Interview - Bard Farstad of eZ systems

PHP and the Internet

SP: In general, what do you like -- and dislike -- most about PHP?

I like PHP because it's very quick to develop software using it. You also have libraries for mostly anything you need when working with dynamic Websites. The thing I dislike about PHP is the object orientation, but this will be improved with version 5.

SP: To what do you attribute PHP's success? Does PHP have anything to offer which can't be found elsewhere?

PHP is simple to get started with. You don't need to know much about PHP programming to make some PHP scripts. PHP still offers more advanced functionality, so it applies to a much wider audience than, for example, Java.

SP: As a developer with experience in other "serious" object oriented languages, what's your opinion of PHP's support for object orientation? What's your feeling about the coming changes with the Zend 2.0 engine? What do you say to those Java types (or any others) that like to criticise PHP in this area?

The object orientation is the poorest part of PHP, but if you use it with caution it's OK. I really look forward to the Zend 2.0 engine -- people who criticise PHP for this are absolutely right. However, I think that PHP is the best-suited language for the development of dynamic Websites. It's also important to remember that the language is just a tool; the important thing is what the users of your software think -- and they normally don't care what kind of language it's written in.

SP: PHP is a language that has appealed to developers with backgrounds in Web design rather than software development. Do you feel that the preference of many of these PHP developers for writing procedural rather than object oriented code is holding back the language's progress? What tips do you have to offer PHP developers who hope to put together successful PHP projects?

I think that more and more people are starting to write object oriented PHP, but if you now look at open source projects written in PHP, most of them are still not done that way. If more people would write object-oriented code it would definitely have boosted the development of PHP in this direction. So the tip to other developers must be; write object oriented libraries and reusable code.

SP: Despite being the most popular server side language for the Internet, what do you see as the root causes for PHP being largely ignored in mainstream IT circles? Do you think PHP can gain widespread acceptance within the enterprise as a viable solution for Web development?

I think the main reason for this is marketing. But PHP continues to grow and is being used by more and more companies. I think PHP will be used a lot more in mainstream IT circles in the future. It's already being used by many big companies.

SP: Given the problems you've had finding a solid XML parser for PHP (to the point where you wrote your own), what's you're opinion of PHP's XML support? Have you looked at the latest incarnation of PHP's DOM extension? Do you feel it's now able to provide a stable library for parsing and generating XML using the DOM API? And how do you regard PHP's support for technologies like XML-RPC and SOAP (given that, again, you've written your own implementations for these)?

PHP's XML support is fairly good, however, it didn't suit our needs at the time, which was why we wrote our own implementation. Also, there were some problems with memory leaks, where the DOM parser chewed up all the memory. I think the most important thing for PHP is to have good low level features; you don't need every protocol implemented native in the programming language. Currently I think PHP needs a bit more work on these extensions, but these shouldn't remove the focus from other developments that are more important in PHP.

SP: Aside from XML support, what do you see as the main technological challenges for PHP in future?

Object orientation.

SP: How you compare PHP with current commercial offerings from Sun (J2EE) and Microsoft (.NET)? Given the experimental Java and http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.dotnet.php/#nlt#/.NET extensions/#enl#/, what do you see as PHP's future role in relationship to these two big frameworks?

My general experience is that it's much simpler to get an answer to a question you might have about an Open Source solution than it is with a commercial solution. So in my opinion, PHP is much more powerful, because of the Open Source community.

SP: And finally, as far as Web design and development are concerned, how do you think things will look 5 years from now?

I think you will see more applications and integrated systems. You will hopefully see more standards, and it would great if people would also follow the standards.

SP: Bård, thanks very much for taking time from your busy schedule to talk to SitePoint. Having seen what eZ publish 2.0 can do, it sounds like an already great project is just about to get better. All the best with eZ publish 3.0!