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Zend Developer Zone: Inforworld Article Shows Microsoft is Starting to Look at "Dynamic Languages"

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:41:53 -0500

According to this new post, it seems like the corporate world, specifically Microsoft, has been looking more and more at dynamic languages like PHP.

InfoWorld posted an article last week in which Paul Krill, InfoWorld Editor at Large and Doug Dineley, Test Center Executive, sat down with Jason McConnell, the Visual Studio product manager responsible for all languages at Microsoft, to talk about "Dynamic Languages". It's actually an interesting read.

Cal talks about some of the goings-on in the piece, including the release of Phlanger for .NET integration, a bit of the Q&A that went back and forth, and his opinion on what the future holds for dynamic languages.

PHP Magazine: IPM Poll Question: What Are the Misconceptions Surrounding PHP?

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:43:30 -0500

PHP Magazine has posted the results from one of their previous polls today - this time asking readers what they think the largest misconception surrounding PHP is.

The International PHP Magazine conducted a poll over the week, asking for your opinion on 'The misconceptions surrounding PHP'. The options provided were:

Java/ASP/Ruby/Python/Perl/C is better, and faster than PHP
PHP does not scale well
PHP has to write/read everything from a database
PHP does not support shared memory
PHP is not a compiled language
PHP can't run for days

The results from the poll showed unanimously that the impression that Java/ASP/Ruby/Python/Perl/C are better and faster than PHP topped the charts. Coming in close are two options - that PHP doesn't scale well and that PHP isn't a compiled language (surprising).

Check out their latest poll for the week asking what the most common security mistake is.

Sara Golemon's Blog: Compiled Variables

Wed, 24 May 2006 17:39:32 -0500

In a new post from her blog today, Sara Golemon seeks to dispell any FUD that might come up surrounding compiled variables (as there's already some issues raised in this interview).

Last month at php|tek I gave a presentation on "How PHP Ticks" where I covered, among other things the process of compiling source code into opcodes (an intermediate psuedo-language similar to what java calls "bytecode" or what .NET calls "MSIL"). As part of this section of the presentation, I showed one of the more interresting changes between ZE 2.0 (PHP 5.0) and ZE 2.1 (PHP 5.1), namely: How variables are retreived and used in an operation. More specifically, how they provide a small, yet cumulative, speedup to applications in a way that's transparent to the end-user -- One more reason to like PHP 5.1 right?

After listening to Marcus Whitney's interview with Brion Vibber of WikiMedia in which he mentions my presentation and makes reference to this engine change, I realized that I should clarify what this feature is (and more importantly, what it isn't) before any FUD spreads.

She describes what they are with an illustration using a simple PHP script and breaking it out into the compiled version's parts - both in PHP4 and the PHP5 versions. Of course, representing what they are needs a flipside, so she presents a look at what they are *not* as well. There's also a brief mention of the special status that globals and static variables get outside the norm.