Hi,

I was going to start this off with some analogy on how Ruby is like dating some ‘hottie’ that turns out to be crazy .. but I just couldn’t make it work …

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When Ruby on Rails started to gain some momentum a year or so ago, I decided to take another look at the Ruby language itself along with the Rails web framework.

Before I get to the heart of this article, I have to tell you that I love the elegance of the language … it is fun to use.

But, being a nerd who’s has experienced disappointment in promising new technologies in the past, I decided to dig a little deeper into Ruby and Ruby on Rails before committing to use it in real projects. I did my research … and I’m glad I went with PHP instead.

… Let me just say that this Twitter news, only reinforces my own thinking from a year and a half ago.

Why did Twitter decide to move away from Ruby and Ruby on Rails?

Well according to TechCrunch, the boys at Twitter found that Ruby could not be made to scale.

Update:

Apparently this Techcrunch report was later refuted by the Twitter people. Nonetheless, the point of this article still holds true.

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I’ve been involved in the tech business for many years. Though technology is constantly changing, there is a constant:

Angry self righteous tech-nerds.

Who are the angry-nerds?

Angry-nerds are those programmers, network administrators or any other geeks that have a major chip on their shoulders.

Typically, they are in their twenties, with little experience, and are just out of school … full of academic dogma and ritual.

It takes little to set these guys off …

When confronted with a tech idea they don’t agree with, or they find that a concept (or way of doing things) is ‘below’ them intellectually .. they become arrogant, hostile and their not so inner nerd-child appears.

Generally these twits are useless to have around … besides being annoying.

Angry-nerds like to attack beginners

One behavior that is consistent in the angry-nerd population, is their collective disdain for those trying to learn a new technology. If that wasn’t strange enough, they are even critical of those who would try to help beginners get on their feet.

Why?

I think angry-nerds are just looking to bully people they feel they can bully. A little payback I suppose …?

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The classic arguments that bring out the angry-nerds (frothing at the mouth), include:

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I just got back from a trip to Thailand, so I should be back creating new videos and articles on PHP. In the meantime, I have a few Wordpress videos that might interest some of you.

About the videos:

I cover just the basics in the videos I have up now, but I am working on new videos that will teach you how to create Wordpress themes from scratch.

How does this relate to PHP?

… Though not required, PHP knowledge can help when creating themes for Wordpress. This leads me to why I posted this on Killerphp.com: part of the reason I created killerphp.com is because Wordpress is written in PHP. Wordpress is a good example of object oriented PHP and is a great piece of software that can be used as the foundation for other projects – Wordpress platform?

From my killersites.com blog:

I decided to create a dedicated Wordpress section on killersites.com

Right now, I only a have a few videos (with a bunch more coming) but I am also thinking of maybe some written tutorials etc…

The videos:

wordpress-logo

So far I’ve only added a few videos but have another 40 minutes of video to edit that should be up this week.

Any comments or suggest are welcome.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

The article’s title (I admit,) will get some people little miffed at me. But, what can I say, the truth hurts!

Seriously, this statement is valid and is worth talking about because there are a lot of web designers out there who are considering the leap into building dynamic (database driven) web applications. And with so many choices (ASP, ASP.NET, Ruby etc …) it can be very frustrating when trying to make that choice.

Of course, I believe (and know) that PHP is the choice language/technology for web designers. But why are the other technologies not a good choice for web designers?

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Hi,

This is a touch off topic but I thought that some PHP’ers out there might be interested nonetheless.

Preamble:

I got my first Mac about 8-9 months ago and I have to say after having used Windows (all flavors) since 1994, I have to admit that OSX is the best operating system I ever used. Yes, even better than DOS!

The problem is, that I have a few Windows only applications that at first glance, (it would seem,) will not run on a Mac.

… That said, I’ve have found that this is actually not a problem at all … thanks to a few options that you have to run Windows and Windows based programs on Mac OSX .

I wrote a whole article on running Windows on a Mac and even created a couple of demonstration videos!

How does this have to do anything with PHP?

Practically speaking, not too much. But, Mac OSX is Unix under-the-hood and so are most Web Servers.

That means using a Mac will give access to a whole slew of very useful Unix tools that you don’t have on Windows (a.k.a.: the crasher,) and you will gain a better understanding of what you can do on Linux/Unix based web servers. PHP is better tied into Linux anyway.

Stefan Mischook

www.killerphp.com

Preamble

I have written this article to speak to business owners and other non-nerd types. So you will not see me go into nerd-details regarding my arguments.

Instead, I concentrate on the business arguments and only touch on the technological issues underlying them … when it makes sense to mention the nerd stuff.

Introduction

I’ve already written about why I think PHP is the language that web designers should learn and why Ruby is no threat to PHP.

One thing I feel that needs to be addressed (in non nerd terms,) is why it makes business sense to use PHP for your web based applications.

