Blog Posts

The future of PHP

Lukas Kahwe Smith,
07.06.2010 15:00 CEST - Comments [6]

A few months ago the current development branch for the next major release of PHP was dropped. It was in development for several years and was intended to bring Unicode support to the core of the language. The approach taken was not seen as feasible for many so it was never completed. Its existance however slowed down development and made release management difficult. For example PHP 5.3 was basically created to get some features from this new Unicode branch released. Obviously having to back port lots of features to 5.x that had piled up over the years proved to be a very difficult task, which took over one year.

The obviously question to ask is what will happen now? The German t3n magazine recently interviewed me on this topic for the 20th edition of their print magazine.

t3n: Derzeit ist nicht klar, ob die nächste PHP-Version 5.4 oder 6 sein wird. Woran liegt das?

Lukas: PHP 6.0 war als der „Unicode-Release“ auserkoren. Dazu wollten die Mitglieder des PHP-Projekts das Thema Unicode und den grundlegenden Ansatz noch mal überdenken. Der daraus resultierende Thread auf der Mailingliste ist vorerst im Sand verlaufen, ohne dass irgendwas dokumentiert wurde. Somit stellt sich die Frage, ob der nächste große Wurf wirklich mit Unicode zu tun haben wird.

t3n: Welche spannenden Neuerungen sind denn schon im neuen Trunk oder werden vermutlich bald einfließen?

Lukas: Das aus meiner Sicht interessanteste Feature ist „Horizontal Reuse“. Dabei geht es um einen alternativen Multiple-Inheritance- Ansatz. Die Wahl ist hier vorerst auf Traits gefallen. Ein möglicher neuer Aufhänger für PHP 6 sind Zends Performance-Patches. Mit FPM ist außerdem bereits ein alternativer Ansatz zur Nutzung von FastCGI in den Trunk eingeflossen. Schließlich gibt es noch die The- men „Large File Support“ und „Large/Infinite Integer Support“. Hierfür gibt es jedoch noch keinen Patch.

t3n: Facebook hat vor wenigen Monaten das Projekt „Hip Hop“ veröffentlicht, um PHP zu beschleunigen. Was halten Sie davon?

Lukas: Allgemein bin ich recht unbeeindruckt. Die Zugewinne von „bis zu 200 Prozent“ halte ich für extrem wenig, soviel würde ich von einem PHP-zu-C-Extension-Compiler erwarten. Der größte Vorteil ist die Speicherreduzierung dank Multi-Threading. Von daher habe ich das Gefühl, dass Facebook langfristig sowieso lieber seine eigene, wenn auch an PHP angelehnte, Sprache haben will. Meine Hauptsorge ist, dass Facebook langfristig keine Ressourcen mehr in die Entwicklung des APC-Cache steckt.

t3n: Immer mehr Entwickler entdecken, wie komfortabel schlanke und moderne Sprachen wie Ruby oder Phyton sind. Warum sollten Entwickler trotzdem auf PHP setzen?

Lukas: Das Killer-Argument für PHP ist und bleibt die große Verbreitung. Es gibt viele Entwickler, preiswertes Hosting und eine große Auswahl an Komponenten und fertigen Applikationen. PHP ist nicht die am schönsten designte Sprache, jedoch enorm schnell, wenn es darum geht, wichtige neue Webtrends direkt in den Sprachkern aufzunehmen.

t3n: Welches PHP-basierte Open-Source-Projekt finden Sie derzeit besonders spannend?

Lukas: Ich verfolge die Entwicklung von Symfony2 und den diversen Components mit großem Interesse. Mit Doctrine2, den eigenen Symfony Components und auch einigen Zend-Framework-Klassen wird hier die Open-Source-Entwicklung in Reinkultur praktiziert.

Comments [6]

Vladislav Rastrusny, 07.06.2010 15:47 CEST

If you publish your posts on PlanetPHP, please, make translations at least if you publish them in German. Respect other developpers, please.

chregu, 07.06.2010 16:12 CEST

We did the introduction in English especially for those not understanding German so that you know, what's it about. That's good enough for me for the odd non-english post on Planet PHP

Paul Leclercq, 07.06.2010 16:30 CEST

It is easy to cut and past this in google translate if someone needs to understand the overview of this.

Vladislav Rastrusny, 07.06.2010 17:12 CEST

http://www.planet-php.net/submit/
When you add blog to PlanetPHP, there is a rule, that your posts should be in English.

Brian Holub, 07.06.2010 21:07 CEST

The English intro and the ease of Google Translate make this post valuable to PlanetPHP visitors (like myself) even if it's not entirely in English. Maybe the PlanetPHP rules are too strict... frankly I'm glad this showed up there (it's how I found it).

Rob Zienert, 07.06.2010 23:31 CEST

Come on, give him a break. It's good content and if you're actually interested, you'll throw it into Google Translate. For those who don't feel like it, here's the output:

---

: T3n is not currently clear whether the new PHP version will be 5.4 or sixth Why is that?

Luke: PHP 6.0 was chosen as the "Unicode Release". These were the members of the PHP project, the subject of Unicode and the basic approach to rethink again. The resulting thread on the mailing list is for the time being lost in the sand, without anything that was documented. This raises the question whether the next big bang will really have to do with Unicode.

: T3n What exciting innovations are because in the new draft, or probably soon will be included?

Luke: The most interesting feature is, in my view "Horizontal Reuse. This is an alternative to multiple inheritance approach. The choice is initially fell in traits. A possible new hanger for Zend's PHP 6 are performance patches. With FPM is also already an alternative approach to the use of FastCGI included in the draft. Finally there is the The-men "Large File Support" and "Large / Infinite Integer Support". However, there is still no patch.

: T3n Facebook a few months ago the project "Hip Hop has published" in order to speed up PHP. What do you think?

Luke: In general I'm quite impressed. The gains of up to 200 percent, "I think very little, as much as I would expect from a PHP-to-C-extension-compiler. The biggest advantage is the reduction in storage due to multi-threading. So I have a feeling that Facebook would rather his own long-term anyway, even though in PHP ajar, will have language. My main concern is long term, that Facebook puts no more resources into the development of the APC cache.

Explore t3n: More and more developers, as it is comfortable and sleek modern languages like Ruby or Python are. Why developers should still rely on PHP?

Luke: The killer argument for PHP is and remains very popular. There are many developers, affordable hosting, and a large selection of components and manufacturing applications. PHP is not the most beautifully designed language, but very fast when it comes to important new Webtrends directly incorporated into the core language.

: T3n Which PHP-based open source project is available at present particularly exciting?

Luke: I have followed the development of the various Symfony2 and Components with great interest. With Doctrine2, their own Symfony Components and some Zend Framework classes is practiced here, the open-source development at its best.

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