Keep PHP Alive! Grow a Beard!

Apparently, beards and programming languages have a direct correlation with each other, at least according to Tamir Khason. His latest list (a “take two” from this older post) reinforces the idea, pointing out lots of different languages and the people involved. Basically, the facial hair (beard, mutton chops, goatee, soul patch, whatever) of the major players involved is an indication as to how well the programming language is doing. Language in the “No Facial Hair” crowd include F#, IronPython and Prolog while the cool cats in the “Facial Hair Everywhere” group include C, Perl, Ruby and Python.

So, where does PHP fit on the list? Well, he points to this picture of Rasmus Lerdorf as a positive indicator for our beloved language, but there just might be enough other developers out there to counteract his effect.

For example:

not a mustache to be found here
a bit found here (go John and Ilia!)
a huge point for the good guys with Zak’s crumb-catcher
Ben Ramsey sporting a mighty fine bit of face fuzz
awesome representation from Belgium (I have been corrected)
a bit of fuzz from Cal Evans (of Zend)
a sad lack of facial hair from the Zend Twins – Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski
another plus from Marco Tabini (of php|architect)
and, of course, The Wez
Marcus, Dan and Wez showing off their contributions toward the cause
and this guy gets a little extra credit for not only the mutton-chops and goatee but also for the amount of time he put in to make the rest of the hair on his head do that

Though thankfully, there’s one growing part of the PHP community that makes it so much better without even having to worry about the facial hair (thank goodness) – the PHP Women (coming soon to a conference near you!)

So, what’s the result? Does PHP pass the “Khason Test” for survival? Could the best way to support the community possibly be to let that facial hair grow? It’s too soon to tell, if you ask me – right now, though, I’d say the current follicle count is tipping in favor of PHP being around for a good long time…

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering – yes, I am a little on the scruffy side myself)

14 comments

I’m a busy developer in NYC and have sported a beard for years.

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Also, I’d say that about fifty percent of the attendees at the NYPHP meetups sport some variant of facial hair.

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OK, here’s more for you:

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@brian: I guess Chris Shiflett falls in the “non-fuzzy” half

@Stas: excellent! thanks

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“awesome representation from Brazil” … hum no, it’s a pic ture of an aperoPHP that I organize in Belgium….

aperoPHP are unconventional/informal meeting.

http://www.aperophp.net is the website to organize theses meetings

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@Christophe: d’oh! thanks for pointing that out – I changed the post

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That’s funny, I’ve always found facial hair incredibly itchy, uncomfortable, and distracting. Big beards just read as just laziness for personal hygene for me.

So if the beards are representative of the social life a programmer has because he’d rather code than shave, then it’s obvious why would these people make the best languages!

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