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Lead PHP Developer Quits
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Jul 28, 2006 07:49 AM
from the changing-of-the-guard dept.
from the changing-of-the-guard dept.
Jasper Bryant-Greene writes "Jani Taskinen, one of the lead developers of the Zend Engine (the engine that powers PHP), as well as a lead developer for the thread safety system and other core components of the PHP project, has quit in a relatively cryptic message to the php-internals mailing list. Jani has been involved with PHP for about 6 years and his loss will undoubtedly be a big blow for the PHP project."
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Message text (Score:5, Informative)
From: Jani Taskinen
Date: Thu Jul 27 20:28:45 2006
Subject: Good bye.
Groups: php.internals
Re:Message text (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, though, a more thorough listing of Jani's contributions over the past 6+ years might better show just how much of a loss it is to have him depart the scene (from http://www.zend.com/person.php?handle=sniper [zend.com]:
Whatever the reasons were, major thanks have to go to Jani for all of his work. We would be looking at a different www without his efforts.
Parent
6 years is long enough (Score:5, Funny)
Threads?.. bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Only pages with more than 1 visitor need to ca.. OOPS!
Pity (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunate for the Zend team, but I'm sure it won't be the death of PHP. There are many other developers, and you can still run PHP sites with other engines, for instance, the Quercus [caucho.com] engine in Cauchos Resin I'm sure there are similar modules available in the mono/.Net world and others.
Jani Taskinen who? (Score:5, Informative)
Jani worked on the PHP core and the Zend Engine.
Jani has contributed to php.net in the following ways over the last 12 months:
* as a lead developer for Zend Engine II
* as a lead developer for TSRM (Thread Safety Resource Management)
* by testing and maintaining the build for the PHP core
* by writing/maintaining tests for the standard functions in the PHP core
* as a lead developer for gd, a core extension
* by working as a developer on imap, a core extension
* by working as a developer on session, a core extension
* by working as a developer on sockets, a core extension
* by providing occasional fixes for the testsuite distributed with PHP
* by applying maintenance fixes to the underlying libraries in bcmath, pcre and xmlrpc
* by providing tests and occasional fixes for xml
* by providing occasional fixes for apache2filter, apache2handler, apache_hooks, cgi, cli, dba, dom, iconv, informix, isapi, ldap, mcrypt, mcve, mime_magic, msql, mssql, mysqli, mysql, ncurses, oci8, odbc, openssl, oracle, pgsql, recode, snmp, soap, sqlite, sybase, tidy and tokenizer
* by writing/maintaining tests for mbstring, mhash, pcntl, pspell, shmop and wddx
* by working as a developer on bugs.php.net
Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging him harshly? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a volunteer he gave a great deal back to the world. You call him childish. I say he is entitled to walk away without having to explain himself.
Re:Judging him harshly? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Cryptic? (Score:5, Funny)
From IRC, the reason: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:From IRC, the reason: (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:From IRC, the reason: (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed.
However, which one of the four unarmed UN observers killed in the attack was a threat to Israel's existence or its people?
Parent
Seeds of conflict? (Score:5, Interesting)
I found these:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=11329681 6720289&w=2 [theaimsgroup.com] 5 7711671&w=2 [theaimsgroup.com] 0 9820157&w=2 [theaimsgroup.com]
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=1153255
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev&m=1153312
...which hint at conflict. Maybe one of those blew up in a way he didn't like. However, I don't think those really are the issues. I would guess it's something off-list. It's too bad. I have friends working at Zend. You never want to see someone so useful walk away.
I must admit that I'm impressed with the mailing list -- Jani said "don't reply" and nobody did. They're either a disciplined bunch, heavily moderated, or Jani's leaving just didn't have much impact.
-Tony
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it such a shock to some that a developer got burned out working on the same code. Open source developers are often not appreciated. A few get paid and many don't. Its just constant nagging for new features or bug fixes. There are rewarding aspects too. Maybe he wanted to do something with php that hasn't happened. He was involved with thread safety and that hasn't seemed important to many people. Personally I'd like to see thread safe php so I could play with some of the apache mpms...
Parent
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Its just constant nagging for new features or bug fixes
...
Personally I'd like to see thread safe php so I could play with some of the apache mpms
Parent
Thank you Deanna F'n Troi (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Good riddance... although a sad one! (Score:5, Insightful)
If they deliver the code and can keep the project together with their style, then can act how they want. Linus, RMS, Theo de Raadt - they have their quirks (Linus much less than the others), but the code speaks for itself.
Since you're going as far as to question Linus suitability for his job (architecting his hobby project that conquered the world) - where's your wildly succesful open source project?
