I see a forum for Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, ASP, and .NET, yet none for PHP, which is easily more popular than any single one of those things, and potentially more popular (as far as web development goes) than all of them combined.

What gives, guys?

EDIT: ****, this forum script (phpBB) is written in PHP.

Probably because HostMySite doesn't focus on PHP. They are strongly devoted, and well known, as one of the top ColdFusion Hosts. (And .Net as well)



Maybe for kiddies writing scripts, but not at the enterprise web development level.

As far as no forum, I believe that's what the "Programming" forum will have you covered.

PHP isn't for "kiddies writing scripts," Jason. ColdFusion, if anything, is more kiddie script-leaning than anything else on that list.

Also, that explains why there's a ColdFusion forum, but not a Ruby On Rails forum.

And if PHP is only good for kiddies writing scripts, and not for enterprise web development, can you explain why vBulletin, Invision Powerboard, phpBB, and MyBB, the main forum scripts are all written in PHP, not ColdFusion, not Ruby on Rails, and not ASP. The most popular blog script, WordPress, is written in PHP.

Not to mention that some of the world's most populated sites, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Gaia Online run off of PHP. Again, not ColdFusion, not Ruby on Rails, and not ASP.

Based on these facts, I can conclude that PHP is robust enough to be used on not only an enterprise web development level, but probably more robust than ColdFusion, which is only used on one of the Internet's top 10 sites: MySpace.

Also, every Linux site they host, including mine, supports PHP. Can someone justify not letting PHP have its own forum, as it is the web development industry standard?

I disagree.

Name a single forum script that can compete with vBulletin, phpBB, or Invision Powerboard that is also not written in PHP.

Just because a whole bunch of popular forums are written in PHP doesn't make it "the" web standard. My thought is PHP was chosen because it is the most widely available (as its on every linux server install) and it is FREE Have you ever seen licensing for ColdFusion? It can be very expensive.

If PHP is "the" web development standard, then why is it not in use by the top fortune 500 or 100 companies? ColdFusion is currently in use by 75 of the fortune 100 companies.
To back that statement up: http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/customers/

HostMySites control panel is written in ColdFusion, and their order forms in .NET. Guess they're not following "the" web standard. Come on guys get with "the" standard!

Our shop used to code in PHP. And in fact, we don't write PHP anymore. (unless explicitly requested by the client) We can write more code, more efficiently in much less time with ColdFusion than we could with PHP. We've even rewritten client sites at our expense to transition away from PHP.

I'm not at all saying ColdFusion is "the" web industry standard. Everyone has their opinion dude. And there is no "standard" web programming language. The only "Standard" is the front end html and CSS coding.

Just a side note: I can't speak for .NET. I have a lot of respect for .net as it is very widely used. Unlike PHP, I've never written one line of .Net, so I can't speak for it. or make any facts regard it. Maybe someone can chime in. I believe that ASP.net is also a very powerful language right along side CF. And that brings everyone to the debate of Coldfusion or .Net. (a Never ending battle)

Community Server.

And PHP is used on many of the most popular websites. What do you rate as more important: the use of the language by large companies, or a site's actual popularity? I mean, that's nice that Crayola uses ColdFusion, but can you honestly tell me that hundreds of thousands of users visit that site every day, and spend hours on it at that? Not at all, but you can say that about Gaia Online, Facebook, and quite a few others.

Maybe I was too harsh saying that ColdFusion isn't a standard. as the link you've sent me to does list quite a few big companies that use it. But I consider myself a fairly serious PHP coder, and I can do some neat stuff with it. It's robust, fast, and memory efficient.

It may not be the standard (although I really can argue it's the most popular), but it is certainly a standard in competition with ColdFusion. I'm just a little offended that there's no PHP forum, at all, when there's forums for other languages, which just aren't as widely used.

Is Yahoo! not enterprise level web development? Or are they "kiddies writing scripts"?



Just because they use it, doesn't mean they use it exclusively, or even extensively, so that number's a bit misleading. Outside of myspace, how many high traffic websites are running coldfusion as the basis for their framework? PHP's scalability has proven pretty well with Yahoo, Wikipedia, Facebook, and so on. Certainly enough to cut the "script kiddie" moniker that's no longer valid IMO.

As we all know, LISP and Assembly Language are the only real programming languages. At least the professors at U of D thought they were.

Macai, I will be creating a PHP forum shortly, though you are now required to post in it at least once a day

Haha! I definitely will!

With Zend Framework I would contest that PHP could become an industry standard for casual as well as enterprise programmers, and stands up well against all of the offerings we have at HostMySite.

Remember, application performance and stability isn't about the language it's about the underlying architecture.

Nothing wrong with PHP. But I can tell you from personal experience, that computer science and computer engineering majors are taught C++, before anything else. This means they are more likely to prefer ASP.NET with C#.

It doesn't matter if PHP is used on major Blog, and forum platforms. When it comes to desktop application development, and hardware programming. You are not using PHP, you are using some form of 'C' or even writing it in Assembly.

I can't comment on CF against PHP, but I can say that I would take ASP.NET over PHP any day just for the ability to write code in a more Object Oriented Manor.

PHP has been around for a long time (1995). Much longer the ASP.NET (2002). It has proven the test of time and is widely used both in the enterprise and entry level markets. The fact that PHP is so widely available and so prominent in the open source community means you get a ton of free PHP written apps. This is both good and bad for the language. Anytime you have a mass quanity of anything some of it is bad and or becomes abandoned while some of it is great. For those new to PHP they could pick an out of date piece of software (ie. oscommerce) and consider it the PHP "norm".



How are they to know any better when there are no classes taught on the subject. You're on your own learning PHP. Buy a recent book. That is the best way to make sure you are getting the most up to date information and not learning a bad habit.



PHP gives the programmer the wide open ability to write beautifully sound / scalable object oriented code or to write sloppy hard to maintain code. Many people are drawn to PHP because it's easy to get started and there are so many examples available. Again unless you really know the language how are you to know what examples are good and what is bad.

.NET has done very well in the enterprise and business world all thanks to Microsoft. But to get started you are practically forces to use another Microsoft tool (Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio). JAVA also has done well but it's still more difficult to get going. Requiring a compiler / IDE and JRE. Ruby on Rails really hasn't been around long enough and really only has a very small following in comparison. Coldfusion is also fairly small while some big companies are using it now it's still a bit ridiculous in terms of price and load on the server. For that price it should not require a gig of ram just to be somewhat stable. It's hardware requirements need to be considering in operating costs.

PHP is free, it runs fast and is stable on just about any hardware specs. It does take longer to learn PHP. I will not argue it is a hard language to really learn (copy and paste doesn't count). I will argue that once you've learned it and built up a good library to pull from applications can be developed as quickly as Coldfusion and they are be more stable.

This is an excellent article I came across awhile back doing some research on Rails.
http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html

As for the PHP forum. There is one now. Since hardly anyone posts in it I thought I'd bring it up.