CHAPTER 20 ■ OBJECTS, PATTERNS, PRACTICEThere is never enough room or time to cover all the material that one would like. Nevertheless, I
hope that this book has served to make one argument: PHP is growing up. It is now one of the most
popular programming languages in the world. I hope that PHP remains the hobbyist’s favorite language,
and that many new PHP programmers are delighted to discover how far they can get with just a little
code. At the same time, though, more and more professional teams are building large systems with PHP.
Such projects deserve more than a just-do-it approach. Through its extension layer, PHP has always
been a versatile language, providing a gateway to hundreds of applications and libraries. Its object-
oriented support, on the other hand, gains you access to a different set of tools. Once you begin to think
in objects, you can chart the hard-won experience of other programmers. You can navigate and deploy
pattern languages developed with reference not just to PHP but to Smalltalk, C++, C#, or Java, too. It is
our responsibility to meet this challenge with careful design and good practice. The future is reusable.