Gadgetopia

Friendster goes PHP: This is good news. I hate to dis Java, but, well, I hate it. Always have.

…on Friday we launched a platform rearchitecture based on loose-coupling, web standards, and a move from JSP (via Tomcat) to PHP. The website doesn’t look much different, but hopefully we can now stop being a byword for unacceptably poky site performance.

After that little rant, it may seem strange for me to say that I’m trying not to get hung up on platforms lately. My buddy Matt has been pelting my with .Net propaganda, and Joe told me that it’s fantastic (“I tried really hard to hate it…”). This being the case, I’m working on staying platform-neutral these days and concentrating on app design and usability, without regard for what platform the app is written in.

I’ve recently used PHP to write perhaps the best app I’ve ever designed, but I’m trying not to identify it with PHP so much. The value of the app is in the design, the flow, and the usability, and it could be re-written in any platform that makes sense. (See this post for much more on this note.)