Drupal Is a PHP Application, Remember?

Keith Casey recently observed to me that "Drupal developers don't seem to think of themselves as PHP developers," and the ensuing conversation, at various times roping in Joe LeBlanc (a Joomla! developer) and Aaron Brazell (WordPress) caused Aaron to write this really thoughtful post. What we've realized is that many of these applications with large communities don't seem to think they're a part of the larger PHP community, and for whatever reason the divide exists, it makes both communities weaker.

PHP is actually a rich language. It has been used from tiny personal projects up to FaceBook and Digg. The collective experience of its community also spans that range and much in between. So there are things the broader community of developers has learned that could greatly benefit Drupal and other open source projects.

As Joe points out in the comments to Aaron's piece, not every application is a Digg. So the PHP community could use the feedback that optimizing for the Digg case might come at the expense of middle-tier uses of the language. And of course it remains a stubborn trope in the Drupal community that object-oriented programming in PHP results in "slower" applications, yet the broader community has learned that object orientation is almost never the cause of slow PHP applications; doing things like having too many database calls is--and that's definitely a problem Drupal has by design (see slide 40 and forward of this presentation).

So both communities would be enriched by the participation of members of the other. I admit I have been more of a PHP developer who happens to use Drupal, but I have attended the DC DrupalCon and a couple of the DC user group meetups. Yet aside from developers who report to me, I haven't seen anybody from the DC Drupal community showing up at a DC PHP meeting.

So if you develop sites with Drupal and know even a little PHP, check out your local user group or consider attending a PHP conference. You might find potential members of the Drupal community and learn some things that could benefit your next Drupal project. And I will definitely bring my Drupal experience to PHP conferences and meetings.

We will both be better off, so if you've been waiting for somebody to invite you or bug you to join in, consider yourself invited!