Gerrit wrote:
I think a lot more people have this
"PHP-religion-problem", really (I
know at least three people in my immediate environment with this
problem: a Pythonist, a Rubyist and a Perlist). If the modularisation of
PHP is of a degree that it would indeed be possible to code new parts in
other languages, I'd be happy to dive into a task that could be
fulfilled in Python (I'm already an active pywikipediabot-developer).
If it was written in Python you'd just find some other way to avoid
contributing. And then we'd have lots of people complaining that they
can't code in Python, and that we should be using Java or Ruby or
something. You can't satisfy every programmer, everyone has their own
preferences.
PHP *can* be a valid reason to refrain from MediaWiki.
Some people care
about things like language design, and since MediaWiki is of course OSS,
those people will not get involved in a PHP project. Nicholas and I
apparantly are two of them, I'm sure there are many others.
I'd code for Wikipedia regardless of what language it used. I had never
looked at PHP before I started on Wikipedia. If it was in Python, I'd be
there. It wouldn't have mattered if it was in Ruby, C, Haskell or x86
assembly, I'd dive in. Because Wikipedia needs programmers and Wikipedia
is a worthy cause.
Unfortunately it seems most programmers on Wikipedia would rather think
of excuses, complain about the lack of progress and file bug reports.
-- Tim Starling