> I think we have a vastly differing definition of "in production".
Running software that customers use, directly or indirectly.
I've supported servers running PHP and Java software in production. The shared-nothing per-request nature of PHP meant I didn't have to deal with a bug in a misbehaving library causing memory leaks and taking down the application server.
> That's what I mean, not only for PHP but for like 99% of all programming languages: they play catch-up, waaaaaaaaay too slowly and gradually, with things that should be baseline by now.
PHP's problem domain has been web-based e-commerce and content management systems. In this area, PHP powers most of the web. You'd want to use PHP in this field, over other languages. Every improvement around PHP has been to advance this goal, such as the recent addition of gradual typing. There's no question of "catching up" in this area. That it is broadening out into different areas, great.
> You seem to insist that statistical success speaks something of the merits of a technology.
If the technology doesn't have a marketing department, or large companies forcing people to use it, then arguably, this does, as otherwise people would just use something else.
There have also been many other qualitative improvements to PHP over the years. I also mentioned its shared-nothing architecture, which is a qualitative, not statistical aspect behind PHP's success, as it has proven to provide stability in production. People use PHP because in certain problem domains, it is qualitatively, and statistically (assuming you mean, it benefits historically from a wide number of successful, maintained libraries) the best tool for the job.
Running software that customers use, directly or indirectly.
I've supported servers running PHP and Java software in production. The shared-nothing per-request nature of PHP meant I didn't have to deal with a bug in a misbehaving library causing memory leaks and taking down the application server.
> That's what I mean, not only for PHP but for like 99% of all programming languages: they play catch-up, waaaaaaaaay too slowly and gradually, with things that should be baseline by now.
PHP's problem domain has been web-based e-commerce and content management systems. In this area, PHP powers most of the web. You'd want to use PHP in this field, over other languages. Every improvement around PHP has been to advance this goal, such as the recent addition of gradual typing. There's no question of "catching up" in this area. That it is broadening out into different areas, great.
> You seem to insist that statistical success speaks something of the merits of a technology.
If the technology doesn't have a marketing department, or large companies forcing people to use it, then arguably, this does, as otherwise people would just use something else.
There have also been many other qualitative improvements to PHP over the years. I also mentioned its shared-nothing architecture, which is a qualitative, not statistical aspect behind PHP's success, as it has proven to provide stability in production. People use PHP because in certain problem domains, it is qualitatively, and statistically (assuming you mean, it benefits historically from a wide number of successful, maintained libraries) the best tool for the job.