Rasmus wrote about the "No Framework PHP MVC Framework. And so many people missed the point, it becomes almost funny. First of all, there are a bunch of Ruby on Rails wonks who are obviously dismayed by the entire idea that using a framework, especially one with a central controller could actually be harmful. This is something that Avi and I talked about earlier, albeit in a slightly different content.

Railing on Rails

Probably the most annoying, asinine, and missing-the-point-entirely, is an entire blog post that claims to compare the no framework PHP version with Rails. Look, I am not about to rag on Rails. It is obvious that it does something right and good for a lot of people; in fact, installing and playing with rails is very high up on my todo list.

One of the things that bugs me about this comparison it is at the end of each subsection is a running tally of lines of code written, as if that is the be-all and end-all of programming. If it really had to do with how many lines of code we wrote, we'd all agree that a language like scheme is best, and we'd all program in one language.

But really, the biggest thing is this, I'll just quote the relevant authors, and let them speak for themselves:

I don't have much of a problem with MVC itself. It's the framework baggage that usually comes along with it that I avoid. Parts of frameworks can be useful as long as you can separate the parts out that you need. As for MVC, if you use it carefully, it can be useful in a web application. Just make sure you avoid the temptation of creating a single monolithic controller. A web application by its very nature is a series of small discrete requests. If you send all of your requests through a single controller on a single machine you have just defeated this very important architecture. Discreteness gives you scalability and modularity. You can break large problems up into a series of very small and modular solutions and you can deploy these across as many servers as you like. You need to tie them together to some extent most likely through some backend datastore, but keep them as separate as possible. This means you want your views and controllers very close to each other and you want to keep your controllers as small as possible.

--Rasmus

The controller handles the requests of the user. Every request goes through a controller first. The controller uses the model and view to create a response. In this application, one of the tasks of the controller is to load a list of products, using the model. The controller gives this list to the view, which turns it into HTML.

--Jules

The difference is obvious. Rasmus is talking about why using a monolithic controller might not be a good thing, and shows us how one can get round that using his language of choice. Jules is showing us that his language and framework of choice is so much better then ours because his framework writes all his code for him. Glossing over the fact that Rails itself has, just as a guess, several kilo-lines of code. So I guess that means that PHP is better, because it only took PHP a few hundred lines for what took rails thousands.

Now as I said, I don't have it in for Rails. I don't actually believe that a framework is better then a language for writing web applications. I think both have their place.

Object Fascism

The other funny/annoying part of the comments to Rasmus's blog is the OO-Zealots, another great quote:

I think you are doing a lot of damage with this posting. Do you realize what's going to happen if ONE of the 30 programmers in the building I work in find's your post? For years I have struggled convincing fellow programmer's that PHP is NOT a simple scripting language for the gamers and what not, that it actually CAN compete with J2EE and ASP.NET and C# if used where appropiate. To read this from the creator of the language....I'm still shocked

--Jurgan

Now, at work, I have to deal with a J2EE app. I am not sure if it is a representative sample or not, but let me tell you: if the J2EE/huge-framework method is the right way, then I'll throw my lot in with the bad-guys. Trying to change just one small aspect of this system becomes an exercise in pain. This droplet here, is it configured by the params and oparams in its XML? Or is it configured by its properties sheet? Or is it configured by some other XML configuration file somewhere else? In actual fact, I am also willing to explore the very real possibility that there was a very particular reason for the at-work system being laid out like it is, and I am going to try my very best to learn it as best as I can, without letting my prejudices getting in the way. It isn't going to be easy, but it will be well worthwhile.

Anyway, the central point here is that you can talk till you are blue in the face about how PHP is a perfectly valid language, about how it can be used appropriately, until you are blue in the face. 90% of them will not listen. They don't care. The C# guys spent a fuck-tonne of money becoming certified by Microsoft. They are firmly, and proudly locked in. If they have to admit to the possibility that there is another perfectly valid way of doing things, their house of cards comes crashing to the ground. The same can be said with the Java guys. They love their Bondage and Discipline language, and wear their love proudly. It is so much easier to sneer at a language that challenges what we think of as "good" then it is to actually learn from and learn about that language.

To those guys, I say "So what". Let them spend countless dollars on training and education on broken languages. Go learn Scheme, Haskell or something. Go see what the fuss is about continuations and web programming, so that the next time they start to sneer in your direction, you can retort with something like "Oh, I'm sure glad your language of choice solves every problem. Why aren't we all using Language X for everything? Quick tell the world!". Language advocates are annoying and dumb, and should be treated as such. Don't treat them as people to convince, but people to scorn.

Okay, sorry, this got a little ranty. But language advocates piss me off. There is a big difference between loving a language, and loving a language to the exclusion of all others. I'll finish off by pointing you to this great entry about Java by Steve, titled: Execution in the kingdom of nouns.