work already one, and the expertise that the P
halanger devs have acquired working on it. Now all their previous experience
 has to be ported to ruby, which while easy, is still not trivial.

> Have you considered that they have finally realized that the C heritage is
> becoming legacy as COBOL became?
>

Except for VB, Python, Ruby, all the main languages have C based syntax, tha
t's php, perl, C#, c++, java, javascript. You have absolutely no point there
. It is not merely that people are using C, but the new languages that come 
up are also following the
rules of C.

If C was a burden, then the people would have designed the new languages dif
ferently, but instead, what we have is that the more popular of the new gene
ration languages are all like C. The legacy argument doesn't work at all her
e.


 
>
> Frankly I despise semi-colon delimited languages because they force you to
> use syntax for the normal case instead of the abnormal one.  Braces are
> silly when compared to a language like Python that is elegant and has no
> need for them.
>
> That said, I am not incapable of coding in languages that I don't prefer,
> when needed.  And evolution has shown that the more adaptable species are
> the ones more likely to survive.

It is about productivity. I have even done extensive elisp programming, and 
I am comfortable with it. But what we have here is not whether a person can 
do something or not, but how much productive is he going to be. We are in a 
business. We are talking a
bout applications with 200,000 lines of code. When it comes to large applica
tions, an inherent ability to parse is an advantage.


> 
>
> Yeah, charm like a root canal.  It won't go away because most people only
> envision small permutations of what they are familiar with.

The 6 of the most popular are like C. So you have no escape.

> 
>
> They used to say that about COBOL.

COBOL was a SINGLE language. Here we have 6 languages--the most popular ones
, being like C. Including all the libc functions.

>
> Yes, familiarity.
> 
>
> Actually, it's 'Nobody gives a damn (tm)'.  (Sorry, just jerking your chai
n.
> :)

"Nobody cares" an uncyclopedia definition. http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Nobody_car
es


> Listen, if Silverlight becomes big enough someone will pick up Phalanger o
r
> otherwise port PHP.  Frankly I see a lot of reasons why Silverlight won't
> become big; they are making a lot of wrong market choices.  And I'm not th
e
> only one who thinks so. http://inelegant.org/silverlight/  and
> http://diveintomark.org/archives/20...02/silly-season  But then I'm
> soured on MS these days. :)
>

Yes. But we already lost the desktop battle. The same arguments--Proprietary
, MS controlled crappy interfaces--didn't prevent MS from completely taking 
over the desktop. Yes, Server is different, and MS never got it right with .
NET, but what I am seeing
with MS is that philosophy of improving and learning from mistakes. They hav
e rectified two of the primary problems with .NET--the lack of dynamic langu
ages, and the inability to have desktop like controls--even though it took t
hem 10 years.

Anyway, as I have said earlier, Silverlight is merely one more reason. The k
ey idea is php on .NET. and the contrast with Ruby community's attitude towa
rd IronRuby.


I am of the same opinion of Miguel. Somehow the open source folks never lear
n, and are always dismissive of the competing technologies, even though they
 have pathetically lost out in the desktop front, and now has a pitch battle
 in the server side.

K T Ligesh wrote:
>  It is all about productivity. You are taking off a developer
> from his core expertise, who has created something usable,
> and then dumping him into something that he has not
> previously worked on, it is a criminal waste of human
> resources. IN my opinion, that's not a sane thing.

Productivity doesn't matter if a person is being productive on a project
that is not as much interest as another project which they also could do
well on.

> Then it is upto you to explain why. PHP has a larger
> enterprise reach. PHP is more popular. PHP has a more
> complete .NET implementation. There has to be some reason for
> MS to backtrack.

Rails has gotten more buzz lately and is driving lots of developer interest.
The local Ruby group is alive with energy and the local PHP group is
interesting but doesn't have the same energy.  Rails is hot and new, and is
also a single well known framework for Ruby.  PHP has lots of frameworks;
which to pick?   For many people, Ruby is more "fun" and you can't discount
that in even MS; they have managers but a lot of them are coders too.  The
MVC model of Rails is *very* productive.

