In a new post from John Lim over on PHPEverywhere today, he adds his own personal views to the mix of responses to the now infamous Register article predicting PHP's demise - Are There Enough Bodies to Satisfy PHP's Love Affair.

The Register poses the interesting question Is the web's love affair with PHP over? They quote an EDC survey that suggests that developer takeup of PHP, Perl and Python have been slowing down in the past year. I don't know who they surveyed, but here are some possible reasons from my own observation:

There is no doubt that PHP has a place in the enterprise. PHP provides a good way of developing interactive HTML user interfaces, be it for a small business or a large one like Lufthansa, who are using it for online-ticketing. But perhaps expectations have been unrealistic. PHP is not a general purpose language [...] and PHP is designed to work in a certain way.

He notes three show stoppers that he knows of that might cause problems for PHP in the future, including: a lack of frameworks, standards/software certifications, and interfaces with larger commercial apps. He agrees, though, that the "love affair" isn't over by far, but he does suggest that, while PHP will always be popular with the smaller startups, adoption in the larger, more corporate world, will be a slow process...