PHP 5.1: The Bazaar Is Sometimes Bizarre

PHP 5.1: The Bazaar Is Sometimes Bizarre.

Well PHP 5.1.0
is out. This is a monumental piece of work, and congratulations to the
PHP 5 internals team for all the hard work. However it feels rushed
through the door. Apparently there are compatibility problems (with
typecasting when parameter passing, the prototype date class, and
possibly other stuff.) Wait for the patches.

Update

Later that day… I stumbled on this quote by Dave Winer:

It seems the computer industry hasn't gotten to the stage yet where it
can really deliver delight to users. Maybe we spend too much time
trying to fuck up the user experience. I think of that when I see pages
with fifteen different formats that all do the same thing. Why? There's
no need for it. How many of those types of battles
were fought inside Apple that resulted in the super-shitty experience I
had and Jeremy had. Maybe we need to take a step back and start
thinking a bit about how this kind of bullshit keeps us from growing.

I haven't been reading the PHP internals mailing lists since August
this year, but because of the rumored PHP 5.1 mishaps, I did. The
in-fighting and name-calling is surprisingly heated. Open source is
certainly great, the price-point is good, you can fix things yourself
(if you have the skill), but the meandering directions that PHP takes
can be frustrating. Some people want a more advanced programming
language to keep up with the Rubies and Pythons; others (like me), want
100% backward compatibility. The Bazaar (and perhaps all software development for that matter) is sometimes too bizarre.

PS: There is a way to achieve 100% backward compatibility. [PHP Everywhere – By John Lim]

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