One reason I extreamly dislike PHP is that they have no analog of CPAN which results in a lot of staff being put in core. Which in turn results being practically imposible to develop backwards compatible code. I.e. if you say develop with 4.2.x, then in each core lib you use there are zillion new features which are not present in former versions. And you occasionally use new features even if you want to stay backward compatible just because there are so many of them.
With perl it's core is much smaller and many core libs have standalone versions avialable from CPAN which still work with old perls. Basically I can keep in my head list of all things I should I avoid if I want to be backward compatible even back to 5.00503. Try this with PHP.
This is exactly what I dislike the most about PHP too. It's a true hassle to recompile and redeploy PHP/Apache everytime you want to add a bit of functionality (like XMLRPC, GD, etc). I also am not fond of how there is no namespace support in PHP for classes.
Aside: with all the fun that has been happening w/ Parrot/Ponie lately I've been daydreaming about writing a PHP parser that targets parrot.
Re:php--
clscott on 2003-07-25T15:26:36
I'm with you inkdroid, that's what I dislike about PHP, that and the complete ease with which you can intertwine the HTML and code.
As for a PHP compiler that targets parrot, well I think Sterling Hughes is working on that.
