Andreessen: The future is PHP

"My new company is running a combination of Java and PHP. This is something I get no end of crap about," he said of the technical decision. "We have a core to our system that is built in Java. It is more like an operating system, like a system programming project. Then we have the entire application level — practically everything you see is in PHP."

PHP has received the blessing of major powers in the computing industry. IBM and Oracle are working on software that let PHP-powered applications pull information from their databases, and that endorsement has been important, said Zend chief executive Doron Gerstel.

"The fact that IBM and Oracle are behind it — this is for a lot of IT (customers) a quality stamp. The big guys endorse it, so it must be good," Gerstel said in a meeting with reporters.

The new version 5.1 of PHP, scheduled to arrive in early November, will include a faster engine to process PHP scripts, said Zeev Suraski, a Zend co-founder and PHP creator. It also will include a low-level "data abstraction layer" that makes it easier for PHP to communicate with different databases and a higher-level layer to interface with XML information produced and consumed by Web services.

Version 6, which is expected to arrive in 2006, will support Unicode character encoding, which supports a wide range of alphabets, simplifying creation of software that works in multiple international regions.

Andreessen said he believes the Web is where most new applications will reside — in part because Web applications are available as soon as they're launched, sidestepping the distribution challenge of desktop software.

"Microsoft talks a lot about Avalon (display technology in the upcoming Vista version of Windows) and fat clients. But they still have a problem. You have to get the program out onto everybody's desktop. With the Web model, you don't," Andreessen said. "I think there's no question the Web model is going to dominate over the next 10, 20, 30 years."

Some interesting work is being done on the PCs, however, but he pointed only to applications that run in a Web browser and that rely on data and services supplied over the Internet. Here, again, Java is losing to an unrelated scripting technology called JavaScript and a JavaScript offshoot called AJAX that permits a fancier user interface.

"JavaScript was, and now with AJAX is, the standard way to do client-side development in a browser, as opposed to Java," Andreessen said. "Java applets in the browser never took to the extent some of us thought they would."

Not everyone sees things the same way. Google uses some cutting-edge browser-based software such as AJAX, but chief executive Eric Schmidt recently took the stage with Sun chief executive Scott McNealy to announce that the Google Toolbar will be piggybacking on distributions of the desktop version of Java.

"I was amazed to find out how much the Java Runtime Environment is inside companies, either because a CIO standardised on it or there are enough applications that the CIO wants the JRE to be a standard" part of the company's computing infrastructure, Schmidt said at the Sun-Google event. As part of that partnership, Google will help develop Java.

Netscape pushed JavaScript as a way to build fancier Web pages than the fundamental HTML standard permitted, but without the more difficult programming Java required, Andreessen said. "We did JavaScript to try to be an intermediate bridge between HTML and Java. I got in huge fights with Sun over this," Andreessen said. "They got mad. Then I told them we wanted to name it JavaScript, and that made them even madder."

Java isn't the only client software that didn't live up to its promise, Andreessen said. Macromedia's Flash format, which enables animation, sound, motion and other splashy features within browsers, also is on the list.

"I think Flash is one of the most exciting technologies out there that's almost on the verge of great success and never quite achieving it," Andreessen said.