PRO::PHP Interview With Andi

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:14 UTC

Today, PHP Architect and Pro PHP Podcast held their first live podcast (Interview with Andi Gutmans) since PHP Architect announced their “acquisition” of the podcast. However, due to some technical difficulties, the live feed was canceled after about fifteen minutes into the interview, and the audience was unable to participate in the Q & A session at the end.

Nevertheless, I do have a few notes from the interview to share.

PHP Collaboration Project
The Zend PHP Collaboration Project, often referred to as the “Zend Framework,” was on the minds of many of the attendees as the interview began, and Marcus Whitney dove right into it, asking Andi why Zend decided to undertake this project. Andi said that Zend feels there are three things needed to take PHP to the next level; the PHP Collaboration Project is made up of these three things:

• a solid framework/development environment
• enriched development tools (Eclipse)

• best practices

  Zend is using the PHP Collaboration Project as a vehicle to promote and accomplish these goals to advance PHP.

  PHP Competing With .NET
  Marcus asked Andi why he has been quoted in the past as saying that Java is not PHP’s main competition, but, rather, .NET provides the most competition. Andi ellaborated on this, saying that the Web is moving toward a more agile development model, which is why he feels that Java is not particularly suited for the Web. Instead, .NET and PHP are both particularly suited to solve the Web problem, and so it is only natural for .NET to be PHP’s main competition.

  PHP Strengths
  Andi continued his discussion of PHP vs. .NET by highlighting the major strength of PHP and the main weakness of Microsoft (and, thus, .NET). He said that the greatest strength PHP has is its large community base, while Microsoft has never been able to solidify itself in the server market over Apache—the software giant’s greatest weakness in the competition against PHP.

  At this point in the interview, the technical difficulties took over and the audience was unable to participate in the remainder of the interview, so this blog post serves merely as a teaser. I believe they’ll post the rest of the interview by Monday, though, so look for it, then.