Brennan’s Blog

I came across a User Group video on Django and the speaker explained that PHP does not have support for namespaces. This is referenced at about 6 minutes into the video. I looked around and found that it is true.

• PHP namespaces
• PHP ChangeLog: Version 5.0.0 Beta 2
• What I don't like about PHP
• Petition for PHP Namespaces

Despite not having what most software developers regard as a critical language feature, PHP has become perhaps the most widespread scripting language for web applications. PHP has held strong the past few years despite all of the alternatives like Perl, Python, Ruby. I find it is hard to avoid using PHP software. For my blog, I found that Wordpress was the best option. For webmail, RoundCube is my current favorite. For my link blog, I use Scuttle. These are all PHP applications and they just work, even without namespaces.

Right now the hottest web framework is Ruby on Rails (RoR). It has only been roughly a year that RoR has become a mainstream framework and I am waiting on it to overtake PHP. Looking at projects listed by programming language on Freshmeat.net shows that there are nearly 4000 PHP projects and just over 300 Ruby projects. And those Ruby applications are not all Ruby on Rails applications.

How will this platform which is superior to PHP reach a Tipping Point where it becomes the new standard?

What will cause the tipping point for RoR? I would really like to see the core RoR community target the top 5 commonly used web applications and produce their own best of breed. You can see there are many sites using Ruby on Rails. But each site seems to have a specific purpose instead of a generic solution, such as a slick webmail client.

I did find Typo, a blogging solution for RoR. And after digging a little more, I found HotScripts.com which has a good Ruby on Rails section. It lists software for a wiki, forums, issue tracker, file uploader and cms package. That looks like a good start. Those PHP developers looking for a decent language may just need to look at Ruby.

I still do not plan to dig into coding with Ruby on Rails. It is a great alternative to PHP, Perl and Python, but I am quite satisfied with ASP.NET and Atlas which has adapted to the popularity of AJAX and Ruby on Rails. You can see that with SubSonic. (renamed from ActionPack)