That said, what about this effort that focused on PHP first?

http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/a...st-on-the-FastC
GI-project-and-PHP-support-on-IIS.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/arch...-FastCGI-Module
-for-IIS-7.0.aspx

You ignore that in your accusations against Microsoft.

>  First of all, Windows is not my native platform. I tried
> with Mono, but last I checked they had some problems, which I
> couldn't work around. And even then the entire windows
> platform is alien to me, and it will take some time before I
> can get a hang of the philosophy.

Then it amazes me that you currently think SilverLight is revolutionary when
people who have been on Windows for years like me are non-plussed.

> But it is a waste of years of work already one, and the
> expertise that the Phalanger devs have acquired working on
> it. Now all their previous experience has to be ported to
> ruby, which while easy, is still not trivial.

That's the nature of software.  It is a shame, but it's life.

>  Except for VB, Python, Ruby, all the main languages have C
> based syntax, that's php, perl, C#, c++, java, javascript.
> You have absolutely no point there.

"Besides that Ms. Lincoln, how was the play?"  Point is there are successful
non-C based languages.  Being C-based is not an anointment from God.

> It is not merely that
> people are using C, but the new languages that come up are
> also following the rules of C.

Because of prior influence, that's all.

>  If C was a burden, then the people would have designed the
> new languages differently, but instead, what we have is that
> the more popular of the new generation languages are all like
> C. The legacy argument doesn't work at all here.

That's a completely false dichotomy. There are other reasons which I keep
stating; prior influence.

>  It is about productivity. I have even done extensive elisp
> programming, and I am comfortable with it. But what we have
> here is not whether a person can do something or not, but how
> much productive is he going to be. We are in a business. We
> are talking about applications with 200,000 lines of code.
> When it comes to large applications, an inherent ability to
> parse is an advantage.

"Productivity" is a red herring; you can't objectively measure it in a
repeatable way. A good Ruby developer can be as productive as a good PHP
dewveloper, maybe more so because of the forme's ability to hide lots of
unimportant syntactical minutia.   And productivity is probably as affected
by attitude as by platform.

>  The 6 of the most popular are like C. So you have no escape.

So you are arguing the popularity at the current time is all that matters?
You said one should learn from history, maybe you should look at how once
popular technologies became eclipsed when better adapted technologies
appeared. That might be happening right now with Ruby and Python. For all we
know, languages that are not C-based may be at the tipping point. Simplicity
is the watchword these days, and C-based languages are decidedly non-simple.
Non-C based languages are certainly easier for non-programmers than C-based
languages because they omit aspects that make coding look so obscure. VB
succeeded for that very reason (and has declined for other reasons.)

>  COBOL was a SINGLE language. Here we have 6 languages--the
> most popular ones, being like C. Including all the libc functions.

There were many less programmers back then, there was no Internet to promote
distribution of new languages, there was no open source to speak of, and the
hardware couldn't support the tools we have today to make language
development easier.

>  Yes. But we already lost the desktop battle. The same
> arguments--Proprietary, MS controlled crappy
> interfaces--didn't prevent MS from completely taking over the
> desktop.

That was a different era.

> Yes, Server is different, and MS never got it right
> with .NET, but what I am seeing with MS is that philosophy of
> improving and learning from mistakes.

MS of today is not the same MS of 20 years ago.  I was talking to a 3rd
party tools vendor in the MS space just two days ago and he lamented how MS
has changed; it's become very regimented with a command and control
management style and people are not allowed to make the same kind of
decisions, and many of the really sharp people have left.

> They have rectified two
> of the primary problems with .NET--the lack of dynamic
> languages, and the inability to have desktop like
> controls--even though it took them 10 years.

10 years too late.

>  Anyway, as I have said earlier, Silverlight is merely one
> more reason. The key idea is php on .NET. and the contrast
> with Ruby community's attitude toward IronRuby.

Sounds great!  Get a team together and make it happen!

