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Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 16:12:28 +0200
Message-ID: <CAEPJdukh-mO-24wNo2qoHOp1yzNgfFMki2CPepc7faPpXZMNsw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Chase Peeler <chasepeeler@gmail.com>
Cc: Zeev Suraski <zeev@php.net>, Olumide Samson <oludonsexy@gmail.com>, 
	Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel@gmail.com>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP's declining(?) popularity
From: kontakt@beberlei.de (Benjamin Eberlei)

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On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 3:47 PM Chase Peeler <chasepeeler@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 8:14 AM Zeev Suraski <zeev@php.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 1:15 PM Olumide Samson <oludonsexy@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I also don't agree with the index and all its statistics
> > >
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by 'all its statistics'.  Mostly everything =
on
> > the methodology page is fluff, which may be purposely there to hide the
> > only part that really matters:
> > ----------------
> >
> > The ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search
> > engines. The search query that is used is
> >
> > +"<language> programming"
> >
> >  ---------------
> >
> > It's a simplistic measure of an arbitrary search term in search engines=
 -
> > nothing more.  It's completely, 100.0% meaningless.
> >
> >
> > > , yet I'm not invalidating it as it is a much-viewed index globally.
> > >
> >
> > I am.  It's quite remarkable that people are paying any level of
> attention
> > to it whatsoever, and indeed it's saddening.  But the fact that many
> people
> > believe something doesn't make it true, if the evidence clearly suggest
> it
> > isn't.
> >
> > According to the index :
> > >  "Till the end of 2009 everything went fine, but soon after that PHP
> was
> > > going downhill from 10% to 5% market share in 2 years=E2=80=99 time. =
In 2014 it
> > > halved again to 2.5%.
> > >
> >
> > Trying to correlate the TIOBE index with anything that happened in the
> PHP
> > world is akin to trying to correlate the results of rand() with the
> weather
> > forecast.  The two aren't related at all.  Building any thesis on the
> > foundation of the TIOBE index is like trying to build a brick house on =
a
> > muddy soil.  Heck, like trying to build a brick house in the middle of
> the
> > ocean.  There's nothing to build on.
> >
> > While it's extremely difficult to measure the popularity of languages,
> > RedMonk's slightly more relevant measurements (GitHub projects and Stac=
k
> > Overflow questions) suggest it's been doing well over the last decade -
> > right up there in the top 5 with no meaningful decline.  What Mike and
> > others pointed out are areas where we should consider investing if we
> want
> > to *increase* the popularity beyond what it already is (which is what
> > happened with Python).
> >
> > Zeev
> >
>
> While I think some excellent suggestions have been made on this thread, o=
ne
> thing that I feel Mike's sources show (and maybe it's confirmation bias) =
is
> that any decline in popularity that PHP might be experiencing (for the sa=
ke
> of argument, we'll pretend such a decline does exist) isn't because PHP
> isn't strict enough. It's because it doesn't do a lot of the things that
> languages like Python can do. If this is the case, we don't reverse the
> trend by making our language more syntactically or behaviorally like the
> other languages out there. We reverse it by supporting the features that
> are currently lacking, or, adding features that other languages don't hav=
e.
>
> First, you say it yourself, but the sources are biased, so i am not sure
any of your conclusions hold valid. But lets pretent they do, like you did.

Yes PHP does a lot of things that languages like Python can do, for example
alwayse throwing an error when you access an undefined variable, which is
totally something that python does.

Newcomers do make a lot of simple mistakes in the beginning, so being
strict on enforcing variables exist is something that makes it easier for
newcomers.

>
>
> --
> Chase Peeler
> chasepeeler@gmail.com
>

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