***GEEK ALERT***

There is a lot of buzz here about Ruby, and Ruby on rails. Which seems pretty cool, and it appears to do alot for you, but I really don\'t see the corporate world catching on. I think it will probably remain just a hobbyist language. That being said, I am still very interested in it and will probably try to add that language to my small portfolio.

One thing that I am disappointed by is the fact that even though this is a Java conference they cover things like Ruby, but not one session has made mention of PHP. Personally I find PHP to be simple and I took on to it right away. Many have the view that PHP is just another scripting language. While that is pretty much how I use it, (along with most other PHPers I know) it does have some Object Oriented capablities and I am surprised that nobody here seems interested. I myself would like to start investigating the OO PHP stuff, but my inexperience in programming in general has kept me from making that leap. (Along with the fact that time isn\'t exactly something I have plenty of anymore, and my 8 to 5 job doesn\'t have much call for PHP solutions).

That being said, I still want to try some OO with PHP and see where I end up. It has its bad qualities, security, revisions, and now with PHP 5, backwards compatability, but I think its a viable solution to many a corporate problem ESPECIALLY if its used as part of a LAMP solution. (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). The LAMP combination provides cost effective solutions all th way around. Gratned you can have the same thing with Java, but I feel that the barrier to entry for Java, (as far as learning curve) might be bigger than it is for PHP. At least that is how its been for me. I hope that maybe next time, someone will give a talk on PHP. It deserves a look.

Anyway, I am anxious to get home and see Carrie & Olivia as its the first time I\'ve been away for more than a day\'s work since Liv was born. I hope she recognizes me when I come home...