>  I am of the same opinion of Miguel. Somehow the open source
> folks never learn, and are always dismissive of the competing
> technologies, even though they have pathetically lost out in
> the desktop front, and now has a pitch battle in the server side.

FYI, I'm not "an open source folk."  I come from 12+ years selling 3rd party
products to Microsoft developers.  The fact I'm disenchanted with Microsoft
and their ability to deliver for developers should be telling you
something...

--
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org - http://t.oolicio.us

On Sat, Aug 11, 2007 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> K T Ligesh wrote: 
>
> Is every direction that affects somebody negative;y by definition "A screw
> over?"  Sure seems that way.

Isn't that the very definition of 'screwing over'. if I spend my entire life
 getting adept at something, and then the company just drops it, they are sc
rewing me over. And please, the termininology isn't mine. I think the VB6 pr
ogrammers explicity said t
hat MS had fcked them in the *ss. This is a verbatim statement in one of the
 early usenet posts, and a point of extreme controversy in the VB community.

You seem to be taking productivity very trivially. Change of enviroment is n
ot an easy thing to cope with. Haven't you gone through all the rebellion th
at VB6 folks had raised against the new VB.NET? Maybe, it is just me. I have
 the ability to sympathize
with other people's plight even though it doesn't directly affect me. What I
 said has nothing to do with my personal opionion, but I am merely repeating
 what every VB6 expert has stated.

And now with Powershell, it just got worse.

> 
>
> You just go right on thinking that. '-)

I believe in building incredibly complex systems that can do everthing. I re
ally hate the cacaphony of a myriad small systems all interacting haphazardl
y.

On Sat, Aug 11, 2007 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> According to the book written by the PowerShell team lead, Powershell is
> part Perl and part Python. It is not part C#.  And it doesn't have those
> infernal semi-colons. '-)
>

It HAS. If you want multiple command on the same line, you use semi-colon.

----------------
function main ($v) {
## Store the performance counters we need
## for the CPU, and Disk I/O numbers
$cpuPerfCounters = @{}; $ioOtherOpsPerfCounters = @{}; $ioOtherBytesPerfCoun
ters = @{}
$ioDataOpsPerfCounters = @{};
$ioDataBytesPerfCounters = @{};
$processes = $null;
$lastPoll = get-date;
foreach($b in $c) {
}
}
----------------

The above is a perfectly valid powershell script. It is a snippet from top.p
s1, the equivalent of the top command. Now, how can anyone in their right mi
nd claim that the above is not C. It is more C than even perl, since Perl do
esn't allow defining functi
ons with full arguments.

I think you should just give up. The Future is C. And for good reasons. Prog
ramming shouldn't be descriptive. If anyone wants descriptive languages, let
 them become an author and write novels.

Thanks.

On Sat, Aug 11, 2007 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Mike Schinkel wrote:
>
> Antipodal reaction?  LOL!  You kill me!  Different managers with different
> view of priorities, that's all!

"Antipodes" is shakespeare. I have always wanted use it somewhere. :-) Nah. 
There is a real conspiracy here. You just have to delve deeper. You are bein
g so naive.

> That statement tells me you don't even realize why the web technology is s
o
> resilient and has scaled so well. I only understand it because I recently
> spend six month diving deep into old mailing list discussions and reading
> specs, and I came out a believer.  Loose coupling that can accomdate failu
re
> is key to the web, and strings provide that. For more local apps, structur
e
> is okay. But even for local apps the lack of the equivalent of a UNIVERSAL
> resource locator for stateless resources is a serious downside to that whi
ch
> you hold in high regard.
>
> But certainly it would take me years of repeating other people's arguments
> to get the point across. May I suggest you read RESTful Web Services [1] a
nd
> then we could have this discussion?

Yeah. But there exists also a radically different approach in the Desktop, w
hich is also EQUALLY succesfull, and the real reason why web is hot is that 
customer doesn't need to download anything. Anyway, let me check the link an
d I will tell you if it ma
kes any sense.


