Is PHP the future of web development?

[ComputerTech]

---

yahhhh!.... AJAX can't stand alone...
and for me technology don't stop
yeah! bling bling men...abz'

can u elaborate AJAX can't stand alone...?

[kibotizer]

can u elaborate AJAX can't stand alone...?

- ok there it is

AJAX alone is worth very little without the server-side languages, it's simply a way to grab data off the server / db without doing a page reload. Used the right way its a great (and very cool) tool, but it's not going to stand on its own, its essentially Javascript back in its glory days. Gmail, Meebo, Digg, Basecamp, etc., all the Web 2.0 companies implement AJAX in various ways but well they wouldn't exist without PHP, RoR, Perl, cgi etc.

Now PHP has a huge following, it has had this for a long time now and its definitely up there as one of the more dominant languages for web development. It's easy to use, (very easy for beginners to pick up) and deployment is cheap (about 95% of hosts probably support it). I'd say PHP will continue to be in forefront of web development for the coming year. RoR (Ruby on Rails) has made a lot of noise over the past year, and its a great language / framework to base your web apps on, but most hosts don't support it ATM (Dreamhost's a good host if you wanna go the RoR way). Django (based on Python) interests me a lot as well but it's in the same position as Ruby is (poor hosting support). And well if you like 'em IIS / Windows Servers there's always ASP.net. You can't really go wrong with any of the languages mentioned, (and there's a lot more, I'm sure there are Coldfusion fans out here as well) just weigh in the ins and outs of each and stick with it.

Oh, and yep, as Baddudes says, at the end of the day, all these languages will be spitting out html.

plus >> AJAX without PHP or any SERVER side scripting is not that secure of what you thought... AJAX therefore can't stand alone

what i mean is that AJAX can't stand to come up with a very nice web applications in terms of high security)...

With AJAX you can create better, faster, and more user-friendly web applications.



yeah! bling bling men...abz'

[ComputerTech]

IMHO ajax is not intended to be stand alone...well at least on its beta stage dev

Ajax advantage from wiki:
The most obvious reason for using Ajax is an improvement to the user experience. Pages using Ajax behave more like a standalone application than a typical web page. Clicking on links that cause the entire page to refresh feels like a "heavy" operation. With Ajax, the page often can be updated dynamically, allowing a faster response to the user's interaction. While the full potential of Ajax has yet to be determined, some believe it will prove to be an important technology, helping make the Web even more interactive and popular than it currently is.

AJAX downside might be:

from wiki: The dynamically created page does not register itself with the browser history engine, so triggering the "Back" function of the users' browser might not bring the desired result.

[kibotizer]

ahh ok... basta it can't stand alone... hehe... peace bro....


yeah! bling bling men...abz'

[morphian]

i believe it's AJAX(Asychronous JavaScript and XML) that's gaining popularity these days. PHP has established its presence and it will remain as strong as it is. The future however seems to be leading to AJAX. GMail, meebo, and other sites are just some of the sites that use AJAX.

Why tha' heck would you compare AJAX to PHP? toink!

[morphian]

it's really more of the 'open-source' vs. Microsoft question. w/c one would be more preferred by companies and other establishments in terms of stability and cost. i'm a PHP programmer, but frankly PHP is not ideal for large scale projects for large scale business firms. .NET is, and of course it's a lot more expensive w/c will most likely not be preferred by smaller scale businesses.

so just between open-source and .NET, i think both of them will stay for quiet a while.

but there's this 'new kid in town' and it's gaining a lot of popularity among programmers and developers. it's Ruby on Rails. - well not really new since Ruby existed since the 90's, but it's the application server 'Rails'. they say it's also fit for large scale projects. it's open-source as well.

[ComputerTech]

yeah Ruby, phyton etc...

[radj]

future: XML + CSS + (any server side scripting) + (any DB thingie)

[vern]

I like PHP because it's cute.

I like Python for everything else ... it is a lot more elegant when used for something other than web programming.

Remember the topic is about PHP. Compare it to other server side languages, not with AJAX/XML/CSS/etc ... which aren't.

[Anton]

PHP is teh r0xor!! hahahaha

but anyway, PHP is what, about 12 years old? Although PHP5 was just release 3 yrs ago. So when it comes to the future, in my opinion, in about 5 years time web development will see another language take charge. May it be Ruby on Rails, Django or cakePHP (altough these are app frameworks, i believe the real question is what framework will persist), there are certainly alot more surpises instore in the very near future.