The Register reports that PHP developers are still stuck on Windows Desktop. The Register quoted a survey conducted by Zend Technologies, that found on the desktop, the numbers breakdown thus:

• Windows: 42%
• Linux: 38.5%
• Mac OS X: 19.1%
• Everybody else: 0.4%

The Register is only telling half the story. 38.5% on Linux is a fantastic percentage. I for one am a happy Ubuntu & Gnome desktop user and I haven’t depended on Windows desktop for at least 6 years. Its a shame though that so many employers and technical people still use Windows desktop when Linux Desktop has everything you need, its free, and its not crap either. Funny that the circling vultures at The Register would focus so much on how PHP coders are still on Windows, and fail to point out that as a group they are agressive adopters of Linux Desktop. Visitor stats for websites indicate that Linux desktop is a lot less than 38.5%.  PHP developers are helping lead the way for Linux as a choice for the desktop that is fast encroaching on Windows turf. That turf will soon be taken away from Windows by Linux. Somebody should have pointed that out. Guess that is what I am doing.

Linux dominates the web server world, and it makes darn good sense to see run the same system on the desktop as for the server for reasons of uniformity and behaviour. Its an obvious right choice to make. Learn to work well in the Linux shell on the desktop and you can use all those skills on the server.

Oddly, The Register reported all this but did not supply a reference to the source report on Zend.com

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/17/php_windows_linux/

I am back recently from Codeworks 2009 in Washington, DC. It was in Alexandria, Virginia actually, but close enough, its a big place and its the same thing. This is the first time I have been able to go to a conference  without being involved at all in its planning and organization. I know from experience that a lot of work is put into organizing and hosting a two day event with top-level speakers from all over. The DC Codeworks event was just one event in a series of dates in major cities across the us. Yep, php has gone rockstar. I am proud of the work I have done in the past but I found that by the time the conference came around I was too tired to absorb the lessons as I would like to. So while I am busy recompiling notes from the talks I attended, here are some photos from the conference I would like to share.

The conference was great, I learned stuff, I learned what I know, what I dont know, what I need to know, and more. I met a great group of people and traded lots of business cards.