Reveal the secrets behind PHP's success

 

Rasmus lerdorf may be the most famous computer ox in Greenland. He created it in 1995.PHPScript language, and successfulApplicationTo hisWebsiteUnder his first-hand cultivation, PHP has become a powerful and mature language. Currently, there are millions of PHP application cases around the world.

Rasmus lerdorf, founder of PHP

LinuxThe format magazine gave us an interview with Rasmus lerdorf, revealing the role of Rasmus lerdorf in the PHP community and how he made decisions in the early days, which gave PHP a great success today.

Linux format (lxf): The number of PHPDevelopment?

Rasmus lerdorf (hereinafter referred to as RL): it is less than 10 or 15 years ago, but I still read the mail list every day to discuss features and occasionally fix bugs. I am personally more interested in security and performance issues.

Lxf: What is the organizational structure of the PHP team? It seems unclear now...

RL: No structure!

Lxf: who makes the final decision?

RL: Let's work together! We have a completely open email list in which anyone can subscribe to it, read it, comment on it, etc. I have always insisted on keeping it transparent, and anyone can read the email list, if there is a divergence, then whoever implements it first wins.

Lxf: as the final arbitrator, are you under pressure?

RL: of course there is pressure. I always try to play down this role, because I don't want to make a final decision on too many things, I want the project to be self-sufficient, and I want it to be self-promoted. If I am deeply immersed in the role of decision makers, it is unrealistic to make every decision.

Honestly, I do not know enough about some things, such as Sybase. I have never used Sybase. How can I make the right decision on SYBASE extension? In this case, we need to make decisions by members who are familiar with Sybase in the team.

Lxf: is Php 6 Development slower? It's been two and a half years of development...

RL: It is not decided to slow down the development speed of Php 6, because people are very interested in Unicode programming, But Unicode programming is not that simple, there are many complicated things to consider. From a business point of view, everyone wants to use Unicode, but from a daily point of view, many people do not need Unicode because the systems they build will only be used in one region. Theoretically, everyone wants to end up using UTF-8, but this is something we will consider later, and it is not as pressing as other features in PHP.

When someone says "I need this now", we usually start development and developers are responsibleWorkIt's not all about Php 6. Many large companies want to promote Unicode because they tend to be internationalized.

Lxf: In the early days of php development, which language inspired you?

RL: C and Perl. At that time, I was using these two languages, because at first I had no idea how to create a new language.MethodTo solveWebServerI don't need so many things in Perl, and I don't want to manage all the memory like C. So what I need is a lite version of C, and it cannot be very Perl, I can easily embed it into a webpage.

Later, we studied C ++ andJavaAnd find out the functions that need to be implemented in our project, but this is done by others, we have beenObject-orientedProgramming is not very cold. I use it only when I think it is appropriate, but I have never been a fan of object-oriented programming.

I think what I mainly want to say is "you must give up control ". If you want to createOpen SourceProject, you cannot be too narcissistic, you cannot rewrite everyone's patches, you must give people equal control.

Lxf: Have you ever experienced this?

RL: it must have been there. In 1997, I almost wanted to stop this project because it grew very fast and my mailbox was filled with suggestions, complaints, patches, and other things until then, I have always tried my best to deal with these things. Some people may make a suggestion to send a patch to me and I may rewrite the patch. At that time, I thought I should do this.

If I don't agree with someone's idea and need a round-trip communication, I will not keep up with the pace. At that time, I became very frustrated and had a problem. So I began to think about why these people wanted me to correct theirCodeWhat about it? They didn't pay me any more. What can I do to save my work from this hell?

So I think it's time for reform, So I open my permissions and give those guys who have been complaining about permission to modify the code. When they feel like the owner, I complained a lot less at once, and I was more motivated. the whole atmosphere had undergone earth-shaking changes and brought a lot of fun, now we are a team that truly works together.

Lxf: Do you pay attention to other languages such as Ruby?

RL: I think Ruby has shrunk recently. Maybe the new version will come out soon, and the speed may be a little faster (Laugh). Maybe I will pay attention to it at that time, but it has always had performance problems, the official team also admitted this because I think the performance of the new version may be better, and I am not a hot fan of code generation. (51cto reporter recently interviewed Dave Thomas, the author of programming Ruby. Dave also said Ruby is not a fast-growing language .)

In a demonstration video, scaffold seems to be quite good, but I am not interested in using scaffold in the real world, and I think many people share the same idea with me. scaffold is cute, but I need something more practical. Ruby is also a great programming language. I think it is a very clean and beautiful language.

There are many people turning to Ruby on Rails because they are being demonstrated in videos and "Hey! You can build an application within 10 seconds, "but when they really need to do something practical, they will think," Oh, garbage, I really don't know Ruby !"