This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Web Buzz by Douglas Clifton. Original Post: Discussion On PHP Feed Title: blogZero Feed URL: http://loadaveragezero.com/app/s9y/index.php?/feeds/index.rss1 Feed Description: Web Development News, Culture and Opinion Latest Web Buzz Posts Latest Web Buzz Posts by Douglas Clifton Latest Posts From blogZero

After Tim Bray (of XML fame) posted a brief piece On PHP the other day, developers from all corners of the Web have jumped on the thread to voice their opinions. Since Tim's blog doesn't have a commenting system, he was kind enough to gather together links and summaries of some of the best of these, which you will find amended to the original post. If you have the time and are interested, they are worth going over.

For the most part, these views are not positive. And they simply reinforce the poor image that PHP continues to endure. PHP is ubiquitous because it has a low learning curve, and is available to amateur programmers all over the Web. This is precisely why elitist developers have such a low opinion of the language. While PHP has its flaws, there is nothing inherent in the language to force bad habits on the user.

Are there countless examples of poorly designed PHP applications? Yes. Is PHP a "bad" language? No. The former is not a logical premise, so the conclusion is nothing more than an assertion. Consider the Web as a whole. Anyone can create a Web page, and there are many, many bad pages out there. Does that mean HTML is flawed? Or HTTP? Yes, they have flaws, but that's another argument.

And what many people seem to overlook are simple economics. We live in an imperfect world, one in which many organizations don't have the staff, time or expertise to build semantically perfect, optimally designed, professional Web sites. And that is exactly why the Web exploded outside the realm of a few highly trained computer scientists.

It's easy to fall into the trap of looking down your nose at amateurs, I'm guilty of it myself. But you can't blame the language for poor results. PHP, like Perl, is "a language for getting your job done." And oh boy, have I seen some bad examples of Perl programs.