Sandro Groganz gives an interesting response to Matt Mullenweg’s taking PHP 5 and Zend to task.
I find his post interesting because he compares Php5 to Java, unlike the rest of us who are focused on Ruby and other sexy beasts.
As a Java programmer myself -and one of the many Java people dazzled by Ruby- I have a lot of sympathy for his take. After all, from where I stand, Php5 is simply an attempt at replicating everything that Zend likes about Java. I wonder if the idea was to attract Java programmers but if so, it shows a serious lack of understanding of what we like. Java developers are not looking for a laundry list of features; if we were simply looking for a lightweight version of Java, Groovy is all we need, thank you. Rails, on the other hand, really appeals to a professional developer’s mind with its elegant constructs such as built-in iterators and its community.

I am among the people who believe that Php5 is a mistake. Php4 was perfect to develop lightweight projects that require good performance while maintaining an iterative development model. I also think of myself as a Php4 developer when necessary just like I know that I can whip up a shell script when I need something done very quickly.

I have used Php4 for years. Then, Php5 came along, making promises of object orientation that would allow me to write code about as complex as my Java code. OK, so what benefit am I getting from using this new language? (From Matt Mullenweg’s post: “I wonder if PHP 5+ should be called something other than PHP” – aye!)

I use Php a lot, for Clic!Dev, nextBBS and other very demanding projects. Sorry to say, but the last thing I need is an interpreted object-oriented language. If I am forced to move to Php5, one of two things will happen:
1. I will code in Php5 the exact same way I am coding right now in Php4, ie using a minimum of object orientation
2. Or I will decide to bite the bullet and recode everything using a language that doesn’t suffer an identity crisis

I wish Drupal and other members of the ‘Pure Php5 Movement’ good luck and I think that it’s a good idea for projects this size to implement the best development practices, however I cannot help but think that the only reason why they are doing so in Php is mainly because nobody wants to can thousands of lines of legacy code.

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Your feedback is welcome. Actually I would be more than happy to be proven wrong on this topic!