the state of the PHP community
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From: Nathan Rixham on 29 Jul 2010 09:43 have you sent an email to <php-general-unsubscribe(a)lists.php.net> ? Mike Roberts wrote: > Hello All. I have been given advice on how to remove myself from this > list, and taken it. I have tried on my own to discover how to remove > myself from this list. I have even ( something I am not proud of) hinted > that I might start irrelevant threads of conversation so you will ban > me. Unfortunately a look in my 'deleted items' folder shows all the > daily messages just thrown in there..... Isn't there somebody who is > responsible who instead of giving advice ( that never seems to work) can > simply remove me from the distribution list, delete me or whatever? Yes > I signed up intentionally so I could understand a technology that I was > recruiting for, and yes it was helpful, but that was 2007 and I think it > is time for us to break up. > > So IF YOU HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO REMOVE ME "Make it so number one!". > Thanks > > > > > > > Sincerely, > > Michael Roberts > Executive Recruiter > Corporate Staffing Services > 150 Monument Road, Suite 510 > Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 > P 610-771-1084 > F 610-771-0390 > E mroberts(a)jobscss.com > Check out my recent feature article in Professional Surveyor 12/09 > edition. > http://www.profsurv.com/magazine/article.aspx?i=70379 > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Nathan Rixham [mailto:nrixham(a)gmail.com] > Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 1:36 AM > To: PHP-General > Subject: [PHP] the state of the PHP community > > Hi All, > > I find myself wondering about the state of the PHP community (and > related community with a PHP focus), so, here's a bunch of questions - > feel free to answer none to all of them, on list or off, or add more of > your own - this isn't for anything specific, just out of interest and > sure I (and everybody who reads the replies) will learn something + > doors/options/contacts may come of it. The only thing I can guarantee is > > that I'm genuinely interested in every reply and will read every one of > them + lookup every tech and link mentioned. > > in no particular order: > > What other languages and web techs do you currently use other than PHP? > - if you include html or css please include version, if js then > preferred libs, and whether client or server side. > > What's your previous language/tech trail? > > Are you considering any new languages or techs, and if so which? > - names / links > > Is PHP your hobby/interest, primary development language, just learning > or? > > How many years have you been using PHP regularly? > > How many years have you been working with web technologies? > > Did you come from a non-web programming background? > > Is your primary role web developer or designer? > > In your developer life, are you an employer, and employee, contractor, > freelancer, part of a team of equal standing members? > > Do you tend to work on jobs for geo-local clients, clients in the same > country, or do you work internationally 'on the web'? > > How do you get your projects? do they come to you, word of mouth, do you > > hunt and bid for projects, code call, visit clients, target clients > individually you think you can help, or? > - not looking for trade secrets, just to get enough for an overall > picture. > > Do you have any frustrations with the PHP community, do you find you > want to talk shop but can't, or find people to work with but can't, have > > projects in mind you want to do but can't find people to do them with > etc? > > Do you network with other PHP'ers in real life - meetups etc, do you > tend to shy away, or do you find you circulate in other web related but > non PHP focussed communities? > > Are you a member or any other web tech communities, opensource efforts, > or standardization bodies - again, if so which? > > Are there any efforts, projects or initiatives which are floating your > boat right now and that your watching eagerly (or getting involved > with)? > > ps: please *do not* flame anybodies answers, that really wouldn't be > fair. > > Best & Regards, > > Nathan >
From: Paul M Foster on 29 Jul 2010 10:18 On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 06:36:13AM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: > Hi All, > > I find myself wondering about the state of the PHP community (and > related community with a PHP focus), so, here's a bunch of questions - > feel free to answer none to all of them, on list or off, or add more of > your own - this isn't for anything specific, just out of interest and > sure I (and everybody who reads the replies) will learn something + > doors/options/contacts may come of it. The only thing I can guarantee is > that I'm genuinely interested in every reply and will read every one of > them + lookup every tech and link mentioned. > > in no particular order: > > What other languages and web techs do you currently use other than PHP? > - if you include html or css please include version, if js then > preferred libs, and whether client or server side. HTML 3, CSS 2.1?, Javascript (no idea of version) though very little of that. I use C, Python and Bash, but not for web work. > > What's your previous language/tech trail? Dartmouth BASIC, Borland Pascal, C, C++, FoxPro, Bash, Perl, Python, PHP, Javascript, in that order. > > Are you considering any new languages or techs, and if so which? > - names / links Nope. > > Is PHP your hobby/interest, primary development language, just learning or? Primary development language. > > How many years have you been using PHP regularly? Probably five years or so. Some exposure before that, but steady development for five years. > > How many years have you been working with web technologies? About 12 years. > > Did you come from a non-web programming background? Yes. > > Is your primary role web developer or designer? Primary role is CEO. But since I'm the guy with the expertise, I do the coding and design. > > In your developer life, are you an employer, and employee, contractor, > freelancer, part of a team of equal standing members? I suppose you'd call me a freelancer. I operate alone. > > Do you tend to work on jobs for geo-local clients, clients in the same > country, or do you work internationally 'on the web'? Clients in