Parent
Re:Good riddance... although a sad one! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah! You're reading too much into his words. As I see it, what he's trying to say is that the reasons to him leaving are personal, but obvious for some poeple involved. Also, he does not want to start pointing fingers and does not feel he owes anybody an explanation. Perhaps you see this as behaving like a primadonna, but hardly hot-headed behaviour. He doesn't insult anybody in his post, although he obviously wants to and he refrains from whining about whatever he's unhappy about.
Parent
Re:Looks like a stomp and a doorslam. (Score:5, Insightful)
Recently, I read an interesting book by a psychologist named Paul Eckman. OK it wasn't an interesting book, it was a tedious book on a fascinating subject.
A couple of the takeways from the book: emotions are persistant mental states that are triggered by situations that bear on your future well being, and in turn trigger certain stereotyped survival related behaviors. In an emotional state, people do not process new information that would contradict the survival behavior. In other words, once you get to fighting, or to running away, you aren't going to listen to reason until you've fought it out or have run far, far away. The psychologists therefore call emotional states refractory, which is a word I learned from EE "Doc" Smith which when applied to metal means hard to work and when applied to a state of mind means hard to work with.
I've sometimes seen job listings looking for people who are passionate about their work. I'm not so sure this the right thing to look for unless you are looking for a short term employee. All jobs involve having your desires frustrated from time to time. As your emotions build up, your ability to process new information and ideas that could help you overcome your frustrations is diminished, because atavistic survival behaviors related to conflict and survival begin to strangle your productiivty.
In that case, the best thing is to take yourself out of the situation, which in all liklihood your own behavior contributes to.
You can take two people who are miserable and underperforming in their jobs, have them swap jobs, and suddenly they'll feel a great relief and surge of productivity, as they work flexibly around the exact same kinds of problems that had them stymied in their original job.
Unless you're some kind of Zen master you're going to run into this sooner or later. When you reach the point where you can't perform up to your potential, even your potential as defined by the less than perfect work situation you're in, it's time to move on. This is probably why academia, infamous for its harsh and pointless politics, evolved the institution of the sabbatical. But for the rest of us, this means quitting and getting a new job.
The emotions expressed in the email are probably universal. They do not in themselves indicate immaturity However, one thing that you do learn as you get older is when you feel strong negative emotions towards other people, hiding them is the best first reaction. In most cases you cannot change other people, especially if you are terminating your relationship to them. So the best you might hope for from negativity in the way you do this is some kind of catharsis, or perhaps some kind of public vindication. However experience teaches you don't often get those, and when you do they aren't as satisfying as you imagined them being.
Above the simple futilty of showing your anger and disappointment, expressions of strong negative emotion evoke an equal, if not stronger reaction from their targets. Often this ignites a round of petty retribution that comes back to haunt you.
So when it becomes impossible to deal with the emotional climate of work, leave. But always leave with a kind and magnanimous word. In the end that serves you best.
Parent
Re:Looks like a stomp and a doorslam. (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you're some kind of Zen master you're going to run into this sooner or later.
Well, he is apparently a Zend master!!
Parent
Re:Shock! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Looks like... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Reason: burnout (Score:5, Insightful)
The causes are quite straight-forward. When we do something for other people, we need some kind of reward. It can come in many forms - appreciation, money, reputation, status. The best rewards change over time and are a good mix of all these.
Open source projects consume people, with demands on their time, social life, professional capacity. The only rewards tend to be reputation. Depending on the invidual's personal life and other demands (family, job), they can sustain a heavy open source project for a few years, and as many as five or six. At some point, it either becomes a profession (with a wage) or a problem.
All volunteer organisations have this problem and it's exacerbated by peer pressure. If everyone else is spending 80 hours a week hacking, then it seems normal to spend 81. At some points, open source projects can seem like cults, and unintentionally adopt many cult techniques to keep people involved, whatever the personal cost.
(Those techniques include isolation from family, use of secret languages, separation from real time and real life, etc. I don't *think* any OS projects do this on purpose, though I have my secret doubts about the FSF. Just kidding, Richard!)
I've seen burnout cases so severe the persons involved were literally sick, unable to function normally any more, and needing psychiatric help. In other cases it's project-specific. I've had this on open source projects, where after five years I've just abandoned the software, telling the users, "sorry, it's not working any more".
Each person has different needs, but eventually if we don't get what we need, we get sick. Young people are especially vulnerable because they don't understand their own needs very well and neglect them easily.
The upside is that burnout is easily cured by a change of scene and some tangible rewards. Some people even come back to projects they've abandoned, but it can be very difficult. A good dose of selfishness ("what do I need in order to feel happy NOW") is always useful, and a good self-protection measure in many environments, open source groups included.
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