[thelist] Is Java dead ? (was Evolt Hiermenus?)

Andrew Forsberg andrew at thepander.co.nz
Thu Mar 7 23:39:00 CST 2002


>For one thing, Java needs to have includes for the simplest of features
>which PHP gives me in as simple a form as function.

True, and that's nice.

>Try using MCrypt in Java
>for instance? The MCrypt lib comes as a standard with Linux, FreeBSD and
>OpenBSD so PHP can use it without any intervention from the host -- I may
>stand corrected.

./configure --with-mcrypt=/foo/bar/mcryptdir
// then the rest of your options AGAIN on the forty-fifth rebuild!
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mcrypt.php

My point is, and Matt expressed it better than I did originally, I
cannot create a php product, with a php installer script, that can be
installed onto any php system of a given version number -- *if* it
relies on non-default options (and sometimes even those defaults will
be disabled by hosts in the interests of speed and/or convenience for
them).  This is because many of the useful features of php can only
be added at compile time, not later.

>There are several libraries that can actually be just
>installed as a binary on the server (e.g., XPDF for dealing with PDF files)
>and all server side languages can easily access them without any hosting
>constraints.

See:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.configure.php
And witness the eight separate configure options for the two
different pdf libs php supports (cpdflib and pdflib).

>Secondly, a lot of functionality can be included at runtime in PHP as well
>(through pear or additional functions or additional modules) so this
>discussion would make sense only if we could list out the real features to
>compare against. Additional modules are just not a popular thing with PHP,
>that is all.

Discovering and using PEAR was a fantastic thing for me. Still, we're
talking opinions, not facts.

>One thing that would be great in the PHP world though is some sort of a
>deployment platform, like WAR files in the Java world...but then PHP does
>not need it because it is a flexible platform.

Begging your host to recompile php is not my idea of flexible. Adding
'include_once (PDFLib.php');' to the top of a script would be
flexible... but let's agree to disagree.

>I don't need to put this file
>ONLY into this folder, and that file ONLY into that folder, or the system
>will crap out. In the PHP world (which is not JSP-esque kind of an
>afterthought/quick-response-to-increasing-ASP) I can define my own directory
>structure, so the flexibility is left with me as a developer/architect. Some
>levels of standardization should come from the application, not the language
>provider.

Absolutely -- this is how I see Java being *more* flexible than PHP
as a server-side language (same disclaimer: this is an outsider's
p.o.v.) you can include classes that will abstract the details for
you!

PEAR is great, PEAR is lovely, but PEAR can't recompile PHP on the
fly. The php environment is more or less static, so good php programs
tend to get designed for the lowest common denominator environment.
It's almost like facing those tiresome client-side problems when
you're designing a program for more than one target server.

Cheers
Andrew

--
Andrew Forsberg
---
uberNET - http://uber.net.nz/
the pander - http://thepander.co.nz/



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