the same country. > > How do you get your projects? do they come to you, word of mouth, do you > hunt and bid for projects, code call, visit clients, target clients > individually you think you can help, or? > - not looking for trade secrets, just to get enough for an overall picture. Most of my coding has been for internal projects to run the company. I come up with the idea, do the design and the coding. Where a web customer needs PHP (usually for forms and such), I'm the guy who does it. > > Do you have any frustrations with the PHP community, do you find you > want to talk shop but can't, or find people to work with but can't, have > projects in mind you want to do but can't find people to do them with etc? My sole connection with the "community" is this list. I don't personally know other PHP programmers. I have a lot of respect for most of the people on this list. My only dissatisfaction is trying to figure out what people posting with very bad English are talking about. > > Do you network with other PHP'ers in real life - meetups etc, do you > tend to shy away, or do you find you circulate in other web related but > non PHP focussed communities? No networking. Not really into socializing. Even when I worked in a group programming environment, we didn't talk much about the nuts and bolts of how we did our jobs. We talked about women, music and such. Occasionally we talked about the odd requirements for this or that job. > > Are you a member or any other web tech communities, opensource efforts, > or standardization bodies - again, if so which? Former president (12-13 years) and co-founder of local Linux Users Group. > > Are there any efforts, projects or initiatives which are floating your > boat right now and that your watching eagerly (or getting involved with)? Not really. I'm not particularly interested in technology just for fun, though I've been a techie most of my life. I'm really only interested in technology to the extent I can find a real use for it in my life and work. Otherwise, I don't care. Consequently, although I own a cell phone, I have no use for a smart phone. I use maps rather than a GPS in my car, because I read maps just fine and I don't take spoken driving directions well; I really need to *see* where I'm going from above, as with a map. I think 3D movies and TV are just silly. I don't really see Blu-Ray as an improvement; I don't need to see movies in hi-def and I'm not going to watch all the extra content on the disk. Here's my version of a vacation: a cabin by the ocean. The only phone is a booth up by the road, about 50 yards (meters) away. There's a TV, but I don't turn it on. I take a laptop and never turn it on. I take actual books which I read for hours on end, in between naps and walks down to the water. Email just stacks up for a week. I don't google or wikipedia on vacation. And I have no anxiety whatsoever about being off the grid. I'm a late adopter. Paul -- Paul M. Foster
From: "Bob McConnell" on 29 Jul 2010 10:28 From: Nathan Rixham > I find myself wondering about the state of the PHP community (and > related community with a PHP focus), so, here's a bunch of questions - > > What other languages and web techs do you currently use other than PHP? > - if you include html or css please include version, if js then > preferred libs, and whether client or server side. Netbeans, Perl, PostgreSQL, Selenium, XHTML 1.0 Transitional. > What's your previous language/tech trail? In chronological order - Languages: Fortran IV, 8008/8080 Machine language, BASIC, Assembler (my primary strength), C, Pascal, PL/M, Perl, C++ (Still don't understand the purpose of objects or classes). OS: N*, CP/M, CP/M-86, CCP/M, PC-DOS, Eunice (NCR), Unix, Minix, Linux. Kernels: SMX, Xinu, Ctask (I still maintain code for all three). > Are you considering any new languages or techs, and if so which? > - names / links No. > Is PHP your hobby/interest, primary development language, just learning or? Primary development language at the moment. > How many years have you been using PHP regularly? 3 > How many years have you been working with web technologies? 16 > Did you come from a non-web programming background? Yes, embedded systems and POS. I still maintain software for a variety of data comm devices, cash registers and credit card terminals. > Is your primary role web developer or designer? Web Developer. > In your developer life, are you an employer, and employee, contractor, > freelancer, part of a team of equal standing members? Employee. > Do you tend to work on jobs for geo-local clients, clients in the same > country, or do you work internationally 'on the web'? Same subcontinent (North America) at the moment. Subject to change as we now have offices on three continents and clients on four. > How do you get your projects? do they come to you, word of mouth, do you > hunt and bid for projects, code call, visit clients, target clients > individually you think you can help, or? > - not looking for trade secrets, just to get enough for an overall picture. A story is posted to a product backlog by one of the product managers. The development/QA team refines it, breaks it into tasks and schedules them for one or more sprints. > Do you have any frustrations with the PHP community, do you find you > want to talk shop but can't, or find people to work with but can't, have > projects in mind you want to do but can't find people to do them with etc? My biggest problem is that the web community appears to be moving exclusively to OOP, which I see only as a lot of extraneous overhead with no significant benefits in return. But it seems to have been the fad du jure for the past decade. My second issue is that the community is very fragmented. The PHP developers are in one mailing list, the NetBeans developers in another, Postgres is all by itself and testing tools and frameworks are all over the map with no guideposts or cross-references available between them. I can't even find where some of the support groups can be contacted. > Do you network with other PHP'ers in real life - meetups etc, do you > tend to shy away, or do you find you circulate in other web related but > non PHP focussed communities? There are a half-dozen of us in the company, and we have an irregularly scheduled conference call roughly once a month to discuss issues, tools and style. New development is moving to Java on Liferay, and only a few of us will