> 
>
> It can distract attention from where it might be better utilized.  FYI, I'
m
> not against this I just have a natural tendancy to provide a counterbalanc
e
> when I see other people being more zealous than pragmatic.

But it is already there. Phalanger is already there. The only thing is neede
d: Zend has to get MS adopt it. If Phalanger didnt' exist, I wouldn't bother
. I have many many times repeated that the only reason why my request cannot
 be deemed unreasonable is
that Phalanger already exists in a completed state, and I am currently using
 it to build applications, but the project looks abandoned, and nobody is an
swering any of my queries.




> 
>
> Maybe. Or maybe they just code in PHP classic and go about their business.
>
> Listen, I'm not against this. I'm just saying "put your money where your
> mouth is" and get coding.

Code is available. Only thing needed is the official stamp from MS.


> 
>
> Hmm. According to XML.COM, RSS is "a portal content language."   The reali
ty
> is a computer language is an abstraction layer that allows the user to
> encode information for processing and/or representation.  Your point is
> quibbling a nits.  RSS is a declaritive as opposed to procedural language
> and the simplicity analogy still applies.

I would say you are the one who is nibbling at the quits. We are talking of 
building applications. If it doesn't have while loop, for loop, and if then,
 then it is not a language. Sorry.

>
> Never said there way.  My point about independant components actually
> supports that concept.
> 
>
> You "make them complex?"  Do you really hear what you are saying?!?  No, y
ou
> factor the complexity out so that you can handle the complexity without it
> causing you to make mistakes.

Complexity is unavoidable. If it was simple, then there is nothing has to do
. That's a tautology actually. If it is simple, then it would have been alre
ady done by some idiot. The only tasks that are left are the complex ones. S
o complexity will ultimat
ely exist at some place. It is your decistion to have it in code or pass it 
on to the user. My preference is to have it in code, and make it easy for th
e user.


> "Not meant" for writing applications?  What inside information do you have
> my dear friend?  Have you travelled to Redmond and met with the people on
> the Powershell team and discussed Powershell with them?!?!?  (like I
> have...)

Can you write Silverlight in powershell? In that case, I think I will stop w
asting time here, and learn Powershell better. Powershell is pure C with $s.

> 
>
> According to the book written by the PowerShell team lead, Powershell is
> part Perl and part Python. It is not part C#.  And it doesn't have those
> infernal semi-colons. '-)

It HAS semi-colons.  It is 100% C, with $ prefixed to variables.
 
>
> Here's how insane: You can take one feature from a language and claim it
> discredits an entire language. Now THAT is insane.  The more you type, the
> less credible you sound.

When there are competing languages, every feature counts. Why should I bothe
r with python, when I can get the same and MORE from Ruby? If python alone e
xisted, and the other choice was perl, yes, you have a point. Otherwise, no,
 why put up with nonsense,
when you can get the same and more from somewhere else?

And that's exactly what happened. Before Ruby, python, despite its flagrant 
disregard for the wellness of the programmer, did well, because the other ch
oice was even worse. But not anymore, and for that I am thankful.



> 
>
> That's a design decision that many people agree with, myself included.

Redundancy is terrible. Why should you want to clutter your code with a self
 everywhere? If you are in VIM, you can color $this, or self separately, so 
there is absolutely no chance of making a mistake. Also, after sometime you 
automatically understand w
hen you are inside a class and when you are not. You don't need a flagpost o
f a 'self' cluttering your code to tell you that. That's a bad decision, and
 implying that I am not capable of realizing when I am inside an object, and
 when I am not.


 
>
> Nothing is stopping you. Go for it.  (we are full circle now.)

Get Zend to get MS get the old programmers back to PHalanger. (I know 3 gets
).
 
>
> Recruite a team of crack developers who want the same and pick of the
> Phlanger project.  Heck, go talk to Miguel at Novell and ask if he can
> provide you some guidance.
>

The code is there. The only thing lacking is the official stamp. Both from t
he PHP community and from MS. Tomas has done an outstanding piece of work, b
ut it got scuttled by MS. Why do I have to repeat this again and again. the 
code is already there. If
it didn't, I am merely trying count the clouds. But that's not so.

