Chris notes that Theo has posted his Six Reasons PHP Sucks PHP Lightning Talk.
My favorite part:
Reason # 4: User comments on the online documentation.
Allows PHP to expose what are perhaps the worst most dysfunctional and retarded code samples.
Reason #5: PEAR.
Allows PHP to expose what are perhaps the worst most dysfunctional and retarded code…
…in an easily downloadable/installable format
If you aren’t laughing, you haven’t used PHP.
A scoping circle jerk
I’m a little confused about the lack of lexical scoping being a problem as PHP doesn’t have dynamic scoping (which is far, far worse IMO). Given the sort of problems PHP is designed to solve, it’s scopeless system works, though it does create strange hacks like passing array('classname','methodname') for callbacks.
(Then again, once you get used to it, the constructs are a lot simpler than closures.)
Sometimes it is PHP’s greatest weaknesses that makes its greatest strengths.
I love this comment
Here is a comment I read on Chris’s blog:
“I completely agree with lexically scoped variables and namespaces. Seriously. We need those.
My number 1 reason that I wouldn’t use PHP (or perl) in a heavy load environment is the lack of database connection pooling. 1 connection per Apache thread? That’s insane. That’s the one place Java will always beat PHP (or perl).”
My response
Pray tell, please enlighten us how connection pooling can only be done in a lexically scoped language with namespacing?
Yeah, a dedicated database connection for Apache process is totally insane! What a waste of my Oracle license limits that I didn’t pay for! Fuck, I should go install JBoss or dotNet because I might get a hypothetical performance gain on a high load database!
This is fucking brilliant! The reason Ruby on Rails doesn’t scale is because it lacks connection pooling on ActiveRecord. God, that’s it!
Someone should tell Rasmus I might run out of resources on my database because I don’t know how to edit my Linux configuration or install SQL Relay.
The sky is falling!
My mind is totally blown away with your razor sharp decimation of how PHP won’t work in a heavy load environment. You have convinced me:
I’m selling my shares of Yahoo! because when they enter a high load environment it’s going to die!
PHP is dead.
Long live Java.
I need to become a J2EE consultant like you.
Please, don’t let Reality hit you in the ass on the way out of this blog.
