Its not just PHP, or even just software and digital infrastructure. Most average people would be appalled to get a look behind the curtain of how a great many things they depend on every day are operated once it is not sexy anymore and just fades into the background of the machinery that keeps the lights on and their lives going.
Many industries are this way, people don't seem to realize it's only in some cases two or three people in an entire region that are keeping some key peice of equipment going. Like shit even our infrastructure is that now, we used to have people on site everywhere monitoring but now so much is just a guy in an office doing the work of 50 people.
“We have one full-time staff member (that's me) and 14 mostly part-time contractors,” Executive Director Elizabeth Barron of the PHP Foundation said via email in an interview on Friday. Board members are unpaid volunteers, and funding comes from donations and grants.
Sounds more like she is stretched thin, and pointing out how unsustainable the current model is. Only one person dedicated to maintaining a programming language that ~70% of the internet uses is the perfect example of that xkcd “all modern infrastructure, vs one obscure person who has thanklessly been maintaining a project since 1997” meme.
because it didn't support the same features and ended up being a fork of the language called hack.
since it wasnt a replacement and would have required lot of software to be modified or in some cases like wordpress and drupal largely rewritten it never saw wide adoption.
the foundation didn't exist so that one staff member didn't exist. the foundation doesn't direct development either, they sponsor development and otherwise help to fund the project.
there is not fault either. hhvm was never a php project. they happened in parallel and there was a lot of good feelings at the time and efforts to collaborate. facebook ended up releasing hack lang and the projects drifted apart.
i think this comment misunderstands what frankenphp and the foundation are.
its supports php because it is php. its built on top by loading it as a library. it doesnt implement the language so is not and does not want to be a replacement.
the foundation doesn't choose where the language goes. They support development in various ways but language design goes through an rfc process influenced by lots of people.
frankenphp does come up in devel mailing list discussions. i think its largely thought it being an external project is a stregth but also closely part of the project.
It only includes sites where the server-side language can be detected. That's often easy with PHP because of URLs ending in .php and well-known software like Wordpress which identifies itself in ways that are easy for a crawler to detect.
It counts sites, not traffic. There are a lot of Wordpress sites out there which get three visitors a month.
Sorry, but you're using the fact that PHP is used by the framework that makes up about 40% of the web on its own as an argument against the claim that PHP might be on as much as 70% of all websites? That's before you start getting into other platforms like Drupal and MediaWiki, or more general-purpose frameworks like Laravel.
It only includes sites where the server-side language can be detected. That's often easy with PHP because of URLs ending in .php and well-known software like Wordpress which identifies itself in ways that are easy for a crawler to detect.
So there are possibly more PHP sites out there than we realize, because the ones which disguise their URLs are ambiguous
It counts sites, not traffic. There are a lot of Wordpress sites out there which get three visitors a month.
You shouldn’t be as concerned with popularity, and much more concerned with attack surface. Your argument certainly can’t be that there are thousands of idle servers out there that should no longer be maintained because no one reads the blog hosted on them?
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Its not just PHP, or even just software and digital infrastructure. Most average people would be appalled to get a look behind the curtain of how a great many things they depend on every day are operated once it is not sexy anymore and just fades into the background of the machinery that keeps the lights on and their lives going.
Many industries are this way, people don't seem to realize it's only in some cases two or three people in an entire region that are keeping some key peice of equipment going. Like shit even our infrastructure is that now, we used to have people on site everywhere monitoring but now so much is just a guy in an office doing the work of 50 people.
who in the hell writes in notepad?
Hey, we can't all afford syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting? In this economy?
I have a few PHP scripts that I maintain. I use Notepad++ like a normal person, though.
one who programs in PHP, apparently, but not all PHP programmers use notepad , some use nano and others ed. /jk
I'm sick of these stereotypes. Joke's on you, I write everything in vim.
I use emacs, but really, I don't program in PHP so there's that.
Yo, I got syntax highlighting up in my nano!
Why didn't we have a meme with these wobbly piles of blocks representing the internet structure having one tiny pillar identified as PHP yet ?
Exactly, many thanks 👍 !
Is the director the only staff member? Does he want a raise?
Sounds more like she is stretched thin, and pointing out how unsustainable the current model is. Only one person dedicated to maintaining a programming language that ~70% of the internet uses is the perfect example of that xkcd “all modern infrastructure, vs one obscure person who has thanklessly been maintaining a project since 1997” meme.
Yes I understand, I should have added a /s to that comment. I even have a version of that cartoon above my desk.
Why would you add the /s? We got so much more info from a misunderstanding!
Maybe the 'director' should be helping then?Oh, OK. That's much better 😁
The director is the full time dev... Read the article.
Thanks for clarifying, but I'm not going to go into Reuters, or any of those ad-ridden sites, like ever.
Facebook rewrote the interpreter, I am not sure why the world didn’t switch to that
Because it’s Facebook
The world seemed eager enough to use React, though
Because it was targeted at facebook's unique use case, poorly supported, abd didn't keep up with upstream changes.
because it didn't support the same features and ended up being a fork of the language called hack.
since it wasnt a replacement and would have required lot of software to be modified or in some cases like wordpress and drupal largely rewritten it never saw wide adoption.
How much of that is php fault for not contributing and instead continuing development with one developer instead of a large corporate backed project
Zero.
What, so if Meta can throw enough money at it, they can just hijack the project?
the foundation didn't exist so that one staff member didn't exist. the foundation doesn't direct development either, they sponsor development and otherwise help to fund the project.
there is not fault either. hhvm was never a php project. they happened in parallel and there was a lot of good feelings at the time and efforts to collaborate. facebook ended up releasing hack lang and the projects drifted apart.
Very little
Not sure why the php foundation didn’t look at frankenphp and said yes this will be the software for php9
NIH i guess
i think this comment misunderstands what frankenphp and the foundation are.
Not invented here syndrome by PHP Foundation and downstream users use whatever the default is.
Yk what isn’t understaffed? Other, better languages.
Of course. And that fact didn't prevent what happened this week.
There might be “better” languages, but PHP is still used by ~70% of the web.
That number is a bit questionable:
.phpand well-known software like Wordpress which identifies itself in ways that are easy for a crawler to detect.Sorry, but you're using the fact that PHP is used by the framework that makes up about 40% of the web on its own as an argument against the claim that PHP might be on as much as 70% of all websites? That's before you start getting into other platforms like Drupal and MediaWiki, or more general-purpose frameworks like Laravel.
So there are possibly more PHP sites out there than we realize, because the ones which disguise their URLs are ambiguous
You shouldn’t be as concerned with popularity, and much more concerned with attack surface. Your argument certainly can’t be that there are thousands of idle servers out there that should no longer be maintained because no one reads the blog hosted on them?
Wordpress is still commonly used for e-commerce. You’re probably visiting more PHP sites than you realize.
I’m aware of that. I’m questioning it still being used.
A large installed base of web apps including giants like Wordpress combined with a desire not to migrate when something is working.
So what. It's like saying hunger is good because most people are hungry.
They, notably, did not say that PHP was good.
Neither did I.
Ok, make them all change then. Exercise your authority.
Oh? No one has any so it’s important to maintain existing infrastructure for the best outcomes?
damn you better go tell them
Well somebody has to if people still use it
You're right. Also, spoken language is much better than written language, let's get rid of written language as well.
reply.wav
Comparing concepts to implementations.
Got a proper alternative to Nextcloud that's not php? O.o