Peter Stuifzand

What comes after PHP?

In the The PHP Singularity Jeff Atwood writes about how PHP is the only option for server code that runs everywhere. And that if you don’t want to write PHP, you have a problem, because there aren’t any other options.

This is not an abstract, academic concern to me. I’m starting a new open source web project with the goal of making the code as freely and easily runnable to the world as possible. Despite the serious problems with PHP, I was forced to consider it. If you want to produce free-as-in-whatever code that runs on virtually every server in the world with zero friction or configuration hassles, PHP is damn near your only option. If that doesn’t scare you, then check your pulse, because you might be dead.

The day before Anil Dash wrote Clouds for people, or the consumerization of the Cloud about something that could be the solution to this problem for consumers and producers.

So we need a consumer cloud offering. An app store for EC2 or a marketplace for Rackspace. The same one-click stores that offer us easy apps on our own local devices should let us purchase consumer-friendly apps that run on our own individual cloud servers.

If we take this idea even further we arrive at the Freedom Box. Which is the same thing, but at home in a small box. These two ideas will strengthen each other. And maybe you can even use a cloud app in the cloud or on your local network.

© 2023 Peter Stuifzand