Rails Creator Praises PHP

I would consider myself above average, maybe even an expert when in comes to developing in PHP. I can pretty much accomplish whatever my heart imagines as far as web applications with it. The problem comes when I have to maintain these applications. Therefore I have looked into frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and CakePHP. I've teetered between the two. I've heard many say that Ruby is what makes Rails so great. On the other hand CakePHP allows you to use your extensive knowledge of PHP and put in a more maintainable framework.

Well, all things considered led me to make the decision to learn Ruby on Rails. It's been much more daunting than I imagined it would be. I feel like an old dog trying to learn new tricks.

In the process of learning, I've been all over the web. One stop led me to the blog of David Heinemeier Hannson - the creator of Ruby on Rails. One thing that has been quite annoying is reading post from self-righteous Ruby on Rails developers who like to put down PHP. So it was refreshing to see DHH give PHP a little love!

I've been writing a little bit of PHP again today. That platform has really received an unfair reputation. For the small things I've been used it for lately, it's absolutely perfect.

I love the fact that it's all just self-contained. That the language includes so many helpful functions in the box. And that it managed to get distributed with just about every instance of Apache out there.

For the small chores, being quick and effective matters far more than long-term maintenance concerns. Or how pretty the code is. PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope.