Lot 49: Greg Beaver's blog

All of you spending free time speculating about whether PHP is better or worse than Perl/Ruby/Java/Scheme/punch cards need to remember a key scene in the 1987 movie "Spaceballs". At a certain point, the main characters Dark Helmet and Lone Star face off with their "Schwartz" rings, emitting a large beam from their midsection. There follows a moment of silence, and Dark Helmet very seriously says:

"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine."

At this point the audience laughs at both of them.

In case you're wondering what this has to do with PHP, let's take a look at what is really going on. Two characters are busy comparing weapons that look rather phallic, but are completely unaware of the ludicrous nature of their struggle.

If you are trying to solve a problem with a computer program, and find a solution (note: I don't say language - AJAX, for instance, is a combination of languages by nature) that

1. takes less time to implement
2. takes less time to maintain
3. is easy to re-factor
4. is easy to document, and to explain to other developers

Then you have found a good solution. The constant search for the "perfect" language will only waste your time. Sure, you need to know the capabilities of each language in order to make a good decision, but making a pronouncement about the net worth of said language is useless. The only useful debate is discussing a specific problem and how to solve it. Period.