be moving to that platform. > Are you a member or any other web tech communities, opensource efforts, > or standardization bodies - again, if so which? I currently subscribe to mailing lists for CentOS, Netbeans, Perl, PHP, Postgres, Selenium, Slackware and TightVNC. I also read newsgroups for Linux, Perl and CP/M. I attempt to answer questions on each, but only when I have gone through similar trials. I don't do web based support forums for obvious reasons. > Are there any efforts, projects or initiatives which are floating your > boat right now and that your watching eagerly (or getting involved with)? I am closely following my 401K to determine when I will be able to retire. (I will be eligible for Social Security in five months.) At that point I will probably throw out every PC I own and find something more relaxing to spend my time on. However, I do plan to keep the Alpha and Sparc stations. Outside of that, I like test-more.php from the Apache-Test project and Mike Lively's test-harness.php since I was already familiar with TAP from the Perl Test::Harness. I have reported some bugs to Mike and adopted the pair with YAML files for automating unit tests. I would like to see more work done in this area. In particular, we need help getting this harness to work under the Hudson CI system. As I said before, I have no class and don't do objects, so it has to be fully compatible with procedural programming. One other resource I haven't seen in the PHP community is an organized collection of free and public domain code resources. Perl has CPAN, C has Snippets <http://snippets.snippets.org/index.php>, and there are other similar resources for other languages. I haven't found the like for PHP yet. Bob McConnell
From: Steve on 29 Jul 2010 15:19 On 7/28/2010 10:36 PM, Nathan Rixham wrote: > Hi All, > > I find myself wondering about the state of the PHP community (and > related community with a PHP focus), so, here's a bunch of questions - > feel free to answer none to all of them, on list or off, or add more > of your own - this isn't for anything specific, just out of interest > and sure I (and everybody who reads the replies) will learn something > + doors/options/contacts may come of it. The only thing I can > guarantee is that I'm genuinely interested in every reply and will > read every one of them + lookup every tech and link mentioned. > > in no particular order: > > What other languages and web techs do you currently use other than PHP? > - if you include html or css please include version, if js then > preferred libs, and whether client or server side. MySQL, JavaScript (jQuery/UI), HTML 5, CSS 2/3 > > What's your previous language/tech trail? PHP was where I started > > Are you considering any new languages or techs, and if so which? > - names / links After reading some of these responses, I may look into server side JS and Java. > > Is PHP your hobby/interest, primary development language, just > learning or? All of the above. It started as a hobby, then became something to do for a living, and I don't expect to ever stop learning. :) > > How many years have you been using PHP regularly? 6 > > How many years have you been working with web technologies? 7 > > Did you come from a non-web programming background? As far as programming, no > > Is your primary role web developer or designer? Developer > > In your developer life, are you an employer, and employee, contractor, > freelancer, part of a team of equal standing members? Freelancer, but interested in joining a team > > Do you tend to work on jobs for geo-local clients, clients in the same > country, or do you work internationally 'on the web'? Mostly 'on the web' > > How do you get your projects? do they come to you, word of mouth, do > you hunt and bid for projects, code call, visit clients, target > clients individually you think you can help, or? > - not looking for trade secrets, just to get enough for an overall > picture. Still trying to figure all that out. I've bid on some and some have come to me. The ones that come to me tend to fall through though... > > Do you have any frustrations with the PHP community, do you find you > want to talk shop but can't, or find people to work with but can't, > have projects in mind you want to do but can't find people to do them > with etc? I find I don't personally know many PHP developers, but that's not a fault of the community. I think PHP has a great community. > > Do you network with other PHP'ers in real life - meetups etc, do you > tend to shy away, or do you find you circulate in other web related > but non PHP focussed communities? No, not really > > Are you a member or any other web tech communities, opensource > efforts, or standardization bodies - again, if so which? No, not actively > > Are there any efforts, projects or initiatives which are floating your > boat right now and that your watching eagerly (or getting involved with)? None that come to mind. Do HTML5 and CSS3 count? > > ps: please *do not* flame anybodies answers, that really wouldn't be > fair. > > Best & Regards, > > Nathan >
From: Rasmus Lerdorf on 29 Jul 2010 15:35
On 7/28/10 11:26 PM, Larry Garfield wrote: > - Those driving PHP development itself (vis, writing the engine) don't seem to > comprehend the idea of someone running a web site who isn't also a C > developer, sysadmin, and performance specialist. "If you don't have root then > we don't care about you" is the prevailing attitude I see. I'm sure most of > PHP-DEV will disagree with that assessment but I've been reading the list for > 3 years now and that sense is very clear. That's quite unfortunate given that > the vast majority of PHP scripts are still on shared hosting where you have no > control over the environment at all. The very basic reason for this is that we build stuff that we need. We will try to cater to others as well, but the things that receive the most attention are the things that the people writing the code need themselves for some reason. None of us run an ISP with thousands of virtual hosts on a single 32-bit machine and half a gig of ram. It is just human nature. PHP is not a product. It is a shared tool and the people capable of building the tool get a lot of say into what the tool does and how it does it. People who are not capable of building the tool can shout suggestions from the sidelines and occasionally some of these will stick, but often they won't. -Rasmus |