Leave it to Zend to kick Java-loving Sun Microsystems when it's down.
PHP has become one of the hottest programming languages in technology, and the engine behind the little scripting language that could is Zend Technologies. Back in 2000 Zend released its Zend Framework to facilitate PHP development, and it's now taking this Java-bashing crusade a step further with the release of its new Zend Server, as The Register reports.
As Dave Rosenberg notes over on CNET's Software Interrupted blog, Zend Technologies is making available its Zend Server on Tuesday as both a commercial product and one free to the community for download. Why? Because such a move should further facilitate PHP adoption and give Zend a prime location to profit from that adoption.
Smart strategy. The new Zend Server can be easily integrated into any bundle, runs native to the operating system, and offers significant performance and management features. With the community version, the company says developers and admins can set up a complete PHP environment in minutes.
This is especially interesting for two reasons:
- With the general availability of Zend Server, the company is obviously signaling that it's serious about run-time and extending its products beyond tools. In other words, it wants to make money. Lots of it. It's smart enough to know that there is a huge market opportunity to support PHP application development with a full production environment--from tools to run-time. And with both the company and a community of users supporting it, Zend can help PHP dominate in Web development.
- The company is going to use the freeware model to accelerate adoption and then convert some of those users to paying customers and provide a foundation of access and support for which the open-source software model has blazed the trail. This model has worked for Red Hat, Zimbra, and others, and I suspect it will work for Zend, too.
This wraps up a really amazing decade for Zend Technologies and its recently appointed CEO, Andi Gutmans. And with big companies like Adobe Systems, Google, IBM and Microsoft using PHP or rumored to nearing full support for it, the next decade should be equally as productive.
In other words, life just became a wee bit harder for Sun. Just what it needed.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Esther Schindler over at CIO.com does a great job picking apart some recent data on Ruby adoption. The (Koders.com) data, which is gleaned from language-specific searches on its code repository site, suggests that Ruby interest is up by a factor of 20 since 2004.
However, as Schindler points out, the Koders.com data may simply reveal the obvious (i.e., the Ruby community is vocal) or the not-so-pleasant (i.e., perhaps Ruby users have lots of need to look for information because of problems with Ruby).
Ruby use really isn't all that much. According to Evans Data, which asks developers twice a year about their favored programming languages, only eleven percent of North American developers use Ruby today, for any part of their work...About two thirds use JavaScript in any guise, just for comparison, but somehow that doesn't generate the same kind of passion...
[I]t also might mean that Ruby developers need more help than others do..., whether because the existing software is hard to understand or because their shops don't have a lot of existing in-house expertise. It might mean that there's so much easily-found JavaScript open-source code that they don't need to head to a dedicated search engine for it. Maybe, in their enthusiasm for all things Ruby, they just like to look at code examples.
So maybe Ruby is on a roll, or maybe it's not. The Koders.com data is inconclusive on this point. All we really know is that the Ruby community is vibrant and vocal.
But Ruby isn't about to take over the enterprise, where most of the money in software still resides. Java and .Net still rule the enterprise roost. Along with the imperfect Koders.com data, O'Reilly Media's book data points to an upsurge in Ruby development, but we're a long ways off from massive enterprise adoption of Ruby, at least in any way that threatens Java developers.
Java has its detractors, but according to a recent reading of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, it's still the dominant programming language, with little change in its overall popularity since August 2007. Runners up? C, (Visual) Basic, C++, and PHP.
That's the short-term view of the past year. Looking at the longer-term view, however, Java, C, and other "traditional" languages appear to be on the decline while PHP and its ilk are on the rise:
Tiobe Programming Community Index, August 2008
(Credit: Tiobe)Data from O'Reilly book sales suggests a similar decline for Java and other traditional programming languages over time. Cause for alarm? Not really. It's just a matter of the web assuming a more vital importance to programming, a trend that will continue to grow. It will, however, take a very long time to make your Java or C skills irrelevant.
Using book sales as surrogate tea leaves, Mike Hendrickson of the O'Reilly Radar finds life bleak for pretty much every major programming language except C#, Javascript, and Ruby. Java? It has plunged by 50 percent since 2003.
Sun Microsystems is hedging its bets on web scripting languages, recently adding Python experts to its fold. So perhaps Sun will weather the storm. Regardless, even despite its five-year slide, Java still holds the biggest share of the book-buying market, as this chart shows:
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