Thanks.

Hello There,
As A CMS author I want to say someting about yoru statements.

On Saturday 11 August 2007 23:41:40 K T Ligesh wrote:

>
>  To be frank, Web programming with css, table, div etc is a terrible thing
.
> It is a completely structureless madhouse. As a developer, I prefer
> creating the entire gui by calling functions rather than by printing
> strings. The latter is what makes web development so difficult. Anyway,
> whether silverlight will succeed or not is irrelevant; it can't hurt anyon
e
> to have PHP on .NET nevertheless.

If you had problem with html you have to find yourself in Desktop business.

Universe of html and htpp was chaos. No state, no structure. Just barelly
accepted W3C standarts.

Once upon time I spend so many hours to generate standarsed html code blocks
with oo php code.

Always and always there was someting else does not fit the my code (of cours
e
I had very low OO knowladge at that time).

Then I realize, there is no simple way or final solution for generating HTML
pages. It have to be free.

Genrating web pages something like designing in corel draw, you can't
standardize it without significant design loss.

>  OK, silverlight fails miserably. So what? PHP on .NET will still empower
> millions of PHP developers to explore new avenues, and come into contact
> with the new programming ideas that .NET library has. It can only be good.

If so, there was lots of PHP project depends on windows and we will see tons
of request here for please can we run that php windows thing in linux.
 
>
>  RSS is not a language. The idea of programmer is to write extraordinarily
> complex programs whose very purpose is to hide the complexity from the end
> user. My day job involves building graphical interfaces--even though I
> personally do not use them--to hide the complexity of the system from the
> end user.
> 
>
>  Just previously you complained how difficult it is to stitch together
> drupal, wordpress etc. Why? Because there is no single person who can
> handle that kind of complexity. Complexity is the key. And complexity
> exists so that it can hide itself from the end user. That's programming.
> You make your programming incredibly complex so that your user doesn't hav
e
> experience it.
>
>  Drupal, wordpress etc has decided to keep it simple. What's the end
> result? Complexity has been passed on to the end user. This is one of the
> absurdities of Open Source. Programmers are saying: We want simplicity, so
> we will throw all the complexity at the end user.
>

Complexity is because of  somebody elses incompetence. For example I can't
code in c to genrate some apache module to support my CMS system.
So ?

I have to take PHP overhead.

Or.

Once upon time My CMS system uses PHP based templates.

Then Customers argued, they can't understood php, easily messed up.
I convert it Plain text.
Then Customers argued, dream weaver can't understood my syntax and using ftp
was too hard for them.
Now we had web based sql supported template system, which 10x times complex
then orginal aproach. (of course it was so , click in an icon an editing
templates. So now they demand someting like dreamweaver on web)

Also

If you thing MS still give full support PHP as own languages on IIS after
capturing %70 of web server market share, i'm sorry you are fool.

MS wants every peny on PC world. First they bang other offices, then Web
Browsers, then IM's, then SQL servers, Then Mail servers, then Borland (or
other developer tools).

Once upon time there was huge support for Novell Services on NT. Now Novell
was nothing.

Their current target was Adobe especially Flash (because of success of flash
based media streaming, stil they don't understand because of code headcache
even windows users chooses flash based sites). And new weapon was that silve
r
thingy. Of course they choose Ruby because it was very HOT for Marketing.
There was tons of Ruby yada yada articles everery where. And there was notin
g
new in PHP community.

I did not see any messages local bbs for ruby development or python
development. They are good on papers and when some ordinary guy try to
develop someting. IT was not good (or easy) enough as php.

We had tons of matured products.

My point of view PHP needs better things for browser side. Php needs focusin
g
new features

Regards

Sancar

PS: We lose desktop war because of there was no Linus Torvards for desktop.
For linux desktop there where to many choices even for developers. And we do
not have that much developer capacity to divide and still compete Microsoft.