Bollocks

"...will become number 1 source of PHP developers soon..."

With a large out-o-control population (numbers of), just having a squillion kids writing a bit of code does NOT make "some place", wherever, the number "1 source of"...

I agree with you 100%. the blog title is ridiculously misleading. This is a phpclasses website related stats only and that is just another PHP community website. I think there are much more famous website for PHP which can give more realistic data.

Also all the points author used to prove his claim of INDIA being # 1, are nonsense and prejudiced. It all seems like a propaganda to me lol

Such articles are seriously going to damage the integrity and liability of PHPClasses.org website. Author should seriously consider this fact. Such stuff damage your image that you have earned by so much hard work in past few years.

Haroon, it does not seem you respect the PHPClasses users community.

The PHPClasses site 10 years of age and has 800.000 registered users . Do you think this is not a large enough representation of the PHP community?

The article also presents statistics from the Zend certification site.

Which other much more famous PHP site can provide more realistic data?

And why this article is "seriously going to damage the integrity and liability of PHPClasses.org website"?

I'm most certain that "Bollocks" feel threatened by the fact that, not only India but, the BRICK countries are very much on a march forward!

It is time to wake up and smell the coffee! These countries are highly competitive today, and surpasses the traditional western economies both in productivity and innovation!

Confrontation is an easy way to to try to make the problem go away, hence "Bollocks" attitude...

I am not targeting any site,country or ethnicity, let me make this clear first of all. But the problem is your blog title. I did not want to dis your website with my comments but we all are developers here and you know the number of users you get from SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users, is not the real number of REAL USERS on a website. Bots, duplicate/multiple registrations and many other things count. And how many active users we have here.

I have a serious concern about your reasons to support your arguable heading "india will become number 1 source of php developers" .

W H Y ?

1 - because in last 30 days max number of users you had are from INDIA?

2 - because they participate more than others on your website?

a fair heading could be "indians are using our website more than anybody else in past 30 days" :)

secondly, it is not me who is arguing with you, there are so many other people in here. which means you need to accept that you did something wrong in your this very article. When you present something in a generalized form then you need consider the generalized data. You are generalizing something based on your site-specific data. Every person who can write a echo "hello world" on a freelance work website where most of the tasks are done for $10 cannot be called a quality php coder, Sir!

If I were you, I would consider who is making the biggest, most complex, most innovative and most quality code in the world before drawing a title "xxxx is number 1" ... your article is misleading because as you know potential employers come on your website and you can mislead them.

so instead of taking on my comments, you better rectify in your blog that you were talking about your site specific stats. And BY NO MEANS I AM INSULTING ANYBODY. I respect everybody but I have problems with your article, yes I do have. If you are representing such a huge PHP community then you need to be more responsible and do much more research before writing something. This is the second time I am having argument with you. First time it was on ZCE exam article where you did no research and post article and interview of a respected ZCE. You even did not give the name of official ZCE books in that but the books name of that ZCE dev. Bro, do research, because people come to your website with a level of integrity in their mind.

It's not me only, there are many other people here who have condemned your this article.

Thank you!

I think it would help if you relax and read the article again to clear some of your misunderstandings.

For instance, the first lead paragraph says:

"The number of Indian PHP developers has been growing at a large pace in the last few years, when compared to other countries. A few years ago, India was just one of the top ten countries with more PHP developers. Now India is number 2 and is almost surpassing United States, which is still number 1."

As you may see, it mentions the number of the Indian PHP developers. I am talking about quantity of developers. It is in that aspect that India will be number 1: in quantity of PHP developers. No claims were made regarding the quality of the capabilities of such developers.

The article mentions the logged users in the last 30 days because it is a public number that everybody can verify in the statistics page. It is just 30 days because after 30 days the site kills all logged user sessions. So it is easy to extract that number.

As you may see there, it represents an universe of more than 40.000 users, which is large enough to take conclusions.

phpclasses.org/browse/statistics/st ...

I could have used numbers from the statistics of registered users in the site in the last 3 years. They would lead the same conclusions but it would give me more work extract and organize. So I justed used the logged statistics because that is where I noticed the growth.

As it was mentioned, a few years ago, logged users from India represented about 3%. While many other countries remained with more or less the same share, India has grown to more than 10% now. It is a growth trend that remained consistent for at least the last 3 years. So, the conclusion is, by extrapolating the numbers, it will surpass the United States share soon.

