PHP in contrast to Perl: As much as I adore PHP, this article makes a lot of good points when comparing PHP to Perl:
PHP has separate functions for case insensitive operations… PHP has inconsistent function naming… PHP has too many functions in the core
I’ll be the first to admit that PHP function naming is all over the map. Via Anil Dash, who obviously has a vested interest in Perl.
PHP: date_sunrise - Manual: I don't know how closely you all are looking at the PHP 5 function libraries, but I stumbled on this function today (and its sibling). date_sunset() returns the sunset time for a given day (specified as a timestamp) and location. The latitude, longitude and zenith parameters default…
Aaron Crane's "Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites" (see: http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2002/papers/html/php/index.html ) is also worth a read.
However, PHP5 addresses many of the "issues" that the Perl crowd is so keen to highlight.
Jonathan, you say that PHP 5 addresses many of the issues that the Prel crowd is so keen to highlight.
Might I please highlight that NONE of the issues that http://tnx.nl/php highlights has been adressed?
"PHP has inconsistent function naming"... c'mon, learn to adapt people! how big a deal is that!!!!!
One of the major factors in an environment's adoption is "barriers to initial success". If someone can sit down and pound out working code with few hassles, and without spending too much time in the docs, they will quickly have an initial success with the platform, and form a positive opinion of it. PHP has a pretty low barrier to initial success, but it would be lower if you didn't have to spend so much time in the doc figuring the crazy function names out. The whole function list in PHP could use a well-considered overhaul.