Microsoft Web Dev Summit 2009
For the past three years, Microsoft has hosted the Microsoft Web Development Technology Summit, inviting a small group of community leaders, project developers, and prominent members of the PHP community, primarily for the purpose of eliciting feedback on how to better support PHP on Windows. I’m privileged and honored to be invited back for a third year to the fourth annual edition of this summit.
This is the first time I’ve ever blogged about the event, though I’ve taken “live” notes during the 2007 and 2008 summits. I’ll be taking notes again this year, if you’d like to follow along, but I’ll also be devoting several blog posts this week to the event because I think it’s important.
As I said, this is the Microsoft Web Development Technology Summit, but perhaps it’s not very aptly named, since it could best be termed as the Microsoft PHP Summit. Then again, one could argue that PHP really is the server-side technology of the Web, so calling this a web development summit is appropriate, and I think Microsoft understands that. This is the first reason I think this summit is important: Microsoft recognizes the importance of PHP to web development.
The second reason it’s important follows closely on the heels of the first. Because PHP is important, Microsoft wants PHP to work as best as it possibly can in a Windows Server environment, eliminating all performance arguments in comparisons between Windows/IIS and Linux/Apache. This reduces the platform choice argument to one of subjective preference with no basis in objective analysis. This is good for Microsoft because many PHP developers continue to use Windows as their local development platform, while deploying to *NIX systems. All performance arguments out of the way, if developers can deploy to the same platform they use for development, would they?
Other barriers for developers include cost and even open source philosophy (but mostly cost). Microsoft is eliminating this obstacle with their WebSite Spark and BizSpark programs. The philosophy argument is addressed by licensing some Microsoft tools and libraries under Microsoft open source licenses (which include BSD-like and GPL-like licenses).
There are many other reasons why this summit is good for Microsoft, but I’ll end with a third one for this post. In the spirit of openness and transparency, open source communities tend to be very vocal and honest, often brutally honest. So, why would Microsoft invite a room full of PHP developers, where the common laptop present will be running Mac OS X, with a few Linux laptops sprinkled in the room, and even fewer Windows laptops? Our community doesn’t hold back with our opinions. That’s why. Each person in the room has ideas of how Microsoft can be better community citizens, provide better and easier to use products for developers, and improve support for PHP on Windows. We may not use that platform, but we all have ideas for how it can be better. I don’t think Microsoft is kidding itself that it will convert us to its platform, but I do think they value our opinions and presence because our feedback will make their products better and we’ll communicate the experience back to the greater PHP community (i.e., through blog posts such as this), improving their image.
Do I think Microsoft has done anything positive with our feedback? You bet. In the years since the Web Dev Summit was first held in 2006, we’ve seen improvements to FastCGI in IIS and the introduction of the open source SQL Server native driver for PHP. I believe these improvements are direct results of the Web Dev Summit. And there are others. This year, the focus appears to be on developer tools, so we’ll be having in-depth discussions on typical workflow and processes for developing a PHP project from start to finish. If you have suggestions for how Microsoft can improve their tools for PHP developers, let me know, and I’ll pass them along.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this thought. Microsoft has seen many changes over the years. They are a behemoth of a company, and my perspective now is that there are two types of people in the company: the big company corporate types who are still convinced that closed and proprietary is the way to protect their products, brand, and customers and, on the other hand, the newer generation of product managers and developer evangelists who are making genuine attempts to be more open and transparent and finding ways to interact with the open source community to promote Microsoft as a good community citizen. Both are real faces of Microsoft. Don’t discount one for the other.
4 Comments
First of all, tell that every time i try to deploy
a webapp to iis is a trauma. Can they improve
existing technologies like iis on windows 2003
Can they put a real solution to htacces config?
Hi Ben,
My requests for MS at the moment revolve around deployment. Essentially, I want native, reliable SSH command line access that doesn't use remote desktop connections or a VPN. Working, native rsync would be nice too.
A good start would be getting something like DeltaCopy installable via WPI as it's really hard to get an IT dept to install anything that isn't either from a big name PLC or installable via WPI.
Regards,
Rob...
What is interesting is you said most developers hack on windows and deploy on Linux. But you then say most of the attendees run around with Macbook {ros!
Is there objective data out there which points to the most popular development platform?
And even if there is, how relevant is it. PHP developers are perhaps the most diverse group out there. You have basic hackers just getting things working, you have small/medium sized web-design shops and increasingly you're getting enterprise oriented development. Each group has very different needs and different goals.
For me, as a largely enterprise focussed PHP dev I think the biggest reason I don't develop (let alone deploy) on windows is tooling. There are so many tools that come with a basic linux or mac osx install that make a developer's life easier.
Most low level PHP coders read blogs and material written by ideological or enterprise level developers who like the power and convenience of the *nix tool stack. I think as much as focussing on PHP's performance, Microsoft need to create a tool stack comparable to what you can find on any Linux install or Mac.
As Rob says above, simple, simple things like rsync and SSH are a 'mare on windows. Heaven help you if you want to do a simple grep to find a source code file.
It's these little things that in aggregate make developing in Windows a mega pain. And that's before you even get to the deployment stage.
I'm really excited about the things MS is doing with PHP. I hadn't tried installing PHP on IIS since 4.3.something, so the conversations I had with you and Glen Gordon re MS & PHP at the Happy Hour in Atlanta completely blew me away. I think having good support for PHP on IIS opens doors to us as PHP devs that have traditionally been closed.
That being said, I do wish IIS could read .htaccess files and support mod_rewrite rules (I know it didn't a year ago). I used a commercial solution on the last PHP site I deployed on IIS, so at least there *is* a way to do it ...