A Non-Biased Opinion

Before I get into the meat of my arguments, I want to point out that I am not some PHP nerd looking to sell PHP.

Yes I am the Killerphp.com guy, but I decided to put up this web site because I concluded that PHP was the choice language today.

… This from a guy who has written software in 6-7 languages (could be 8-9, I’ve lost track) over the years.

Up until a few years ago I was mainly a Java nerd – though I used several other languages too.

The point is that after years of experience as both a programmer and business owner managing programmers and projects, I found that for small and medium sized projects (I can’t comment on big enterprise jobs,) PHP has been the most effective language for me.

The Business Questions

When you are choosing a framework/language for your new project, you have to ask yourself a few key questions:

• Is the language reliable?
• Does the language have a strong community?
• Is it easy to find programmers who use that language?
• Is the language productive?

All these questions relate to cost. In a nutshell, if any of these things fall short in the language/framework you choose, it’s going to cost you more money – sometimes a lot more!

What do I say ‘framework/language’ and not just ‘language’?

I want to keep uber-nerds from criticizing me for calling PHP’s competition (like ASP.net) a language, when strictly speaking, ASP.net and other competitors are not programming languages. Rather they are frameworks that enable the creation of database-driven web sites.

Translation into non-nerd English:

PHP itself is a language but ASP.net, classic ASP, JSP are not … but they do the same things as PHP. These competing technologies are frameworks (for creating database-driven websites,
) built on top of programming languages.

For instance, JSP (the framework) uses Java as its’ programming language to do its’ thing and classic ASP typically uses VB Script.

Contrast this to PHP, that was created (from inception) to build dynamic database-driven websites.

… but I digress from the main point of this article.

My business experience and how it has shown me that PHP is king.

As I mentioned before, besides being a programmer and all around nerd, I’ve actually been (and still am) the ‘business owner’ hiring and managing a small team of programmers.

So why PHP? Remember those 4 points I made above? Well PHP shines (outshines) all the competition when you look at them as a whole.

Perhaps in one area or another, one of the other technologies can match or may even beat PHP, but non of them are so well rounded.

One story of my own

I will only recount one quick story that makes my (business) point. About 2-3 years ago I decided to build a new web application using my favorite language at the time: Java.

After months of stuttered development (and $10 000 – $12 000 not including my time,) I had a stuttering mess that kinda worked. This happens all too often in software development BTW.

Anyway, I decided that this had to be fixed, so I had it reproduced with PHP while (at the same time,) adding new features. My cost for the total rewrite came out to $700. I should have went with PHP from the start …

Stefan Mischook

www.killerphp.com
www.killersites.com

Hi,

I wanted to mention that I have a new PHP article out in the Oct issue (#124) of Web Designer Magazine.

Article Title:

‘Learn to build a php contact form while learning to process forms and send email with php.’

I’ve also released Quicktime versions of the PHP video tutorials – they come with the magazine’s DVD.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

I been away from making videos for about a week now because of a surprize root canal. This ultra-painful experience (I actually lost 10 lbs!) has prevented me from doing any video work (any work at all,) for last little while.

Let that be a lesson to you all:

• If you grind your teeth in your sleep (as I do,) get a mouth piece, otherwise you may end up with an abscess tooth or two.
• Take care of your teeth, otherwise they will come back to byte you … 3 sleepless nights and $1600 for me.

I should be back on the videos within the next couple of days now that the pain has gone.

I’ve received many emails over the last few years, with complaints of how confusing PHP seemed … of how hard the documentation on the web seemed to be.

So I created killerphp.com to help those web designers who seemed to be more inclined to design and not to code.

THE WEBSITE LAUNCHED

I put up the first few videos in July, and at the same time, I let people know on the killersites.com forum about them.

Since then (and to my surprise), in the month and a half that killerphp.com has been online, there has been some interesting things happening:

• The Digg community seem to like the videos: over 800 diggs last time I checked.
• The people at Zend Developer zone mentioned an article I wrote and recommended my videos for beginners.
• Many PHP sites started mentioning killerphp.com.

According to Google, the term ‘killerphp.com’ has appeared in over 18 000 web pages – in less than 2 months! Overall, not a bad reaction in this short a time.

IT’S NOT ALL BERRIES AND CREAM AT KILLERPHP.COM

Generally a positive reaction to the material, I do occasionally get complaints from (what I guess are) experienced PHP programmers, that the videos are too simple or that I’m not the most exciting speaker.

I know I need to keep working on my nerd-speaking skills but too simple!?

… For me, that means I’ve done my job – I’m trying to teach people who don’t know php …

That said, I do appreciate everyone who has taken the time to visit the site and I especially appreciate the feedback, both good and bad. I will try to improve and expand killerphp.com based on what you tell me.

Thanks again,

Stefan Mischook