But if you feel that the PHPClasses numbers are not reliable, lets take a look for instance at the public numbers of PHP developers available at eLance.com, that somebody else pointed to me now:

elance.com/php/search/main/eolsearc ...

North America - 33.6%
India/Southern Asia - 33.2%
Western Europe - 10.5%
Eastern Europe - 9.4%
Eastern Asia - 4.3%
Latin/South America - 3.5%


Other than that, I do not have an agenda that could influence the article. I am not from India, the site is not based in India, it is not sponsored by anybody from India. The site was 100% developed by me. I am from Portugal, which is very far from India and has no special relation to India. I have nothing against or for India or any other country.


Although it is not an obligation of this site, I tried my best to provide valuable information about the PHP market making assumptions from detailed statistics that I have and I think they are fair to use and take reasonable conclusions.

If the statistics of the PHPClasses site are wrong and misleading, nobody came here to prove it.

You claimed that I should use statistics of other more popular sites, but you did not tell me which.

You claim there are many other people here, but I do not see anybody here saying the statistics are wrong besides you.

So, I do not understand you are so concerned in asserting that the article is wrong without any evidence besides your opinion.

The impression that you are passing to me is that you are upset because you take India market as a threat your job. Maybe my impression is wrong, but if it is right, I can understand why you feel that way.

I just regret the fact that you are "shooting the messenger" because you do not like the news he brings. It is certainly not my fault that the reality is the way it is and you do not like it.

@Bollocks

Please think before you comment. First try to verify if the information is correct or not. You really don't have respect towards the users of site and their work contribution given to PHPClasses.org.

Since how many years you have been using this site?

lol ... threat to my job!!!! hmmm.. you are right, we are having a credit crunch in UK because Indian visitors are using your website more than anybody else :D

you talked about my opinion, well what is this article about? isn't it your opinion? if you can have your opinion, why can I not have my opinion?

I love Indians, I have so many Indian friends here, I do not have any hard feelings about them. I wish their figure becomes 99.99%

If you read all comments here on your blog, you will see everybody has one thing common to say, "your blog title is wrong".. I don't have anything personal with you, but since you have turned the table to me so let me tell you, your website is not the end of PHP-world. If you have 800,000 or even 8 trillion visits on your site that does not mean whatever you say is right.

How many times, in past, you had so many arguments on your article? never I guess. why are you getting so much criticism this time? there is something wrong buddy...

I don't want to make any personal grudges with you. But when you write something for community then be prepared for different point-of-view. I love your website too. I have its link in my favorite sites on many places. I always recommend my juniors to search your site for classes when they are stuck somewhere. You are taking it very hard on you and in return coming hard on me. All I said is that your blog title was wrong. You put a very generic title.

I hope to see more great articles from you soon. Have a nice day!

It really doesn't matter how many script kiddies India has or the US has, because only 1 in 10 PHP programmers have the slightest idea what they are doing. I would be interested to see a listing of the highest paid PHP developers worldwide, or a list of the most accomplished developers. This would be difficult data to collect but it would be very interesting to try.

I have met 100 PHP 'programmers' from all over the world who claim to have some level of experience and knowledge in the development field, and I have yet to hire one of them for any extended period. Most of them just couldn't keep up, others had poor communication skills, and still more only knew PHP, and had no clue how to integrate with other platforms (a most valuable skill).

Anyway there is no way that India will surpass the US because of the obvious language barrier. How many Indians have a true command of spoken English, let alone grammar? Albeit probably 100x more than Americans who speak Indian languages fluently, and let's face it, 50% of Americans don't really even speak or write English. But I digress.

The fact is that most of the world relies on solid English communication skills, project management, and integration with other systems besides PHP, in all development projects around the world. And that is why this article headline was indeed 'Bollocks', although the article itself was well presented.

Lol @ David Horton.

If only every third Indian speak english, it's more people than the entire US population (and if your reasining about 50% of the US population being english speaking, then the numbers are even more against you!)! BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) represent more people than USA and Europe combined.

Dismissing this with the language as a reason is laughable! In 10 years India will have passed US as a world economy! China is already there! You will probably need to speek hindi or kantoneese to conduct business in 10 years!

I'm very humble towards the fact that we will have to reconsider the view on these economies vastly over the coming years!